Anyone Else Use Miles Exclusively for Large Number of Y Awards instead of Premium ?
 

I think I’m an outlier on this board as I've never used award miles for premium cabins. Instead, I prefer to take family/friends on trips with Y award tickets. In the past 10 years I've redeemed 3 million+ United miles for 100+ R/T Y award tickets.
Anyone else?

I can count on two fingers the number of premium awards I have booked in the past ten years. I do use miles for last-minute Y awards that would cost a lot of money if paid for. My advantage is that I can upgrade as a GS. It's a great use of miles to me.

I think I am part of a common exception to the "book premium awards" rule where I will also use miles for short-haul Economy when I need a flexible fare or when cash fares are out of balance.

I've never booked an award ticket in anything other than Y. And I can't recall the last time I booked an award ticket for myself. Maybe I never have. :confused: My redemption pattern is to use my miles to book Y awards for my family, particularly the iapetus jrs., when the award value is right relative to the cost of paid Y.

Interesting topic for a thread. I've always felt like an outlier, too.

Y-->GPU is pretty much my only redemptions. Not sure what I'll do next year once I lose GS. UA miles are not worth nearly as much as they were 10 years ago. Used to always redeem for premium awards. Value of the miles have gone down and my J purchases have gone down accordingly.

Five years ago, long-haul premium cabin was for me the much preferred use for UA miles.

That has now shifted, with changes to award pricing and routing rules, restrictions on booking, and significantly reduced availability combining to seriously limit the availability and desirability of premium long-haul redemptions. I'm now much more likely to simply pay for discount long-haul business class (and not on UA). So my most recent UA redemptions have been last-minute domestic and intra-Europe short haul in Y, where you can still get real value.

I just redeem for transborder coach - YYZ/FLL and YVR/LAX, looking for 12,5k awards, usually on AC nonstops. I can't remember the last time I cashed in miles for a free premium cabin ticket, since I use P fares to Asia to requalify. I will cash in miles to upgrade the odd BR ticket, but that's it.

In the last six or seven years, UA has done a fantastic job of introducing me to OA and convincing me--as lhrsfo-- that miles (and MP) are worthless. Like kacee, I use the miles I do earn on TPACs on AC for last minute domestic Y hops...and shuttling back and forth to YVR to catch my TPACs.

I use them for last-minute Y as well. The most recent exception was Air Canada in business from YYZ to ORD. That was actually cheaper than Y.

I generally book North American coach, with an occasional long-haul trip thrown in. YVR is a notoriously expensive city to fly from, and most of our flights these days are on the YVR-SFO route. We'll have to see how the "market rates" redemptions work on UA, and if they're going to be as terrible as they are on AC.

I used to redeem exclusively for long haul J,usually TPAC, sometimes TATL. Mix of UA and Partner flights.

Since the devaluation, I am finding better uses to redeem Y domestic. Either for last minute leisure trips, or as positioning trips to hubs, where I can find much cheaper flights to some destinations.

Lots of shorthaul intra-Euorpe redemption at 8K.

Ironically, I piggy back UA business seats from other *A programs - e.g. AC @ 55K one-way. I piggy back DL on VS; CX/JL on AS.