JimInOhio

United must be thinking that an origin of Washington-Dulles and a destination of Ft. Lauderdale can't possibly have an embedded leg that involves a connection in Bangkok.

findark

I'm not sure if it's published, but it's how it prices and you don't want to argue with an agent about your itinerary

jsloan

No. The rules say nothing about the travel needing to make sense as a single unit. While you're absolutely correct that this isn't what UA intended, it's perfectly within the rules. However, as findark suggests, it's not an itinerary where you'd want to call UA, because some agents take it personally when it looks like you're trying to game the system.

I suspect that the rules will be tightened during some future MileagePlus update.

Agreed; it's implicit in the rules; if neither flight would be eligible for the Excursionist Perk on its own, neither is the combination. It's irritating; even more irritating is that UA will suppress inter-zone awards entirely when there is an intra-zone option, so if you want to fly MNL-HKG, you can fly via SIN (3061 total miles) or BKK (2410), but you can't fly via TPE (1228).

ClimbGuy

Why, what happens if you call and question the pricing?

That's understandable, I remember when I could fly from North America to Asia in 3 class F for 70k miles, there was advance notice given that the rules were changed. The current rules should be followed until they get changed later. Also I tried to create a new routing MIA-LHE, LHE-MLE, and MLE-MIA. That is an easier to understand routing for some, and it still does now allow for the MLH-MLE to work with the perk. In fact it comes to 20K miles for that segment, which makes no sense to me, Central Asia to Central Asia is 17.5K miles, if they want to say because I transit through BKK which is in South Asia it gets quoted at that rate it should come to 25k.

narvik

General question:
What happens if you cancel the remaining segment after having flown the [free] Excursionist Perk?

jsloan

You risk irritating an agent and bringing the day that they change the rules just a little bit closer. Understand that while this is within the letter of the rules, it's not within the spirit of the rules, and thus you're going to have trouble finding someone who will agree with your interpretation... especially with United's newer push toward "the price is whatever the computer says it is."

On that itinerary, I might be willing to call to try to push the point. I don't have an explanation for why it's 20K miles vs 17.5K.

Nothing; your account may be flagged for review regarding hidden-city ticketing if it was fewer overall miles, but that's it. (Like any other HCT situation, doing it once isn't likely to cause any problems; making a pattern out of it might). UA will not refund partially-flown itineraries, if that's what you're asking.

ClimbGuy

Don't you think the people who make the rules read these forums and the blogs that advertise the fact that you can do routings similar to this? UNInsider probably has far more influence over MP rules compared to a call center agent.

My generally point with the 20K miles is the amount of miles required with regard to the routing makes no sense and isn't based on any redemption table I can find. As such their formulas for calculating the required number of miles are just screwed up.

I think the more important question here, is what happens if by not flying the last segment(s), what you did fly would require more miles not less, what are the odds that UA re-fares the itinerary to charge the extra miles?

jsloan

Sure. But the more people who take up agents' time, the greater their motivation to fix it.

Understood, and agreed. I've seen a couple of other cases.

Essentially zero, if it's a one-time event.

Hidden-city ticketing on an award -- which is what you're suggesting -- is handled slightly differently than HCT on a paid ticket. On a paid ticket, UA can make a demand for payment, but they can't enforce it outside of going to court. (They can't go back and re-charge your credit card, for example). With an award ticket, if you made them mad enough, the T&C allow them to do basically anything they want, including closing your account for abuse. As far as they're concerned, miles aren't yours to own, so therefore you have no legal protection against arbitrary forfeiture. In order to prevail, you'd have to convince a court otherwise.

ClimbGuy

By fix it I hope you mean fix the united.com calculations to correctly reflect the number of miles needed, so I do hope they fix that. Though I think you mean to modify the rules for the excursionist perk, which would be rather unfortunate, but is probably inevitable once they can figure out how to price partner award tickets the way they will start pricing UA tickets in November.

if I call in that will be my starting point to prove the computer is wrong

To be clear the hidden city ticketing is not what I am planning to do, narvik asked about it, which is why I brought it up. I agree with your assessment of it on an award ticket. So the remaining question is for someone wanting to try it is if UA ever came after them for it.

jsloan

Yes; I meant that they will fix the loophole. UA never intended to allow people to leverage the Excursionist Perk the way that they have. And I suspect that whatever the replacement turns out to be will be worse. And, yes, I agree that it is inevitable.

I mean, fine, but I don't see that conversation going well. "And now that you've agreed that it's pricing LHE-MLE wrong, I want to change the first and last leg to a purely domestic flight to reduce the number of miles required substantially." Again, you're technically correct, but I'm not sure what that buys you. It would surprise me if that were anything more than an exercise in frustration.

