Boarding/Checked bags/Overhead space
None of these was ever an issue; I have been 1k since shortly after the merger, so even with a BE fare, I board early. Overhead space was never an issue. I never checked bags.

Picking trips
I searched for fares on Google (Matrix ITA) with the goal of spending no more than 5 cents per mile. Most tickets were cheaper than that—in 2018/19 much cheaper. I did overspend on a few flights as described earlier. MM_someday, among others, came up with great fares.

I started this lark to accumulate lifetime miles, so a trip to SIN at 5 cpm was better than an overnight jaunt to Miami at 4 cpm: while I could earn over 7,000 LT miles with a trip to MIA, but could triple that mileage going from LAX to SIN with a quick layover in DEN. Finding fares that could meet or beat that 5 cpm criterion wasn’t difficult. To illustrate this point, I didn’t fly from mid-December until January 16th: fares were expensive over Christmas. I was home on January 21 and 27. In February, due to a family commitment, I was home from the 15th through the 19th; I was similarly stuck at home for work from March 3rd through the 10th; I had a weekend with the dogs on April 6th and 7th and again on May 10th and 11th. I was all done on June 16th and spent the week in Europe, returning on the 24th. Aside from those 14 or so days, I spent every day from January 16th traveling. It was bliss. I planned the calendar around trips to SIN or DXB—the big mileage generators. I would try and fit in LHR or NRT if all else failed; SYD looked good towards the end, but the calendar was full at that point. Open days were filled with round-trips to KOA, OGG, or HND; I’d take redeyes to cities in Florida. A last resort was EWR or IAD. It took effort for the few hours I was home to scan for acceptable trips.

Seating on a BE fare (2023/24)
I wasn’t looking forward to the restrictions of flying on a Basic Economy fare. I realized that flight attendants do it all the time: fly standby and take the dregs when it comes to seating. If they can do it, so can I.

United has three types of coach seats: blue, white and “delta.” On the seat map the E+ seats are blue; the worst, crammed, seats are white and the “preferred” seats have a black triangle. Just like the airline, I can’t figure out what’s so special about them, so I call them Delta seats. On domestic flights, I was assigned a white seat about 60% of the time; I got a Delta on 30% of trips and E+ was randomly assigned for the other 10%. On almost all flights where I had a tight connection, the system would move me up from a white or Delta seat to an E+ seat a few hours before departure.

United is adamant that seats can’t be changed, but if you play around with the app, you can find a way to move yourself to a window seat without cost. International flights were interesting. Initially, I was assigned middle, white seats but after a few flights, I’d end up being assigned an exit row window or aisle most of the time. On flights to or from SIN, I began to rely on getting 42A and was seldom disappointed. Gate agents at out-stations were also very obliging when it came to seat assignments.

How I was treated
There were no issues with preboarding—I was worried that with Basic Economy scrawled on the boarding pass that there’d be an issue; there wasn’t. One thing that I wasn’t prepared for was the treatment I got at the back of the plane. Apparently, a 1k sitting near the back galley is rare, so I was treated really well. FAs would introduce themselves to me, so that I could claim the snack before they ran out. On about half the flights to London, I was brought a meal from the PremiumPlus or Polaris cabin: English flight attendants are the best! I discovered that a 1k at the back of the plane gets treated very well.

Upgrades on a BE fare
Of course, upgrades on BE fares aren’t supposed to happen and on domestic routes, the N fare bucket seems to ensure it’s the case. On international flights, I have seen all sorts of fare buckets associated with a BE fare and, if I get caught in the upgrade sweep before check-in, I have been moved to the front cabin. It happened about six or seven times: flights to Denver and flights to SFO at the ungodly hour of 6 am on a weekend.

Health and related topics
Yes, but they all occurred after I stopped traveling. I found it difficult to sleep; I felt tired during the day; I got the sniffles now and again—minor things like that. Collectively, I’d call them withdrawal symptoms, perhaps due to the change in lifestyle after close to nine months of almost constant travel.

Regrets
I have a couple, but they all center around not having done more mileage runs. I do look back with regret on a spreadsheet of fares to SIN in 2018/19. There were dozens of flights to SIN, HKG, SYD, and MEL from September 2018 to March of the following year that were under 5 cpm. At the time, I thought they were expensive. I likely could have generated an additional 500,000 miles for about $22,000 had I not been greedy!

Another regret was passing up the opportunity to fly 106,458 miles in 13 days for $3,276.66 or 3.078 cpm: I still feel the pain. The travel would have been brutal, but I would have had a weekend to recover. The trip would have been six, back-to-back trips to SIN. Three involved a single stop at SFO; two involve flights to SFO going over and back and one trip was a straight flight to SIN from LAX. The first trip had me leave on Sunday and return on Tuesday; on the second trip I left on Tuesday and came back on Thursday and so on, going over and back to SIN every other day: six trips in thirteen days—bliss. I’d park a car with clean clothes in the trunk in a discount, multistory parking lot, swapping laundry for clothes at each LAX layover. It would have been perfect.

The lesson that I have learned is if you’re doing mileage runs and you see a good deal, buy it.

Problems and Irritations
IRROPs tend to get pride of place on FlyerTalk. In reality, United does a spectacular job. I used to worry about what would happen if. I had trips packed close together. Most of the time, things just worked out. In all the trips to SIN, I only had a major issue with a plane once. I got stuck in Dubai for three days thanks to an incredible storm that caused major flooding. The whole experience was tremendous. I was supposed to arrive back on a Wednesday and had quick turns to KOA and OGG booked on Thursday and Friday; they were both booked in basic economy, but a quick call to United and I was issued a refund in the form of an electronic voucher. I got a one-time courtesy, twice!

I also recall two trips where two NRSAs got pretty insistent about switching seats. The FAs shut that down pretty quickly. I think in one case, one of the passengers lost his seat on the flight.

One other minor irritation occurred at Newark last October or November. I asked a gate agent if she could put me on standby for an earlier departure to LAX and showed her my boarding pass. She told me no. I assumed, incorrectly, that BE fares weren’t eligible and said so in a thread on FlyerTalk; I think WineCountryUA corrected me. What I discovered, months later talking to an agent at LAX, is that she likely didn’t want to do it as there were maybe non-revs trying to get on the flight. I’ve been turned down a few times since (each time at EWR), with all types of excuses, but agents at the UC always come through and put me on the list. I cleared every time.

Overall, I loved the whole thing. I wish I had a reason to do it again and I recommend it without hesitation. If you have the mileage runner gene and you want to get lifetime status, get on a plane and fly.’

There you have it!