Mileage Plus Award Question from an old Newbie
 

Here’s a MP Award and hopefully Saver Award question:

My wife and I have a bit under 600,000 points saved up, all from MP Visa use. We want to go from the west coast to SYD and back, around 11/10 going down, around 11/26 returning.

I’ve never used any kind of MP points for anything, hence I know nothing about it, but a cursory look at award travel between both LAX and SFO to/from SYD shows that I’m short by 100,000 points if we’re looking to travel in anything other than coach. Between the two of us, we have exactly 591,770 points right now.

Looks like they want 175,000 per person per leg.

Can an Economy class MP award flight get an E+ upgrade?
If so, how much?
Can I somehow buy, beg, borrow, or steal 100,000 points that I can use to make it happen?
If there’s a possibility of any of this, I’ll have even more questions.
I’d welcome someone resurrecting the UA Pilot Q&A so I can answer YOUR questions!

FAB

You can buy Economy Plus and price varies based on distance, flight date, etc.
You can apply for a couple of credit cards w Chase and get 50,000 signing bonus each.
You can buy miles on United website going rate is 1.9 cents per mile.

As you are aware, the price listed is the standard Last seat award price. The usual saver price is 1/2 of it. I am assuming you are looking at Business First both ways. One thing I can recommend is try to go through ICN (in Business class via asiana on their 380 - 80K award is available) and then onwards in Economy to SYD. Alternately, you can book onwards in Business first at 175K price and the return in economy (Or the other way round).

If you choose the Asiana route (currently available on your date from LAX), you will end up with 80K+175K = 255K miles per person!

That's one of the more difficult routes in the system for saver awards. It's not at all surprising UA has nothing available so close to your desired travel dates. People plan these sorts of trips very far in advance and the saver business seats go quickly when they are made available.

Carriers will often open more award seats closer to departure if the flight has lots of seats available. For example, if you wanted to fly out this Sunday, you could fly through SFO on UA in first class for 80,000 miles. On Monday, you could travel on Air Canada in business through YVR for 80,000 miles.

Make your outbound Nov 4 or 5... there is Saver F (out of SFO).
The return you are doomed, expect to pay a standard award.... or Y.

E+ buyup looks to be about 175.00 per person, each way.

Not applicable to the question at hand.... NRSA is not possible for this (or did you retire)?

Not doomed, it's same story as the outbound - J/F seats are likely to open on some routing a few days prior to departure.

Book whatever saver award you can now, watch like a hawk for open J/F on the return, and just accept you'll have to pay the change fee.

I'll keep watching as we get closer to the date. I would have been on this sooner if I'd known I was going to try and do this. I'll also check surrounding dates, since given that this is a vacation, we're a little flexible.

Thanks for your input.

FAB

Good suggestions, and thank you. I'll consider these options. Given how often my visa cards are being hacked, it's not a bad idea to have a spare one ready to go.

FAB

I'm not really at all familiar with any part of MP, and have never used it, so I was not aware of that. I'm in for a quick and dirty education, I'd guess. I don't know how to even find any of that stuff as it pertains to any other airlines. Star Alliance, I'm thinking you mean? Is it shown on the MP website? I'll look closer. I appreciate your help.


FAB

Unfortunately, those dates will not be possible, but I can flex a little.

I avoid NRSA when I can because it's such a crap-shoot. In fact, I generally only do it when my wife isn't with me, there is a jumpseat possibly available (none in int'l flights), and/or there are more than one flight/day.

I'm not retired yet, but that has turned ugly for retirees since the merger. Used to be that we got a little bump-up in boarding priority when we retired with 25+ years. Since the merger of equals, retirees now travel at their retirement seniority, which stops accruing at retirement. This was implemented within a month of my 25 year anniversary.

Not really likin' the changes!

FAB

There are award booking services that might be able to help - they would be more familiar with the partner options.
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trave...e-reviews.html

So you can book that Nov. 10 LAX-ICN-SYD outbound right now for 80,000 miles. The ICN-SYD leg would be in Y. If you search for awards LAX-SYD, that routing will show up on the united.com search results (towards the bottom of the page). You could then hope that better saver award options will open over the next two weeks (odds are good they will) and change the award. That change would cost $100 per ticket.

Alternatively, you could wait until something better opens to book. That would save you the change fees; the risk is that nothing better may open and you wind up with no flights.

Or if you can travel Nov. 5, book the SFO-SYD routing in F for 80,000 miles.

For the return, you would basically book whatever you can now, and then keep watching for better options. Subject to the $100 per ticket change fee (assuming the change is made within 21 days of departure).

Unfortunately, before Nov 10th, is out of the question for me. I think I'm going to just keep a close eye on it, and also maybe apply for the two credit cards for the additional 100,000 miles. My wife just told me that she has almost that number of points on her AMEX, but I'm unclear on what kind of points, and whether they're airline points.


I might end up with some combo of our points, bought points, and new MP Visa points. Or riding in coach.

Do you or any other FTers know where I can find a User Guide-type document?

Thanks

FAB

The short answer? You found it. FT is all about the ins & outs of managing the MP perks. From your seat, you've probably paid most attention to things dealing with the actual flight.

Don't worry about posting questions that might seem like the appropriate response would be RTFM. You've built up a lot of cred over the years; thinkin' you're going to be cut a lot of slack and get a lot of help. ;)

Thank you, Mike. The more I look at it though, after buying miles, paying a sign up fee for Explorer cards to get the extra miles, etc, I'll about break even buying a couple of tickets off of Orbitz on Qantas as a backup.

FAB

+1

If you're thinking buying, Quantas has a very well reviewed Premium Economy. No, it's not like E+ it's a separate class of service with domestic type FC seat IIRC. Costs a little more, but on such long flight well worth it. I've done in on EVA Air to Asia and really liked it.

+1

Lots of folks here will be happy to walk you through this.

btw, the AMEX points don't transfer to UA. They will transfer to AC's Aeroplan, through which you can book UA flights.