corbetti

I'm guessing it has to do with legacy airline systems, but i'm curious why in 2018 it takes DAYS for United to post to mileage plus for a flight completed?

Granted, i work in tech and cloud and all that blah blah, but seriously - once you're on a plane and the door closes their systems KNOW this, so assuming the plane reaches the destination airport (also known once wheels down) crediting the miles for the flight should be essentially instantaneous.

What gives?

drewguy

Good question . . . other airlines seem to manage credit by the end of the day of the flight if not sooner.

emcampbe

DL supposedly does this (I rarely fly them, and as such, don't generally check right away). Don't know about other carriers, except for Aeroplan, which definitely never credited instantly either.

I'd guess it's a conscious decision to have the mileage posting delayed. Why is an open question, and it's just a guess.

UA also, IME, likes to batch things, and based on reports that mileage tends to post at a specific time during the day (I can't recall the thread(s) that talk about this, but I definitely remember seeing them), that would be a reason why it doesn't instantly post. Interestingly enough, my TravelBank credit posted a day before (at least) mileage on my last trip - I don;'t recall seeing that before.

If I had to guess on why they delay, it's possible it gives the system a chance to verify data. I'm not talking about that you actually took the flight - as mentioned, they know this instantly. I'm talking about a chance for the system to ensure it is posting the right mileage - by class paid vs. class flown, for example, which can be different in a number of different scenarios - IRROPS, upgrades, buy-ups, etc.

lhrsfo

What intrigues me is what the process is from knowing that I flew a flight, to posting my miles. If it were automated, then, unless they built in a xx hour delay, they would post immediately. If they built in a xx hour delay, then they would post reliably xx hours after the flight. But they post a random time later, which suggests that some individual somewhere has to get round to running a process. That's a redundant job if ever I saw one.

TonyBurr

Before the merger I found my miles posted very often the same day as the flight. I would therefore presume it is the wonderful software which came with the merger.

mduell

Legacy systems from PMCO, batch processes, no financial incentive to improve.

Kacee

Yeah it's the same answer for processing upgrades. They have to run sweeps.

They have moved up the timing recently . . . used to be around 1 pm Houston time two days after the flight, now somewhere around 12 hours earlier than that.

DL I will often see the flight credit while I'm at baggage claim (which is never a long wait with them . . . the bags often beat me to the carousel).

zrs70

jsloan

Agreed. Oddly, recently I've noticed my connecting flights will post at different times. I'll notice an unexpected value and go into the activity log to find that one leg has posted but not the other one. (It doesn't always seem to be the earliest flight first, either). A couple of hours later, they're both present.

That's not my experience at all. Mine's closer to Kacee's; they used to post around 1 PM CT on the second calendar day after departure, and now they're posting sometime earlier that day. Perhaps your flights often depart around 1 PM CT?

I'm guessing your job doesn't involve hooking together legacy systems.

It's not that MileagePlus can't be updated in real time; it absolutely can (and is, by systems that choose to do so, like the MileagePlus X app). It's that the backend flight audit systems seem to feed data in batches after whatever end-of-day validation is needed.

Out of all of the things I'd like to see United IT spending its time on, faster MileagePlus postings is near the bottom of the list.

gmt4

Some years ago I had a situation where I was booked LHR-YYZ-ORD on AC (ticketed on 016 stock), but due to bad winter WX at YYZ and the risk of delays and I called and had my iternary changed to LHR-ORD on UA . About a week went by without my miles/PQM/PQD posting so I called the 1k line and asked about the delay in the credit. She looked into it and discovered a new PNR was created (on top of another PNR from a change on the outbound!) and the system didn't automatically close out the ticket. According to her ticket closeout happens automatically at approx 24 hrs after the segment, with the flight credit to show in FF accounts within the next business day. I've kept that timeline in mind since then and have noticed credit generally follows that pattern.

I also fly AA extensively and I've had flight credit show as soon as 12-15 hrs after the segment. Different airlines, different software. As long as the credit is correct then it's all good by me.

corbetti

StuckinITH

It seems to me that my UAX flights post after my UA flights even though usually on the outbound I take the UAX flight first. On the last trip, it took half a day longer to post the UAX one.

wolfie_cr

the funny part is when I fly for example UA-UA-LH ........and then the miles from LH post 24 or 36 hrs ahead of the ones from UA

kittiyut

This is also my experience. LH will post faster than UA, but only when it is 016.

halls120

My flights on OS and EW also post faster than flights on UA.