findark

Not sure if this one is actually worth it because it will be very hard to find inventory and more importantly mileage running is largely dead and since the fare is from SFO to MRY you can't really use it to go anywhere other than spending time on a plane. But if you wanted to visit the Udvar-Hazy museum or still have a distance-based *A crediting program... I figure an expert might want to have some fun with this.

SFO-MRY for just under $150 on a half-round-trip basis, and somebody really was feeling whimsical when they wrote the routing table:

Notes:

SFO-EWR nonstop is prohibited by the fare rules (standard block for domestic First fares).

DEN is the only routable hub (other than SFO) with service to MRY, and MRY-DEN departs after noon.

Because of this, I don't think a double-hub return is possible because you can't get to the second hub in time to catch a flight to SFO within 4h00.

Longest possible routing here is I believe SFO-IAD-DEN-MRY-DEN-SFO.

MRY is destination point, so you could theoretically treat this as two trips if you drive home from MRY in the middle.

Higher fares on this route have the same routing table, including one way fares, so you could do a "open jaw" jaunt as a single one-way from SFO to MRY.

Priced with inventory off and overflow inventory suppression might make finding inventory effectively impossible:

Quail

Good for AC SQM.
Fare allows AC stock. Now time to confirm if, in practice, this can be combined end-on-end with AC transborder to get it on 014 for AC SQD.

steveholt

Wouldn't that be cabotage?

Quail

Not at all. It's UA operated SFO-MRY, ticket stock doesn't matter. Doesn't even touch Canada.
Hypothetical example for someone living in SFO: YYZ-SFO AC (either AC or UA operated) on Feb 7, continued with the above starting Mar 5. Finding availability though...

findark

It's sub-$300 one-way on a one-way basis, so that might make a better argument since the MRY-SFO direction is restricted to a single transfer in DEN anyway.

Looks like this is templated onto other California regional tables too - here are some one-way options that price (BIH has cheaper one-ways). It will definitely take some massaging to make work well.

I'm realizing all my pricing examples are abusing married inventory rules. If you tell the search engine to search to the intermediate hub (eg. ORD) then it breaks inventory which helps a lot. UA used to let you ticket this via multi-city search but I forget if they fixed it. Really unsure if you can plate that 014.

For example, I don't know if this will ticket but it goes to the final payment screen (it's booking into D as a UA continuous pricing fare, should be underlaid by a SFO-BIH one-way):

PLeblond

From what I counted this would produce 10,100+ SQMs. Do you really want to push the envelope for $350=ish SQDs?

Quail

While exploring options? Yes definitely. Pushing the envelope within the bounds of the complex set of rules set by airlines is a fun puzzle, and the open discussions make this forum special.
When booking? That's a separate question up to individual risk tolerance after becoming well informed. These itins already have lots of inherent complication vs normal travel (including scaled up normal ones like schedule change complexity, tight connections, etc).

segiddins

5 segments in domestic first for a segment run actually sounds pretty appealing to me, not a bad way to spend a day working on the laptop anyways 😂

steveholt

I thought you meant a transborder flight inbetween flying from SFO to MRY.

PLeblond

Don't get me wrong... I love this fare and would jump on it if I lived on the left coast. Only thing that would make it better for me is on top of the lie-flats, if UA still ran Q400s for the shorter segments and I could get a prop flight in there... Just that at $350 for 10k+ SQMs... I'd take the money and run.

And yes, hope that in the case of a schedule change the system didn't reroute me to a "better" connection and have to find a way to build it back to those miles. Its a little hard to say: "I'm have an important meeting in IAD I can't miss" with a 1 hour 2 minute connection.

findark

Ah yes, we did you a huge favor and were able to rebook you on the nonstop SFO-MRY

In practice, I don't actually think the schedule change computer uses faring to assemble its idea of a "trip", and has a decent chance of considering your destination as the furthest point. This was originally surfaced when another poster in the UA forum stumbled upon SFO-ORD-DEN-MRY-SFO as a Google Flights suggestion for SFO-ORD round-trip.

SportsTech

So, if hypothetically one were near SFO or OAK and needed, say, 48K miles to get to 2 million lifetime... This sounds like a better option than flying to China in coach twice. Can one of you who knows how to book these fares (honestly, they're a mystery to me) explain whether this type of routing would be a good way to access a bunch of miles comfortably and relatively affordably? TIA,
ST​​​

findark

For UA MM, you are earning based on BIS only, so the premium you pay for First is solely for your comfort (no mileage bonus). With a fair amount of work I think you can get this under 10 cpm BIS, which is quite good for a premium fare but perhaps 3x more than a good run in Economy.

The best searching I can do with inventory on seems to be a calendar search on Matrix for a 0-day round-trip to either ORD or IAD with "ua+ MRY,BIH ua" or "ua den ua ua" on the return. (Even dropping the routespec is probably ok, just need to trim the query time.)




This is the best I can price on United website with real inventory and a bit of pushing the envelope on inventory rules. SFO-IAD-DEN-BIH is in First (Z/V) and BIH-SFO is in Y (that's the return, so you can do whatever you want with it - stay in BIH, drive home, or maybe if I add a 5th segment go home BIH-DEN-SFO).

SFO-IAD is overnight in a recliner; you can up the price to D for a lie-flat 752. IAD-DEN is lie-flat.

oblisk

As someone who is in that boat, but now lives in europe, i'm strongly considering how i can set this up for a long weekend of classic mileage running to easily push me over the 1mm mark.

Repooc17

If the to go balance is about 50K to MM, similar to the other poster, then this is a lot more than a long weekend's endeavor. You would also be passing through some airports without a lot of frequencies. And, despite the number of segments, some of flights won't accumulate significant distance, relatively speaking.