TippTopp

A perfect storm of travel combined with airline merger has brought my UA account to new heights. The current balance can reach a million when the UA and CO accounts are eventually merged.

From a managerial perspective, keeping a high balance makes little sense: miles can be thought of an unsecured loan to an airline, and experience teaches us that they tend to lose value over time.

But is there any valid reason to accumulate miles? I seem to recall that a member's current balance was used to determine upgrade eligibility. Is this still the case? Are these any other benefits to keeping a huge stock of miles?

Thanks,

TT

SEA1K4EVR

No..there is no benefit. Mileage balance has never been used to get any additional priority for upgrades or anything else.

One possible reason to keep a lot... UA has occasionally auctioned off prizes using miles. And once many years ago it even offered you the ability to charter an entire plane using your miles. As I recall, you could select an A320 or 757 and the amount of miles would depend on which plane you chose and what route you wanted to fly. You could fly anywhere in the US..including Hawaii as long as UA mainline served the cities (757 only to Hawaii). I'm thinking this was pre 9/11.. maybe late '90s. I don't remember how many miles it cost.

But other than really wild things like that.. there's no other good reason to keep them around.

Edited: I'm correcting myself.. it was post 9/11 and it cost 5,000,000 miles for an A320 and 7,500,000 for a 757. Thread here from 2003: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...our-miles.html

tlawrence85

This is untrue. Nothing about upgrades is affected by the number of reedemable miles (RDM) you have.

The number of elite qualifying miles (EQM) you have does affect upgrades, but those get reset to 0 every year and can't be used for travel (they just determine your status).

There is no benefit whatsoever to keeping a huge stockpile of miles.

Kewldude21

I see no real reason to keep so many miles into one account. Use those miles before as you say gets devalued. Over the years value of miles keeps geting less and less.

TippTopp

Thanks for the quick responses, folks! I guess that a few trips around the world should be scheduled...

TT

mikeef

Just do it in the appropriate class of service!

My rule of thumb: Keep enough miles in the account in case I need to make an emergency trip to Bali in an Asian carrier's F.

Mike

TippTopp

I thought that the RDM (total miles in account) affected upgrade eligibility when two members of the same rank compete for a single seat. For instance, one upgrade seat is available and two 1P have requested it. This must happen often with the Complimentary Region 1 Upgrades, for example.

Are you saying that the winner will be the one with the higher EQM (year to date) rather than by RDM?

TT

avidflyer

I like to keep a really high balance myself but you risk devaluation if you keep too much. Prices do go up.

jhayes_1780

IIRC, it does for one of the USA airlines (I don't remember which one) but it is not UA.


IIRC, UA's tie breakers are:

1. Status
2. Fare class
3. Check-in time

randomman

Just over 1.3 Million miles in my account right now. I book everything as revenue since I'm just barely hitting 1P these years.

Going to hopefully hit 1 Million EQM at some point (700k now) and wont have to worry about earning any more EQM (hopefully they keep that benefit...). Then I can burn some of the miles. Hopefully they will be worth something in a few years.

randomman

c1ue

There is one benefit to banked miles besides the auctions and the MM tier to offset the devaluation constant (it isn't a risk, it is simply a matter of time):

While the miles represent an unsecured loan to the airline, they equally represent an unsecured obligation by the airline to you.

Travel to Japan, for example, used to be possible for $500 or $600. Impossible now.

Similarly travel overall has gotten more expensive; if you've been banking up miles for 5 years or more then the actual value of the free tickets has gone up as fuel prices and inflation have kicked in.

The MM tier is also non-trivial if you aren't certain you're going to be 1K or 1P forever. These days they charge $50 for handling fees for 2P or lower; this makes mileage tickets for pretty much any domestic travel not worthwhile if you're flying out of any hub.

garykung

Couple months ago - there was a trip package (hotel included) that actually cost about $700.

WineCountryUA

While I agree with you MM benefit comment (and hopes it continues), the OP was asking about banked RDMs which is not connected at all to MM status.

rruaco

ISTR that the final (almost never used) tie breaker was Alphabetically By Surname, but maybe that was CO.

I'm planning on changing my name to Mr Aaaaaalbert just in case though.

STS-134

It's impossible for two people to check in at EXACTLY the same time. The server can only receive one packet at a time...