Changes to MileagePlus Award and Upgrade Policies - Eff. 3-Feb-2014
 

Hi everyone,

I wanted to give you a heads up about some changes we’ll be making to our MileagePlus award chart and upgrade policies. More details, including links to the changes, are listed below.
Changes to the award charts take effect for all award tickets issued on or after February 1, 2014. The upgrade policy changes will not impact any flights taken before February 1, 2014.

As always, I’m here and will do my best to answer any clarifying questions you may have.

Aaron Goldberg
Sr. Manager - Customer Experience Planning
United Airlines

Awesome!!

so ...it seems it is going to toward MileagePlusPesos in the future or should we
change the name to NON PASS again?

This time Delta gives their member notification at least 8-10 months in advance while United gives 3 months....

But thanks to let us know now.

Ouch. US to Asia (ex-Japan) in C went from 120k to 140k :( 16% increase :(

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Looks like Mainland to Hawaii awards went up a bit.

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All bad. Split chart for UA versus partners, rates significantly increased and regional int'l flights are screwed.

Lots of gutting going on here.

Craptacular. :td: :( :td:

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Sorry cant seem to edit above post but also US to europe saver biz went from 50 to 57.5. Geez.

If I want to fly in F to India, it will cost me 140,000 miles. ONE-WAY. Used to be 160K roundtrip. Unbelievable.

Well... that's somewhat upsetting.

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US-EU in biz went from 50k to either 57.5 (UA) or 7:eek: (partner). That last one is a 40% raise.

it's so UNITED .... friendly

let's get rid off our last loyal elites by changing our FRIENDLY MileagePlus policies

Just about everyone I've read about said a United devaluation was coming..

So, if I read this correctly, take for example a LH (or any *A partner for that matter) F award from US-Europe prior to 1FEB is 135k miles - after 1FEB, 220k miles?! :mad: Not sure the word inflation even does justice to the new Star Alliance partner redemption category. The next time UA offers up $0 mistake fares, I'm going to hop down off my moral high-horse and grab several dozen.

Increasing co-pays to match inflation makes sense. Increasing the number of RDM required to get an award NEVER makes sense, UNLESS they increase the number of RDM earned per flight to match inflation as well. A flight from SFO to HNL for example, earns the number of miles it earns...regardless of whether you paid $800RT for your ticket in 2014 or $200RT for your ticket in the 1980s. Neglecting continental drift, which can, over time, change the distances between cities (but this would also, by the way, change the prices of the flights), what reason is there to adjust number of RDM required for an award to match inflation? Oh yeah, those annoying things that DO tie RDM to US dollars, the credit cards. The existence of those stupid credit cards is devaluing all of the miles already in our accounts.

110,000 OW for *A F to Europe. That's an increase of 43,500 miles (64%) each way.

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Hey all that matters to COdbaUA is ancillary revenue. Gotta sell those TODs to the kettles and constantly improve the Y BOB product! Forget everyone elses loyalty and the premium product (or something).

glad i ditched united when i did. :td::td:

You can thank Chase freeloaders for this.

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Devaluation friendly!

You can thank COdbaUA for turning the airline into a CC company and bombarding me with a sales pitch everytime i'm transiting thru EWR. Not to mention the "You're in!" stuff. If they gave too many miles away then thats on them - for them to screw over loyal customers who EARNED the miles... Its so warped. Delta SkyPesos are becoming more exciting by the day.

Not going to belabor the utter destruction, but,

Aaron - if I book an award in Jan 2014 and then make changes in Feb or beyond (in routing, airline, origin, destination, etc), will it be repriced according to new mileage reqs. or will I keep the old pricing on that ticket?

Wow, this just gets worse the more I read it.

Must be Friday!

Guys, CPU's and RPU's intra-Asia and Northern South America...

WOW.. that's awful

Anyone suprised? Baggage, miles, PQD, SaverAward/MP Awards all messed with this year.

Next up: Changes to RPU/GPU

I would like just one of those genii that said this merger would be a great thing to step forward right now......

Oh well, flying became the least attractive to learn miles a long time ago. Thankfully for all its award chart crap Delta still has partners that have plenty of award space.

That's in there some.

Wow. Unbelievable! I think it's some sort of a Halloween scary joke. It better be :mad: Today I was looking for the last straw to jump to AA or AS, and here comes a whole tree!

I could understand a few miles but when it's 40-64%+ then I guess it's "flyer friendly."

Thanks UAInsider for the heads up. Kudos UA, leading the way for once.

Quick analysis shows that most UA redemption amounts, as well as *A in economy, are the same or have only modest (up to 20% increases), which is probably OK/expected and par with "miles inflation".

*A redemption in J/C has increases around 30-40%.

The real hit is of course LH, TG, OZ, NH F awards which are up anywhere from 50 to 90%. Because why not?


(To be fair, we all knew 70K SFO-FRA-NRT LH F awards couldn't last. But increasing it to 130K is...tyrannical.)
Suddenly BA Exec Club's distance based program seems a lot more attractive!

Well the old system was apply for a couple credit cards, buy some gift cards to cash them out then enjoy LH F at United's expense... funny how that didn't last, no?

This is not a devaluation, it is an annihilation! 220,000 miles RT in first to fly to Japan? That is ridiculous! Everyone needs to Tweet United (and email Jeff Smisek). Small increases are one thing, but what they've done is gutted the program!

Its gonna be harder and harder trying to fly first class with miles...

Not so easy to collect 50k + 50k + 40k ink ink csp for f anymore eh

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I wish they changed the rates domestically to be honest. Atleast then CPU would be maybe higher than a 20% probability for 1Ks.

The following restrictions apply to upgrades on flights to/from Northern South America and within Asia departing on or after February 1, 2014: (1) Complimentary Premier Upgrades and instant upgrades are not applicable; (2) Regional Premier Upgrades (for any fare class) and Global Premier Upgrades (for flights booked in fare class Z, P, S, T, L, K, G or N) can no longer be requested on or after November 1, 2013; (3) There is no co-pay exemption for MileagePlus Upgrade Awards requested on or after November 1, 2013.

That front cabin from BOG-IAH/EWR is going to be dead empty. GPU on a W fare for a domestic F seat? No thank you.

While I'm not holding my breath, I suspect that this is a precursor to a lie-flat retrofit on those routes; the same thing that happened to LIM.

Removing intra-Asia CPUs just puts us back to the PMUA days where you needed W+ and a SWU.

It's more than 90% for a *A F to S Asia. Really, 130K EACH WAY.

As the recently departed Ms Krabaple would say: HA.

:td::td::td:

Also, except HKG-SGN the CO 737's are off the intra-Asia routes as well.