italnsd

Hello, I have a question on the excursionist perk. which logic would suggest is at least in part related to the only rule that seems to contain any potential gray area, namely
"The cabin of service and award inventory of the free one-way award is the same or lower than the one-way award preceding it."
I have always interpreted this the easy way by only thinking of the class of service. In other words, if my first leg is in business class, I should be able to get an excursionist leg for 0 miles either in business or in economy. However, in my current search I am coming across a problem that seems to stem from the second qualifier specified by the rule above, i.e., the "award inventory", even though some extra considerations might point to a bug.
I am trying to purchase the following award trip:

Bogota (BOG) - Mexico City (MEX) April 26
San Diego (SAN) - New York (NYC) Anytime after that
San Diego (SAN) - Bogota (BOG) Anytime after second leg (it does not even matter as the problem shows up before)

For the first leg there are several business class awards throughout April. For example, I chose a BOG-PTY-MEX operated by Copa airlines, departing from BOG at 8.43 am on 4/26 and arriving in MEX at 4.30 pm for 27,500 miles and $108.55. It is denoted as Business (I), which according to some site denotes Discounted Business Class and according to others denotes Business Partner Award. The problem show up with the second leg: I cannot find any 0 miles offer for any date in the calendar, neither in business nor in economy.
I can understand that Business (I), as a discounted award might not allow to get a non-discounted business ticket on a domestic United flight, which probably represents a higher value in terms of "award inventory" (even though it's a bit strange that at no date United offers a discounted business award on that route), but why there is no 0 miles availability in economy either? Is Business (I) also valued below an economy class award? Or is this likely a bug in the United award calculator?
Thanks everyone in advance for any insight you could give me on this issue.

Lux Flyer

Business (I) is the "saver" award level. To delegate to economy for the excursionist perk the economy award would also need to be at the "saver" award level (X/XN), thats what is meant by "same/lower" not everyday availabilty for economy (YN).

italnsd

Thank you for the clarification. So if I understand it correctly, "cabin of service" and "award inventory" are two independent criteria that need to be satisfied. In other words a business saver award does not open up an excursionist perk as economy everyday award, because while it satisfies the first requirement, it fails the second, as saver award < everyday award.
This leads to another couple of questions: are saver awards, especially for popular routes, typically not released in advance but closer to day of flight, according to demand? If that was the case, and I booked a business everyday award for the second leg, would I be able later on to change it for a 0 miles excursionist leg, should a saver award (business or economy) be made available?

Just an extra consideration. Since the Fare Class is so important, United does not really facilitate the quest for the excursionist perk by disabling the selection of Fare Class when switching from Money to Miles as price type.

Thanks again

jsloan

Typically they’re not released at all. If they are released, there’s not necessarily any pattern. United Premier members and United-branded Chase credit card holders often have meaningfully better access to Saver Economy inventory.


Probably not. You’ll run into a litany of problems, including needing current availability on all partner flights as well as the fact that UA generally will not allow you to change to a flight you’re already on in the same class of service. If your original flight has already been flown, that’s an additional hurdle.

For the most part, the Excursionist Perk was designed for US-based flyers traveling abroad, not vice-versa. :/

italnsd

Haha, I see your point, but my best use case for the Excursionist Perk (I live in San Diego) has always been to get "free" US flights, especially coast to coast, in business class. The scheme I used is generally a first leg from Region X to the US in business, a middle leg internal to the US in business and a third leg as a cheap "throw-away" flight in economy inside region X. The scheme works well when the third leg is easy to find. For example if Region X is Western Europe one can generally find a flight out of Brussels for a few thousand miles. Conversely, a bad case is if Region X is Mexico as Star Alliance does not have a partner which does Mexican internal flights.
I have used my United miles more often for coming back to the US than for going to Europe, as I felt that using the Excursionist Perk to get a free flight inside Europe is somewhat less valuable because Europe has plenty of discount airlines and, even more, because the business class in inter-european flights is kind of a joke lol.
This is the first time I ran into this problem, which I feel is kind of iffy as United claimed on several occasions that it got rid of "Saver awards" and "Everyday Awards" in favor of a dynamic award pricing in which there is no class distinction, which would result in lower award costs for less popular routes. Instead, surprise surprise, award class is evoked back from the dead to a special guest zombie appearance whenever needed to eff the customer up. Who would have thought lol.

jsloan

Note that booking a flight without intent to fly it is is violation of the MileagePlus terms of service. If UA notices, they can cancel the offending flights, reprice your awards as flown, or even close your account.

I don’t think they ever claimed that it would result in lower award costs. If they did, well, I don’t know what to tell anyone who believed them.

To be fair, what you’re describing isn’t at all what UA intended when they designed the system.

