UA Considering a "Pay WIth Miles" Option?
Sep 26, 2020, 12:20 pm
#1
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UA Considering a "Pay WIth Miles" Option?
Received a survey from MP and one portion was about using miles to reduce the cost of a ticket. Been wondering when they would implement that.
Sep 26, 2020, 12:22 pm
#2
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Sep 26, 2020, 12:28 pm
#3
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PMUA has this option and other carriers have this. UA is looking for any method to encourage travel. And leisure travel seems to be a target market which fits as "pay with miles" probably is primarily fpr leisure travelers (not solely, just primarily)
Sep 26, 2020, 4:49 pm
#4
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Sep 26, 2020, 4:52 pm
#5
Join Date: Jun 2020
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Upgrading using miles is a crude way of accomplishing that. Say you want to fly SFO-FRA roundtrip, nonstop in business in early October. Lowest available fare (D) seems to be around $11.2K. On the other hand, for about $3.2K, you can get a very flexible B-fare that can be upgraded for 40K miles with no co-payment. (You can save a couple of hundred with a less flexible fare.) Upgrades seem readily available. Using 40K miles saves you about $8K i.e. about 20 cents/mile. I did this one last month and I thought it was pretty good value for the miles I used, especially since the trip yielded way more miles than I spent due to various bonuses.
Sep 27, 2020, 1:14 am
#7
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I'd assume a best case value of 1cpm, appealing to customers that do not have a Chase card.
I am not UA so I didn't get a survey but the key in my opinion is that it would count as cash, so earn PQP unlike an award.
Sep 27, 2020, 7:48 am
#8
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Valuation is everything here. Stingy rates can actually make customers madder. BA permits you to reduce the price of a flight by applying some or all of your Avios balance, but the contextual value is so low, it just makes you even more irritated with BA, if such a thing is possible.
Sep 27, 2020, 7:54 pm
#10
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Valuation is everything here. Stingy rates can actually make customers madder. BA permits you to reduce the price of a flight by applying some or all of your Avios balance, but the contextual value is so low, it just makes you even more irritated with BA, if such a thing is possible.
Sep 27, 2020, 8:08 pm
#11
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PMUA had this option, at least for a while. It was generally a terrible deal, at least everything I saw, though I don’t remember exactly how it worked in terms of value. But much worse than just using cash or just using an award.
I doubt value these days would be any better than current award rates. Given awards are generally less valueable than they were in the past, I hardly see this being worthwhile.
IIRC, I believe using this option in the past with UA also meant you could not earn any mileage on the ticket at all, making the value even worse for those trying to earn status.
I doubt value these days would be any better than current award rates. Given awards are generally less valueable than they were in the past, I hardly see this being worthwhile.
IIRC, I believe using this option in the past with UA also meant you could not earn any mileage on the ticket at all, making the value even worse for those trying to earn status.
Sep 30, 2020, 1:18 pm
#12
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Actually PMUAs Cash+Miles had some nice options pre 3/3/12. I wish that had been retained like most everything about PMUA.
Travel didn’t earn miles but giving customers options is generally a good thing. Especially when you don’t have quite enough to do an all miles ticket.
I recall $75 + 12,500 for domestic RTs. I’m sure that varied based on route and date
Travel didn’t earn miles but giving customers options is generally a good thing. Especially when you don’t have quite enough to do an all miles ticket.
I recall $75 + 12,500 for domestic RTs. I’m sure that varied based on route and date