Hipplewm

I don't have time to mess right now, but for instance, i have been looking at taking Mrs Hipplewm back to Singapore, or HKG, Japan and maybe the EU and comparing quite a few different things.

I have seen flights from 70K discount business EVA as well as TAP - maybe Ethiopian - can't remember on that one) and as low as 90K discount first class (NH) - That one was FC NYC-NRT and econ to SIN but for 110K it upgraded to business NRT to SIN

Some of the discount are for partially econ flights ie econ from CHS to IAH, business from IAH-TPE (EVA) then econ from TPE to SIN, some are for FC CHS-NYC (UA) then FC from NYC-NRT (NH) then Business from NRT to HKG or SIN

There are literally tons of variables and combinations and I am looking at off peak times for sure (first week of Dec for instance)

Before this it was 80K for discount bizz, no matter what, now I will be able to find good options for 70K (no econ at all except domestic which I almost certainly will wait list and clear from CHS) or 110 or 120 and fly FC for the largest segment of the journey (NOT Air China either LOL)

pushmyredbutton

I'm not sure that's variable award pricing as much as it is UA interpreting it's own rules incorrectly (UA vs Star awards costing differing amounts). I've been able to replicate and ticket what you describe by having mostly Star partners at the UA rate. This occurs most often in the S Asia region, but it's not something I'm on keen on reporting for a fix...

jsloan

OK, fine, but considering the big "Saver" price next to it, I assumed Hipplewm wasn't talking about that.

While I've noticed some of that, the biggest contributor to what was described in that post appears to be that UA will charge partner-level mileage whenever there's an interregional flight in J/F in conjunction with a UA flight, but not when the only partner J/F flights are intraregional. So, EWR-NRT-SIN costs more with NRT-SIN in I than with NRT-SIN in X, because the former triggers partner pricing whereas the latter doesn't. Similarly, SFO-TPE-MNL (UA-BR in I) will cost more than SFO-SIN-MNL (UA-SQ in I), because the TPE-MNL flight will trigger partner pricing but SIN-MNL won't.

findark

Does that mean 15k Standard Award here? I thought it wasn't supposed to go below 22.5k.

Meh. Any time I would actually consider a Standard Award it's been 32.5k... admittedly this is like the Sunday after Thanksgiving, but that's all Standard Awards were good for anyway.

jsloan

I've seen them as low as 15K, yes.

I just booked my first Everyday Award, and it was at 32.5K; but as a 1K, I can watch to see if the price drops as the date of travel approaches. Still, I didn't expect to see anything else, and I did actually have a number of choices; it's just that the 32.5K option was the best choice schedule-wise (so far).

sexykitten7

Old system: 12.5 / 15 / 17.5 / 20 / 22.5 / 25 / 27.5 / 30 / 32.5
New system: 12.5 / 14 / 16 / 17.5 / 20 / 21 / 24 / 26 ... 32 / 32.5

And I'm sure I'm missing many price points. The fact is, pricing appears to be down to the .5k interval!
And that's just for regular CONUS Y flights. Who knows what's happened to all the other types of awards?!?

JohnneeO

I am seeing 18K and 19K on LAX-EWR in November.

Thanks to the CC, I was able to snag 12.5K each way N/S between EWR-LAX, something I thought I would never see on that route with the variable awards and ps service.

I booked a 1:15 PM departure on the return leg, but now I see that the 5:15 PM has 12.5K availability while the 1:15 PM is at 18K. Time to call UA CS and beg for a fee-free itinerary change. Wish me luck...

pushmyredbutton

Just to chime in on this issue again; while I think you nailed a large part of it, some results offer a conclusion that the higher rate is pegged specifically on certain carriers, irrespective of routing. This just popped up today, and puzzles me. Only thing I can think of is that ET is coded as a 'star partner' while TG (or SQ) are not:

jsloan

I'm also puzzled. However, given which of those two prices matches the published award chart, I'm not puzzled enough to ask about it here.

MojaveFlyer

It would be nice if Everyday awards were needed only at major holidays, but this is not true. I have not been able to book a Saver award for my family vacation travel (domestic) in years. That is because I don't have time to lose the first vacation day by catching an early evening departure, and I find it pretty hard to get the family to the airport in time to clear security and make a 6 AM flight. It would be great to do all my flying T, W, or Th, but that's not how life works when you have kids or have to count vacation days (and hence straddle weekends). And those fares have gone up a lot, from 25K to 32K, every time I have looked at it. That is a major devaluation.

dordal

I started noticing this a few days ago, but there's a blog post about it now:

https://runningwithmiles.boardingare...award-pricing/

So far it seems they're only doing it on the YN bucket ( economy everyday award ), reducing the award cost from their published max (32.5K domestic, 70K to Europe, etc.). Hasn't hit the business class awards, nor the saver awards, but I'm sure that's only a matter of time.

WineCountryUA

Dymanic pricing of Everyday awards has been occurring for the past year --- nothing new here.

The most recent change is finer steps but variable pricing has long been here.

Just a blogger well behind the times.

dordal

@WineCountryUA No problem moving the thread, but the thread you moved this to very clearly shows this started on July 17... which is much closer to a week than a year.

Before everyday awards were either 25K or 32.5K... technically that may be dynamic, but not really. Now they're all over the place... down to 0.5K increments it seems like.

jsloan

No, these changes took effect on November 1, 2017, as stated in the thread's title.

You're half-right, though; they did adjust them about a week ago to start using the 500-mile increments. However, you're wrong that it was 25K/32.5K -- in fact, domestic everyday awards were 15K, 17.5, 20K, 22.5K, 25K, 27.5K, 30K, and 32.5K; they've now seemingly filled in the gaps.

I've seen occasional availability at 15K going back to November.

WineCountryUA

The first thread was the most recent change (finer increments), the second link which I just added, https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/29025793-post339.html, was mid-Nov 2017.