May 1, 2021, 4:06 pm
Last edit by: WineCountryUA
This is an archive thread, the active thread is "Dynamic Award Pricing" by UA; questions, experiences, .... {Archive}
The details:
Award travel updates
Introducing a broader range of award prices
Updates to award travel are on the horizon. For flights on or after November 15, 2019, we’ll no longer publish an award chart listing the set amount of miles needed for each flight.The details:
- Some award prices will be lower than what’s currently published in our chart. You may have already seen these prices, and you’ll be able to get them immediately.
- Other award prices may be higher than what you see today, especially if you’re traveling at a popular time. These prices will take effect immediately for travel November 15 or after.
- Starting November 15, we’re removing close-in fees, so you won’t be charged the extra fee of up to $75 for booking last-minute award travel.
- A flexible award travel calendar is available on united.com or in our app.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is changing?
For travel on or after November 15, we will no longer publish an award chart listing the set amount of miles needed for award flights. Award pricing will now fluctuate based on a variety of factors, including demand. Additionally, starting November 15, we will no longer charge a fee of up to $75 for award flights booked within 21 days of departure.When will these updates take effect?
The award pricing changes apply immediately to flights on or after November 15, 2019. Until then, award prices will be the same as or lower than what’s currently published in our award chart.How many miles will I need for award travel after November 15?
Award prices will now fluctuate based on a variety of factors. Some air awards will be available for less than what’s listed in our chart, which you may have already noticed. After November 15, award prices may also be higher, especially if you’re traveling at popular times. Use our flexible award calendar to get a monthly view of the award prices for a specific destination.Why are you making these changes?
Increasing award prices for the most in-demand flights allows us to offer better returns for our shareholders. If your award travel is flexible, these updates will help you make the most of your miles.How will these updates affect award travel availability?
United MileagePlus members with Premier® status and qualifying United Chase Cardmembers can continue to book award travel without blackout dates. For other members, most award flights that are available today will continue to be available after these updates take effect.Do the lowest-priced awards have any extra flight restrictions?
No. Our lowest priced awards do not have any added restrictions; the fare rules for all award travel apply.How can I find the lowest priced award for my travel?
The award calendar on united.com or in our app will continue to show the lowest available price for your destination.Will I earn miles on my flight if I book an award?
No. As with current award bookings, award travel in the future will not be eligible to earn miles with MileagePlus or any other loyalty program.What if I need to change my existing award?
If you need to change your award ticket, you will be issued a new ticket for which new pricing and additional fees may apply.What if I purchase a close-in award before November 15
The close-in booking fee will still apply to all tickets booked within 21 days of departure prior to November 15, 2019. We will not refund fees paid prior to November 15, even if travel occurs on or after November 15.
"Dynamic Award Pricing" by UA; questions, experiences, .... {Archive}
Feb 27, 2020, 6:09 pm
#1921
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Aug 2015
Posts: 11,464
I can remember calling in to tell UA they'd made a mistake with my mileage credit, having the agent tell me, "no, that's how it works now", and realising with chagrin that I'd read about the change but not understood what it meant.
Before 2015 (coincidentally, the year I joined flyertalk), I didn't feel I needed to study the benefits on my FF program to feel I was benefiting. From then, the rest is, well, history — documented in my posts here.
Mar 13, 2020, 6:46 pm
#1922
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Danville, CA, USA;
Programs: UA 1MM, WN CP, Marriott LT Plat, Hilton Gold, IC Plat
Posts: 15,722
Once again UA demonstrating the disconnect between fare sales and award pricing. For the next month Hawaii flights from west coast are now discounted to $99 one-way but still require 24.5k miles. Absurd and making DL skypesos look good by comparison (at least for domestic routes). No reason for me to fly UA anymore except for price and free E+ seating.
(Contrast to AS, showing flights available for 12.5k miles one-way).
(Contrast to AS, showing flights available for 12.5k miles one-way).
Mar 13, 2020, 6:51 pm
#1923
Join Date: Jan 2018
Programs: UA LT GS | UA LT Club | Marriott LT Titanium
Posts: 1,250
Once again UA demonstrating the disconnect between fare sales and award pricing. For the next month Hawaii flights from west coast are now discounted to $99 one-way but still require 24.5k miles. Absurd and making DL skypesos look good by comparison (at least for domestic routes). No reason for me to fly UA anymore except for price and free E+ seating.
(Contrast to AS, showing flights available for 12.5k miles one-way).
(Contrast to AS, showing flights available for 12.5k miles one-way).
Mar 14, 2020, 1:29 am
#1924
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: Austin, TX
Posts: 21,413
Hey, you were the one crowing about how UA was about to dump a whole bunch of award seats on the market and erase that paper liability from their books. You can't have it both ways. 
