Pat89339

On behalf to the Mileage Run Moderator team, I would like to express our thanks to the many FlyerTalkers who have risen to the challenge and helped so many members with their helpful suggestions.

‘Please follow the instructions for posting in this thread which can be found in the wiki. DO NOT CREATE A NEW THREAD

These consolidates threads made managing the year end traffic much smoother.

Hopefully, all were successful with their runs.

Pat89339 on behalf of the Mileage Run Moderator team

boat stuck

I need 33,500 BIS miles on UA to get to 1MM so I can stop worrying about status forever. If it wasn't for the pandemic, I'd have reached it in 2020, but alas I'm still a bit short.

For personal reasons, I don't think I'll be able to go on any mileage runs (or indeed, any trips at all) for an extended period of time after July this year, so I'd like to take care of it before then. Weekend trips would be strongly preferred.

In the old days, this could've been taken care of by two $300 roundtrips to China, but alas those days are long gone. In fact, given Covid, it seems any international mileage run would be inherently risky.

So given the above, the best I've found so far is SFO-BOS-SFO on various Saturdays for $198 round trip in UA Basic Economy, which yields 5408 lifetime miles per round trip at 3.66 cents/mile, and I'll need to do 7 of these to get 1MM.

Does anyone have any better ideas? Ideally something with a lower cost per mile, more miles per trip, and/or regular economy instead of basic economy.

Departure Airport: SFO
Miles (PQF/PQP/BIS, choose one) Needed: 33,500 BIS on UA
Maximum Budget: As cheap as possible
Available Travel Dates: Before July, weekends only
Required Metal or Codeshares Okay: UA metal
Route(s) You've Already Searched: SFO to various East Coast destinations + Puerto Rico

DELee

For 33.5K BIS, you'll need to do a few runs no matter what.

Here's what IAHMCI did last year to maximize distance/time in air on weekends and earn around 324K BIS (and outfly ua1flyer ): What I Did for 2022 UA Status, 2021 Style - FT Tales of Qual and/or Requal

David

catahoulafriend

I have a simple question that I’ve poked around on UA website and FT threads but couldn’t see a definitive answer (moderators, please excuse me if this is the wrong thread and feel free to move to where appropriate).

I recently booked travel from USA to Russia using United website (so UA issued tickets) but flying LH on the transatlantic and European legs. (LH is a better schedule than UA “across the pond”). Question: do I accrue UA lifetime miles for the LH legs, or is this benefit only for UA “metal”? Thank you!

Kmxu

UA lifetime BIS miles are earned from UA and UEX metal only.

jm0933

Since I already have my status locked in on Delta for 2023 and I have lots of travel in 2022 that is United-convenient, I am thinking about doing a status challenge to get my UA status back. Any idea when they typically announce the program for the year? I have some travel on 2/11 that would be great if I could have it count.

EDIT: Today. The answer is today.

uporito

Departure Airport: SFO, SAN, or LAX all okay
Miles (PQF/PQP/BIS, choose one) Needed: PQP, as much as possible
Maximum Budget: 2,000
Available Travel Dates: anytime, preferred total time of travel: 2 consecutive days
Required Metal or Codeshares Okay: Codeshares ok, pref star alliance partners only
Route(s) You've Already Searched: SAN, SFO, LAX to LHR and ORY
Do you have a Chinese Visa (Yes/No)? Yes

Not really looking for any route in general, just have some time and spare money to try to get into Premier Silver or Gold.

DELee

Well, you know that a spend of $2000 won't get you to Silver (https://mileageplusupdates.com/milea...alification/):

So a spend of $2K minus taxes and fees is probably more like 1600 PQPs.

If you're assuming that UA will have some PQP and PQF promotions, it would be better to know what your assumptions/assertions are before we recommend how to get to any given level.

David

uporito

Yeah, I know that 2k is not enough, just wondering while I have the time and the alloted budget, how to maximize the 2k. I was thinking about a mileage run and using the codeshare transfer to maximize that to even maybe more than 2k PQP

For example from round trip from SFO - IST - JNB is 910 dollars + tax on March 26 - 28, thats 500 per leg x4 = 2000 PQP for around 950. 2.11 PQP/dollar

Only drawback though is that the total flight time is 57 hours and was wondering if there was a more efficient way to do it.

akhibhag

I need 15000 BIS miles on UA to get to 1MM. Being global services, my reasoning is to really nominate my spouse to share global services status, while I still have it 😀. I had started 2020 with 50K BiS to go and If it wasn't for the pandemic, I'd have reached it in March 2020; I have been able to close the gap in the last two years considerably!

I am open to doing mileage runs domestically. Ideally do one crazy weekend full of nothing but flights. Any ideas, help will be appreciated!

Departure Airport: ORD
Miles (PQF/PQP/BIS, choose one) Needed: 15000 BIS on UA
Maximum Budget: $1500
Available Travel Dates: Before May
Required Metal or Codeshares Okay: UA metal
Route(s) You've Already Searched: ORD to west coast

DELee

How about do something similar to what IAHMCI was doing domestically last year for 14K to 18K BIS in a weekend: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/33863427-post9.html

David

akhibhag

that sounds very much possible. ORD-IAH-SFO-EWR-ORD

uporito

Is using partner airlines the only way to get more than 1 PQD per dollar now?

Kmxu

Yes. See this thread for further details.
Earning Status (PQP) on non-016 Tickets and Partner Metal

exerda

Looking for a somewhat challenging itin to construct for Monday, 1/31, to cash in on some UA promos I have plus get at least something going on my requal PQPs. Here are my constraints:

• Ex-IAD
• 3x one-ways
• Minimum $500 base fare per one-way (prefer to keep close to $500; I've found some in the $900-ish range, but can skip the promo at that point)

I've tinkered with IAD-RIC-EWR-IAD or something similar and come up close but not quite, with the base fares coming in around $400 per. Also not so sure about EWR this close on the aftermath of a potential bomb cyclone.

Any thoughts from those with better fare search skills? I gave up my Expert Flyer subscription a while back or I'd be digging through the specific published fares to try to find a magic $500+ fare.

Not a big deal if I miss out; it's a few tens of thousands of bonus miles at stake, enough to pay for my United Club membership next year. I'd originally planned a trip to BTV and a trip to SGU in January, but both got nixed, leaving me with this last-minute, same-day circle trip idea bouncing around in my head. Harder to do with reduced frequencies right now than it used to be, though!