EmailKid

Good luck getting your card anytime soon

Flyingwasabi

well, first lets be clear, when UA talks about residence, they are not really talking about ‘residence’. I have friends entering the US on a visa, who clearly is not a US resident, but when he first got MP account, UA treated him as a US resident regardless. So when UA talks about residence, they are really just talking about ‘where your address is’.
Also, unless you had your address outside of US at the first place (I doubt many do), they do require you to provide all kinds of documentation to change address. Including rental agreements, utility bills under your name, driver license, etc.

Last, lets talk about the XXX and YYY situation you mentioned. Let’s just do XXX being PEK and YYY being SFO to make it easier alright? It’s perfectly normal for a Chinese person (who entered US on a non-immigration visa, so he clearly is NOT a US resident accroading to the US government). He was doing business in SF, and all over the US. So for domestic flights he choose UA. Perfectly normal right? Then he says, since i’m Flying UA already, i’ll fly UA on my trip home. Therefore he booked a round trip ticket from SFO to PEK and PEK back to SFO. Since he only booked a one-way ticket when he came to the US (probably due to his uncertain schedule), the rest flights will all be round trips starting from SFO. What’s wrong about that? You may see that all his travel, international or domestic are all on UA from SFO, but that’s not the fact. He chooses other airlines when he travels within china, or within Asia, or to Europe, but UA would not know that. the largest 2 airlines in china are sky team airlines, so there’s a good chance UA will never know his other travel.
The key point of your ‘theory’ is that one starts his trips mostly within US, but to cause this situation, all one need is a single one-way ticket to the US.
Given UA launched a couple routes to china in the recent years, the said situation is not unusual. So I doubt UA will ever bring this theory up.

emcampbe

This situation you refer to above is a lot different than the one prompting the most recent part of this discussion. You are talking about a legitimate house that you own overseas.

What was being discussed was the following: one temporarily rents an apartment, gets documentation using the address to change their primary address on UA's website, then stops renting the apartment, but keeps the address that is now not thiers on thier UA profile, mind you, for the sole purpose of getting status without making PQD.

The latter is most certainly defrauding UA and breaks UA T&Cs, and IMO, UA wouldn't hesitate to cancel an account who was found to be doing this. Using the address of a place overseas that you own and have access to, even if you don't live there the entire year, is an entirely different scenario.

IAH-OIL-TRASH

I would think UA could catch such shenanigans (if they wanted to) by looking at travel patterns.

Two Bee

Yea! You're probably right! UA won't care!

jsloan

Besides the obvious -- you can spend almost $13/mile on an SFO-STS roundtrip in Y -- I had a couple of other thoughts:

1 - Coast-to-Coast in the Devil's Chariot. This turned out to be a lot more difficult than I expected, but I did find SFO-SBP-LAX-FAT-DEN-COU-ORD-DAY-IAD, departing Mon 12/11 at 7:40, arriving Tuesday 12/12 at 16:08, with no connection longer than 6 hours 14 minutes, for $1249.40.

2 - Circumnavigate the hubs. Starting from one city, transit every other UA (mainland) hub exactly once before returning to that city. Intermediate stops are encouraged, provided that you don't repeat the same city twice. Lower 48 only. What's the quickest? What's the highest PQM?

For a mere $2207.60, you can get 23,653 miles (per ITA) from 12/11-12/16, with SFO-MIA-ORD-MCO-LAX-MSP-IAH-LAS-EWR-AUS-IAD-SEA-DEN-BOS-SFO.

3 - Try the unusual modes of transportation -- the Amtrak codeshare to ZFV or the bus service to Allentown.

4 - Head to Newfoundland and try a half-hour timezone.

5 - Visit as many of the new additions to the UA route map as possible, since you never know when they'll be gone. CKB, CMI, COU, RST, UIN, CGI, CNY, VEL, and STS -- I believe they all gained service this year, if I'm not mistaken.

6 - Try the Texas Two-Step: How many Texas airports can you hit in a day? (Here, you're "two-stepping" back to IAH each time). AUS-IAH-SAT-IAH-DFW-IAH-CRP-IAH-BRO is $816.40.

Anybody else? :-)

kale73

Oddly, I was considering something quite similar to this earlier this evening. The 'game' I thought of was how to transit every domestic United hub without repeating or 'crossing' one's path. The simplest (and shortest) solution appears to be LAX-SFO-DEN-ORD-EWR-IAD-IAH. Then there's a 'zigzag' pattern IAH-LAX-IAD-DEN-SFO-ORD-EWR that takes advantage of the fact that both DEN and ORD are nearly spot on the routes between SFO and IAD / EWR respectively. This yields 8,652 PQM. As an homage to Phileas Fogg, I think It would be interesting to figure out how quickly (keeping within MCT) this routing could be flown using currently scheduled UA flights.

warrenw

Too hard, I'm flying ICN-AUS and back for $2,400 in P and I'm getting 29,102 PQM for the trip. Of course, that's not BIS, rather BISx2 because of the P fare, but still. I would much rather travel in comfort than try that mess of an itinerary

jsloan

Well, to be perfectly honest, I sort of figured that findark had already considered things like "look for a TPAC sale fare." (That's a great fare, BTW ^). So, I figured I'd contribute my ideas that might be... unusual.

I may find myself in a similar situation at the end of the year. Depending upon whether or not I think 1K is worth it for next year, I may very well be trying either the Texas one or the "look for new service cities" one.

Kacee

I've done these the last two years. A TPAC in P/R (LAX-SFO-NRT//HKG-SFO) and last year P/Z SFO-HNL//LIH-LAX. There's currently a $3700 P fare SFO-SIN, which you can route on UA/NH, and a $2900 P fare SFO-BUD, which you can route on UA/LH/LX. Did this last month with a 20 hr connection in ZRH, which was awesome. Spent 120 CHF on Laderach chocolates.

If you haven't flown it yet, disregard what the website says. It's often wrong. There's not a problem until the miles fail to post after the flight.

findark

Hah, well, yes. If maximum comfort were the goal, pretty sure the LAX turn wins out (has F, is short, tons of frequency in case of IRROPS).

Crossing the country on a CRJ just sounds diabolical*. I just spent 1h30 in LH Y, and that was enough 30" pitch for the year (well actually I have to do the same again next week...). Realistically I'd probably run to BOS with p.s. to see friends there, but I like the trying new cities UA serves suggestion. Could definitely be an excuse to fly into some small outstations that would never be worth the airfare otherwise.

*I think I'll stick for crossing the Pacific in a 737, which I almost did except finished with flatbed 77G HNL-SFO.

jsloan

Sure, but imagine the looks you'll get when you tell people your story!

Tell you what -- if you fly that route, I'll spring for the "I survived" T-shirt.

PebbleBeach

Exactly why I switched back to my US address a few weeks after being overseas for 3 years, had no interest in losing MM and 700K+ miles. Can't say I wasn't tempted as it was the office address so any mail would have been accepted.

physioprof

Is there a consensus view on why UA waives the PQD requirements for status for people with non-US residences?

WineCountryUA

The has been speculated on many times and no consensus.
DL did not have it at their rollout, but the just begs the question why for them. AA does not waiver it.

But for more speculation see
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...er-happen.html

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...worldwide.html

and the orignal
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...on-thread.html