Horsefly

My apologies if this isn't the best way to post this. If a mod wants me to, this can be deleted and I'll repost in the place and format expected.

The trip: August of 2020, we have a river cruise on the Rhone and want to plan some sightseeing in Provence and Paris. Plan for the purposes here is to fly roundtrip from Denver (our home) to Paris CDG.

Our desire: We don't care too much about the domestic legs, but would like to fly Polaris for the long-haul both ways.

Background: This is really long term planning, and I'm just looking for how best to approach it when we get closer. Wife and I are lifetime MP Gold. I currently have about 75K MP miles, wife has about 40K. I also have about 90K Chase Ultimate Rewards points. We have several other trips between now and next Apr, so we will probably be accumulating quite a bit more Chase points, and maybe another 20K-30K MP miles. All told, I'm pretty sure we will have something like 220K-250K MP miles (maybe more) if we convert the Chase points to MP.

Although I'm a United million miler, I've not spent much time trying to optimize my points. I've usually just accumulated enough to get a free trip for one of our daughters to come visit. Now that we are retired, we've gotten pretty hooked on Polaris class for the long-haul, but I'm keen to not pay what I paid to do it to Australia last month.

1. Is it best to buy regular economy tickets and then try to put in for upgrades on the long-haul flights, or should I try and buy tickets with miles (not sure I can get enough)?
2. I know I can get some extra value from the chase points if I buy tix through their portal. Is that option in play here?
3. I've seen some posts elsewhere about some tricks of transferring Chase points to a star alliance partner and buying codeshare seats that are effectively on United. Is that option of any value here?
4. I know it gets asked often, but.... Is there a general rule of when to buy these tickets?
5. I am signed up for Scott's Cheap Flights (the free plan) and am watching it. Will the fare classes that show up there easily upgrade?

Thanks in advance for the expertise here!

SeamusSA

More than 15 months out it's anyone's guess as to what "enhancements" may be introduced that would affect your planning. That said,
- if you really want to fly Polaris, buy it and do not count on an upgrade clearing. It is highly unlikely you would get anything other than wait-listed which may not clear (if at all) until 24 hours before departure. If you do go this route, the higher the fare class of the purchased ticker the better your chances of clearing.
- you very likely will not have sufficient miles to redeem two award tickets in Polaris, maybe not even one, even with complex schemes to book via *A partners.
- Premium Plus will be available on several TATL options for you. Have you considered this?
There is no hard and fast rule for when to buy. Best option is to keep watching and when you see something tolerable, jump on it.
Remember you can use creative routing - e.g., fly to SFO then to CDG. Just be sure the TATL route uses Polaris retrofitted planes, not the godawful frat class US four abreast configuration. Hopefully by the time of your trip most if not all of those will be gone, but check to be sure.

phkc070408

As for using the miles, I probably wouldn't recommend it if you can use them elsewhere. Saver award rates are easiest to find for last minute travel, as UA opens the discounted rates up when it looks like seats will go out empty otherwise. Saver award rates to Europe in J are hard to come by. You would also have to find a domestic leg with saver availability to get to the airport where your flight to CDG departs from. Oh, and unless you want to buy a one way international J fare in the other direction, which is often almost as expensive as a round trip, you would have to find award flights for the trip home. Doing all of this is next to impossible. You could always pay the Standard Rate, but most people can get a better value for their miles elsewhere.

As for an upgrade using rewards, If flying in J is a must, I would only do that if your upgrade can be immediately confirmed. You might have luck finding this as soon as the flights open up for sale, 330 days before departure. Granted this was in 2013, my wife and I flew EWR-NRT in May 2013, and we were able to get confirmed upgrades when we booked in July 2012. Most upgrades are "waitlisted" meaning that you aren't guaranteed a J seat, and UA will normally only issue them if they can't sell them all for cash.

As for paying cash, sometimes this is the easiest, especially if your travel days are solid. As far a price and strategy of getting the best fare, no one has been able to decode the algorithm used by the airlines. The general rule of thumb is if you see a fare that you are willing to pay, you buy it then.

To sum it up, the only way to guarantee J seats is to purchase them, either with cash or miles, and that is normally at the standard rate. When deciding whether the award price is worth it or not, one thing to consider is what other opportunities you have to use the miles.

Horsefly

Thank you folks for the informed replies. I'm not feeling very encouraged but I'm feeling educated!

Has anyone had good luck with calling a Premier agent when trying to optimize something like this? Before I retired in 2013, it seemed like calling the premier number I almost always was impressed with what they could do.

One other question: Pardon my inexperience, but what does TATL mean?

rabilancia

I, like you, am retired / fly out of DEN / hold lifetime Gold / am hooked on Business Class (aging body) / plan flights far in advance. We also prefer non-stop eastbound flights to Europe so that we get more time to sleep--which obviously limits our choices from DEN.