I don't think it's fair to judge the value of the frequent flyer program based upon one route; you're always going to be able to find extreme value outliers in one direction or the other. In fact, one of the advantages of using award miles as a second currency is that you can choose when to use cash and when to use points, to your own benefit.
That said, unless you're sitting on millions of miles -- in which case, by all means, use them -- 24.5K for a $99 fare is not a good redemption, even by MileagePlus standards. Note that if you hold a qualifying United-branded Chase credit card, and you use that card for this purchase, you can use MileagePlus Choices to get a 1 cpm redemption -- so if you're seeing a $99 fare, you can use Choices to get it for 9900 miles.* That's still not a great value -- cash seems like a better deal -- but it can be a decent way to use up a chunk of miles while still earning qualifying credit for next year. Note that you have 90 days after purchase to claim a statement credit for that flight, and they will keep an administrative fee of 2500 miles if you cancel your ticket and they have to redeposit the miles you used to cover it.
* Choices is a weird program. Chase tracks the number of miles that they've given you for purchases on your card, and that's the maximum number of Choices that you can use. So, suppose that the total number of miles you've received for using your card is 100,000. That's the total number of Choices you can use. So, if you have 150,000 redeemable miles in your account, you can use up to 100,000 of them as Choices, to "erase" a United purchase up to $1000 (i.e., you get a statement credit for that amount). If you only have 75,000 redeemable miles in your account, you could use all 75,000 of them as Choices, to erase a United purchase up to $750. These redemptions would also decrease your "Choices" balance -- so, basically, you can't use any more miles to erase United purchases than whatever number of miles Chase has given you during the lifetime of the card.
I don't think it's fair to judge the value of the frequent flyer program based upon one route; you're always going to be able to find extreme value outliers in one direction or the other. In fact, one of the advantages of using award miles as a second currency is that you can choose when to use cash and when to use points, to your own benefit.
That said, unless you're sitting on millions of miles -- in which case, by all means, use them -- 24.5K for a $99 fare is not a good redemption, even by MileagePlus standards. Note that if you hold a qualifying United-branded Chase credit card, and you use that card for this purchase, you can use MileagePlus Choices to get a 1 cpm redemption -- so if you're seeing a $99 fare, you can use Choices to get it for 9900 miles.* That's still not a great value -- cash seems like a better deal -- but it can be a decent way to use up a chunk of miles while still earning qualifying credit for next year. Note that you have 90 days after purchase to claim a statement credit for that flight, and they will keep an administrative fee of 2500 miles if you cancel your ticket and they have to redeposit the miles you used to cover it.
* Choices is a weird program. Chase tracks the number of miles that they've given you for purchases on your card, and that's the maximum number of Choices that you can use. So, suppose that the total number of miles you've received for using your card is 100,000. That's the total number of Choices you can use. So, if you have 150,000 redeemable miles in your account, you can use up to 100,000 of them as Choices, to "erase" a United purchase up to $1000 (i.e., you get a statement credit for that amount). If you only have 75,000 redeemable miles in your account, you could use all 75,000 of them as Choices, to erase a United purchase up to $750. These redemptions would also decrease your "Choices" balance -- so, basically, you can't use any more miles to erase United purchases than whatever number of miles Chase has given you during the lifetime of the card.
Mar 14, 2020, 3:06 pm
#1925
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Danville, CA, USA;
Programs: UA 1MM, WN CP, Marriott LT Plat, Hilton Gold, IC Plat
Posts: 15,722
I don't think it's fair to judge the value of the frequent flyer program based upon one route; you're always going to be able to find extreme value outliers in one direction or the other. In fact, one of the advantages of using award miles as a second currency is that you can choose when to use cash and when to use points, to your own benefit.
That said, unless you're sitting on millions of miles -- in which case, by all means, use them -- 24.5K for a $99 fare is not a good redemption, even by MileagePlus standards. Note that if you hold a qualifying United-branded Chase credit card, and you use that card for this purchase, you can use MileagePlus Choices to get a 1 cpm redemption -- so if you're seeing a $99 fare, you can use Choices to get it for 9900 miles.* That's still not a great value -- cash seems like a better deal -- but it can be a decent way to use up a chunk of miles while still earning qualifying credit for next year. Note that you have 90 days after purchase to claim a statement credit for that flight, and they will keep an administrative fee of 2500 miles if you cancel your ticket and they have to redeposit the miles you used to cover it.
Choices is a weird program. Chase tracks the number of miles that they've given you for purchases on your card, and that's the maximum number of Choices that you can use. So, suppose that the total number of miles you've received for using your card is 100,000. That's the total number of Choices you can use. So, if you have 150,000 redeemable miles in your account, you can use up to 100,000 of them as Choices, to "erase" a United purchase up to $1000 (i.e., you get a statement credit for that amount). If you only have 75,000 redeemable miles in your account, you could use all 75,000 of them as Choices, to erase a United purchase up to $750. These redemptions would also decrease your "Choices" balance -- so, basically, you can't use any more miles to erase United purchases than whatever number of miles Chase has given you during the lifetime of the card.