I think you can get an Excursionist Perk on an everyday award if your previous flight was itself an Everyday Award. Unfortunately, I don’t think that helps you on the itinerary you have listed.

italnsd

Of course I agree on all the points you made. Clearly, many of the things I said were in jest, as I never ever booked a flight without the intent of using it, as some rogue websites discussing this matter have the effrontery to suggest ;-). It's despicable. The reality is that no one can predict the future, and any schedule that includes plans to be on another continent months away from now necessarily faces a certain amount of risk that, helaas, can overpower anyone's good will.

United FAQs on their "new" award structure is a lovely reading, very soothing. It can be found at united.com/en/us/fly/mileageplus/benefits/award-travel-updates.html
I am particularly fond of these two answers:

Why are you making these changes?
Increasing award prices for the most in-demand flights allows us to offer lower prices on other flights. If your award travel is flexible, these updates will help you make the most of your miles.

It's heart warming to realize how selflessly they acted in making these changes, to offer lower prices for less in-demand flights

Are there still Saver Awards and Everyday Awards?
Even though award pricing can now fluctuate, you may still see fares labeled as Saver Awards or Everyday Awards, which is designed to help you find the lowest priced award available for your cabin. Saver Awards are the best offering we have on a particular flight. You can also visit our Flight awards deals page to check out our lowest award fares.

Here they just forgot to mention that "best offering" comes with strings attached. Of course, no one can credibly say that they wrote it with the intent of misleading. It's just that forecasting the future is so complicated, like planning future flights from Brussels. And, as we know, people believe so many crazy things that the words of the PR department of any corporation would ever hardly figure among the most outrageous.

What can I say, this is my limitation. I know I am just a practical person, lacking the intellectual sophistication needed to face challenging tasks like trying to determine the "true intent" of the creator of anything. This is the realm of enlightened people, like priests and judges. My way of thinking is as simple as it can be, I always defer to what the authors have chosen to leave us as the concrete expression of their intentions. I would never attempt to violate their precepts but also never be so arrogant to believe I know the system better than its creators to be able to use it in a way they did not see
Hopefully is clear that this is a light post, written just to elicit a smile. I am very grateful to all who helped me understand this issue, Lux Flyer and jsloan in particular

Kmxu

Originally Posted by jsloan
Note that booking a flight without intent to fly it is is violation of the MileagePlus terms of service. If UA notices, they can cancel the offending flights, reprice your awards as flown, or even close your account.

Many people make multiple plans just in case, which means to make two or three same flight reservations for different dates (with good intervals so that the system won’t treat them as “duplicate and impossible” for auto cancellation). This does not mean “no intent to fly” one of the itineraries. In my mind, it is just not a good practice for taking cheap fares away from others. But one has to do it.

jsloan

Of course it does. It can’t possibly mean anything else. The need to manipulate the system to avoid auto-cancellation proves the point.

One doesn’t “have” to do it. But if one chooses to do it, one should also understand the potential consequences.

italnsd

Thanks again for all your help. Today, somewhat miraculously, a lot of dates suddenly showed up with an Excursionist Perk leg availability (i.e., 0 miles). I was even able to get a halfway business class on a mixed class itinerary. It still baffles me how the miles required gets computed because there were many flights labeled as economy saver (class XN) that costed 12,500 miles. I thought those were the lowest possible, surely opened up by a first leg in Business (I). However, in light of the successful result, as a former manager of mine used to say, let's not allow rationality to get in the way of solving a problem

WineCountryUA

Doubly true for airlines

elmira56925

Have anyone noticed that on app when getting standard economy fare the basic fair automaticity posts? It gives u the cheaper basic fare even when I specifically filtered out the basic fare.

Red259

I would like to book a J award from Europe to the US with miles. I would pay the require portion out of funds in my travel bank. I'm hoping that closer in to the departure date an F award will open up and at that point I would like to cancel my award and rebook it for the partner airline. My question is 1. Are there any fees associated with cancelling an award before the date of the award flight? (it seems like there is not but I wanted to double check) 2. Can this be done online? 3. How quickly do the miles credit back to my account? 3. Does the cash portion that was paid credit back to my United travel bank and if so how quickly does that happen?

WineCountryUA

1. No cancellation / redeposit fees
2; Yes, but it may not always be the best move (agents can do an exchange and you may not need to wait for redeposit / refunds
3. Usually very quickly, rare occasional longer
Second #3 (4) Yes, but the can take days or weeks. Refunds to Travel Banks seem to be manual

yanxfann

Please reference my two attached screenshots. Looking at coach award prices for a 30 day period from Okinawa to Newark the typical lowest 1-way price is 38.5K, but for the same time frame going reverse routing it's 100K. This huge price difference seems like a head-scratcher to me, is this typical? If I used a Japan IP address to search would the prices be radically different?