Does this apply to all UA fares?

No. It was a feature that wrote into some of their discount fares (and may even have been removed by this point).

Minimum stay restrictions are common across the industry, but the 12-hour minimum stay is unusual. I saw it on several fares to Asia.

It was to gain lifetime status.

Wifi was fine. If issues occurred, they lasted no more than an hour. I was surprised how well it worked. There were times when WiFi was broken, so that was a pain, especially if I flew over and back on the same aircraft. I downloaded a lot of programming on Netflix, which worked well.

I think it was around the summer of 2018 that United imposed a 12 hour minimum stay in SIN, but just for the cheapest fares. Fares were really cheap, sometimes close to $500 round trip. The requirement wasn’t imposed on itineraries originating from LAX.

Flying to Singapore, absolutely. But poster was saying the SFO-HKG route would get dropped, which SQ is already competing with UA 777 with Polaris and PP. SFO-HKG is a huge market for tech and I knokw plenty that would fly SQ over UA or CX. SFO-SIN is a different story and I agree that SQ will suffer once Polaris and PP comes.

Greetings All -

HKG's SkyPier's a useful feature assuming TurboJet / Cotai / etc. have sailing times which make sense.

That said, please bear in mind the topic of this thread is [UA] SIN > SFO route performance, not HKG - - suggest folks check out the HKG forum for more details and/or further discussion on that interesting topic.

Safe Travels,

J.Edward
UA forum Moderation

I would disagree here. If UA's purpose was to prevent what you are describing, then they could have applied a HIP check to the fare, which would cause the $1000 fare to be applied if the pax stopped over in HKG for more than 24 hours (if allowed). I think the 12 hour rule was designed to make immediate turns impossible.

I don't know what the truth is, but a quick search show immediate turns are not possible for the discounted rate. The fare is astronomically high if I were to immediately return.

UA doesn't seem to like HIP checks. Very few of their fares use them. You're right, though, that it would have been a simpler approach.

I don't have any inside information, and you may be correct, but I just don't see the logic. I can't see why UA would care about an immediate turn. The usual use of a minimum stay rule is to try to discriminate between business and leisure travelers. A rule aimed specifically at preventing turn-arounds would be aimed at the mileage run set, and nobody else. I just don't think there are enough people doing this for them to care.

Looks like most current P fares do have the 12 hour minimum stay in the fare rules.

Although I suppose if I had to chose any airport for a 12 hour layover, SIN would probably be at the top of the list.

Oh for sure.

When they flew to LAX and earlier to HKG/NRT as well as SFO a short layover in SIN allowed for a single GPU upgrade. Heck you could even upgrade K fares for a handful of miles and no copay... and LAX was empty on non-opm flyer days.

:D OK, well, they probably should just have fixed their GPU system then, but, fair enough. But note that they did this across a number of cities, many of which didn't have any obvious GPU abuse loopholes (e.g., TPE).

So much interest in this route that has not been on the schedule for almost 9 months

We need something to talk about on FT...

I used a single GPU to upgrade from LAX to SIN with an immediate turnaround to SFO. I called and they said they’d fix it, but they only deducted a single GPU. I’m not complaining!