My son living in Canada has 42k UA miles but needs 49.5k for booking an int’l flight. An additional 8k miles are costing ~US$300. The cash price of the ticket is around $1k. I have only around 5k UR in my Chase account after booking a business class in the same flight for around 88k UR (we’re flying together out of the US).

Since he doesn’t want to spend $300, is there any cheap way for him to get an extra 7.5k miles soon?

The only option I can think of is applying for a Chase Ink to get the 100k SUB but that would take a long time and the award flight may be gone by then.

Another option is him booking a dummy flight to take advantage of the award accelerator and purchasing 15k miles for $375. But again, he doesn’t want to spend that.

Can someone suggest what to do?