I understand. I've done the same thing you're trying to do, except that I didn't call and try to argue with them.

I suspect UA wouldn't try to collect from someone who dropped the last segment once -- but, having said that, I've been extremely careful never to tempt fate.

WineCountryUA

They sure do notice and once this "not in the spirit of the rules" gets overly abused, the rules will change and get less flexible as they have for sub-24hour stops and build your own routing segment by segment have been eliminated. .

It is impossible to argue such an excursion perk was intended by UA and such use is not considered "abuse" by UA. A segment totally unrelated (in completely different region of the world) to the primarily travel. Additionally do you think UA intended to out of region travel included in an excursion segment. Say I have a valid award trip with SFO-LAX as an excursion segment, could I route that SFO-NRT-LAX?

UA (and other carriers) have always had "hidden" rules that for one reason or another the have chosen not to publicize or fully write into the code. By once the irritation becomes too much something will happen.

Arguing with an agent that this clearly outside the intent/spirit of rules (for multiple reasons) is a battle you will lose.

Enjoy what you can get the computer to price and don't let a human review this, but realize next round of rules changes will likely address this.

threeoh

The Excursionist Perk was introduced when the one free stopover was eliminated. That and the written rules are the only real insight we have into what UA "intended".

UA could have easily said "travel must be wholly within one region", instead it says "origin and destination must be in the same region". To me that is strong evidence that same-region flights that involve a connection out of that region were explicitly considered and the decision was to allow them.

Likewise, UA could have easily said "EP flight must be in a region one of your two paid flights touches". But they didn't. Did they forget to say that? Or were they trying to allow things like SFO-NRT, ICN-PEK, HKG-SFO which I think would strike most people as within what UA intended.

But what about SFO-ICN-VVO (Vladivostok), VVO-ICN-FRA, FRA-SFO. Is that "intended use"? I honestly don't know. The EP flight is within the Europe region but it sure is a long flight. But since United draws the region map, I hardly feel that that is "cheating". It has a connection outside of the region but the connection is geographically logical.

I 100% think United intended out-of-region connections to be included in the Excursionist Perk. I think this because it seems the written rules are carefully crafted to include this possibility, and, because of the way the region map is drawn, many very sensible connections involve "leaving" the region if you want to stay on *A.

Your SFO-NRT-LAX example is a red herring because the computer would never return that as a valid routing (even though the valid routings are secret). I think the main conversation on this thread is about flights that are returned by a simple one-way search on the award flight search engine that cost miles instead of being free.

I think what United didn't intend is for people to get cheap domestic r/t tickets and then a somewhat expensive EP ticket on another continent. But either they failed to even think about that, decided they didn't care since only wacky FTers would do that, or they couldn't come up with language that prohibited that but allowed other cases they felt were important to include.

But since United hasn't said what they intended, this is all speculation. I think following the written rules should not be seen as "abuse".

WineCountryUA

or sloppy rule writing. IMO, this was mention to provide a short hop in a given region as a part of your overall award, not a tour the world excursion. And note attempts to price fail, if not solely in the region --- that is pretty strong evidence of intent.

..... ICN is not in Europe. doubt VVO-ICN-FRA will price out as excursion



do you have examples that price out?

we agree on that

but the blogosphere enlarges the universal and this the sort of things folks like to do "to get the man / corporation" In the end, UA will disallow this and that may lead to further limitations.

All that matters is if UA sees it as "abuse". my opinion is of no matter.

And in this case, all I am suggesting, get what you can with the computer but taking this to a human is the same bad idea as calling about pricing errors was.

rcw70

Apologies if this has been asked/answered but I could not locate any previous discussion.

If I am traveling on a one-way MileagePlus award on LH PRG-FRA-LAX in Business with an overnight connection, will I be able to change the FRA-LAX segment to First while in the middle of the itinerary (paying the increment in miles/money)? It appears that the day 2 F inventory for FRA-LAX will most likely only become available late in the evening CET after I fly the PRG-FRA segment on day 1.

Thanks in advance.

godbreath

I want to travel SFO -> HND -> CTS (HND -> CTS is a short 1.5 hr domestic Japan flight). Right now I booked an award with SFO -> HND because there is no availability for HND -> CTS for our dates. If HND -> CTS becomes available, will I be able add it on my ticket? I am plat, so there is no fee to change tickets or cancel provided its far enough. But if theres no availability for the SFO -> HND route, would I still be able to make the change?