Our current favorite routing to Europe is the daily United 787 non-stop to LHR, then connecting to elsewhere on another flight and/or using Eurostar (guide HERE). With the UK allowing US citizens to begin using ePassport / eGate starting this June, it will get even more convenient.

Like @phkc070408, "As for using the miles, I probably wouldn't recommend it if you can use them elsewhere"--that's what I do. In our case we use them for last minute mainland flights when purchase tickets cost a lot more. In addition to Scott's Cheap Flights, I suggest using Google flights to track the United DEN-LHR flight. I started planning our upcoming trip over a year ago. 330 days out, I began tracking the DEN-LHR-DEN flights on the days we wanted. RT Business class then started around $5,000pp. It bounced between that and $2,500pp for a month. It is now $6,444pp for those dates and has been as high as $11,116pp (see chart attached). When the early price dip occurred, I jumped and bought for $2,518pp (but continued to track the flight cost).

One more thought: United also has started non-stop service to FRA. Connecting from there is another option.

Good luck and safe travels!



Trans-Atlantic.

tods27

I would look at saver C awards, especially on LH (via MUC or FRA) out of DEN. Saver awards on UA are going to be dynamic, so who knows how many miles you'll need for those. As noted, PP might be an option for you. As always, you'll need to search early and often for using miles.

noah

If you plan in advance, you can probably find business class for less than $3K/pp -- especially if you have some flexibility with cities and dates. Canada often has cheaper business class tickets, making a one-way flight to YVR or YYC more than worth the added expense and hassle.

threeoh

If you have the Chase Sapphire Reserve (CSR) card you get $1.5 of travel for each 100 UR points by using their travel portal. So a $2,500 r/t ticket would cost you ~166k points. If you're a little bit short, you can make up the difference with a credit card. Compare to 120k miles/points for a United award ticket or 140k miles/points for a partner saver award (or a sky high 310k points for an "everyday" award). So you're going to need minimum 240k miles/points and more realistically 280k-330k points to buy tickets for two people. Of course this will all change after November but these are probably fairly good baselines -- buying a cheap business class ticket through the portal is probably the same price as buying the absolute cheapest award ticket. It's up to you to decide if there is better award availability or better cash ticket availability at prices you're willing to pay.

Remember with an award ticket it's the same price to fly open-jaw e.g. DEN-CDG and then MRS-DEN, whereas with a cash ticket flying from outstations like MRS can be expensive. Plus you get a free Excursionist Perk flight if that's useful for you: You could fly DEN-LHR, spend a few days in London, fly LHR-CDG, go on your cruise, end up in MRS, and fly MRS-XXX-DEN all for that 120k/140k price. So with a mileage ticket you might save a couple hundred bucks in local flights / ground costs, if everything works out. That said the last two times I've gone to Europe on award tickets I've thrown away my Excursionist Perk flight because with limited availability, the need to connect through FRA/MUC, and high taxes it was cheaper/easier/faster to buy a nonstop on a LCC.

If you buy through the portal like that of course you'll earn back 7.5 UR points if you purchase with CSR and 20k United redeemable miles (RDM) with 8x Gold multiplier. So you're looking at spending 166k points but earning back 28k points which you can use for your next trip.

And of course, you can turn UR into miles but can't turn miles in UR, so that's another consideration.

PsiFighter37

You're going to be in the brave new world of dynamic award pricing by the time you are looking to travel...so good luck. My advice, based on TATL summer travel in the past: look to travel on a Monday through Thursday (with best probability on Tuesday), and be willing to accept connections. UA's only international flights are going to be DEN-LHR and DEN-FRA; the former will require a double-connect (since LHR and CDG are not a *A hub), while I imagine FRA, being a seasonal flight, will have zero/limited saver award availability.

My suggestion, if you are willing to connect within the US, would be to connect via EWR (as much as some people here hate the airport). In doing a cursory search, I am seeing August dates, even this late, where EWR-GVA and EWR-ZRH (a *A hub) having PN9, which means if you look early enough, it probably has PZ9 (and ergo IN9) as well. I see an EWR-OPO flight this August (on a Monday) with PZ7 on a 752, which probably means you can find IN availability if you are looking for it. But you'll have to obsessively search the UA website.ahead of time, particularly on Saturday mornings (when availability gets reset, IME).

findark

August is a good month for award space to Europe, because nobody works in August

sinoflyer

I agree. August is undisputedly the low season for transatlantic J-class travel. This is especially the case when considering that the airlines are still operating the full complement of summer flights/routes during this time, as opposed to the reduced winter schedule. I definitely recommend using the miles for J awards instead of purchasing Y and then upgrade, even if award spaces don't appear in advance.

For now and until this coming August, I recommend that OP pay attention to how J awards become available for the August period that OP plans to travel in 2020. Available space could appear at the very last minute, but from my experience, J cabins are very empty in August. In the least, this will provide some idea about what to expect next year.