Mar 14, 2020, 3:17 pm
#1926
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: Austin, TX
Posts: 21,413
This makes no sense unless you are desperate to preserve cash or only fly domestic. UA miles can still be worth .02 or more if redeemed for biz class on *A partners. No reason to take haircut no matter what your balance. Now to be fair I spent 50k miles for an one-way peak season UA economy seat rather than paying $1k per person, but that's still .02.
I don't understand why anyone would use a Chase UA card anymore. You can get .a better ROI (2% cash back) with no restrictions from several no AF cards or even better ROI from cards that earn Chase UR and Amex points which can transfer to many programs. The only reason to get an airline card is for the signup bonus. The only reason to pay an AF for an airline card is for the perks (early boarding, free checked bags, etc.)
Mind you, that's the only thing I put on that card, except for last year when they had a promo to offer 5x MileagePlus miles on UA purchases. Then, I moved my UA purchases to that card for the month the promo was in effect.
Last edited by WineCountryUA; Mar 14, 2020 at 4:13 pm Reason: repaired quote
Mar 14, 2020, 3:35 pm
#1927
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: HNL
Programs: UA GS4MM, MR LT Plat, Hilton Gold
Posts: 6,447
Once again UA demonstrating the disconnect between fare sales and award pricing. For the next month Hawaii flights from west coast are now discounted to $99 one-way but still require 24.5k miles. Absurd and making DL skypesos look good by comparison (at least for domestic routes). No reason for me to fly UA anymore except for price and free E+ seating.
Mar 14, 2020, 3:39 pm
#1928
A FlyerTalk Posting Legend
Join Date: Apr 2013
Location: PHX
Programs: AS 75K; UA 1MM; Hyatt Globalist; Marriott LTP; Hilton Diamond (Aspire)
Posts: 56,466
Mar 14, 2020, 3:46 pm
#1929
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Danville, CA, USA;
Programs: UA 1MM, WN CP, Marriott LT Plat, Hilton Gold, IC Plat
Posts: 15,722
What you've left out is the $99 tickets are Basic Economy - $129 for regular Economy. But why would there be a connection between award pricing and a fare sale? the point of a fare sale is to incent fliers to pay with money. And even if the redemption level was 12.5K miles, that would be a poor return on miles
Mar 14, 2020, 4:02 pm
#1930
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: BOS/EAP
Programs: UA 1K, MR LTT, HH Dia, Amex Plat
Posts: 32,063
Just bought a 120k r/t trip to Europe ... not yet seeing business class go below the old level ... will be interesting to watch whether they ever break that rule.
Mar 14, 2020, 5:06 pm
#1931
Suspended
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Bay Area
Programs: DL SM, UA MP.
Posts: 12,729
Mar 14, 2020, 5:14 pm
#1932
Join Date: Mar 2018
Programs: UA 1K, AA EXP. Hilton Diamond
Posts: 1,134
We also bought J savers for 60k each way for out in June. Lots of saver space out there right now. PZ space too out there too if you look for it. Just need to search from hub to destination, e.g. ORD-LHR, ORD-BRU, ORD-ZRH. Often if you do a search like IND-LHR it'll show PZ0.
Mar 14, 2020, 9:32 pm
#1933
Join Date: Feb 2014
Posts: 514
If the economic recovery is slow and UA has excess capacity, they would be smart to induce FF to burn down their miles and take advantage of filling empty seats. We will see if this happens or not.
Mar 15, 2020, 12:19 am
#1934
Join Date: May 2000
Location: Houston, TX, USA
Programs: UA 1K, AA Lifetime Platinum, DL Platinum, Honors Diamond, Bonvoy Titanium, Hertz Platinum
Posts: 7,970
I'm not so sure they'll see it that way. If they're bleeding money, it would not surprise me if they saw frequent fliers as the most likely group to start buying tickets again, and thus want to limit any bargains available for miles.
Mar 15, 2020, 12:32 am
#1935
Join Date: Jan 2018
Programs: UA LT GS | UA LT Club | Marriott LT Titanium
Posts: 1,250
Given thousands of students have to be out in the next few days, I was expecting expensive flights and zero saver space. Wrong! EVERY single flight from PVD-SFO was 15K. Cash fares were all $323.
They want butts in seats. They're doing both. Reasonable cash fares and saver award space everywhere. My son just called from college and said a student just tested positive. The original 'out by' date was 3/23. With the positive result, they changed to everyone must be out in 72 hours! Given thousands of students have to be out in the next few days, I was expecting expensive flights and zero saver space. Wrong! EVERY single flight from PVD-SFO was 15K. Cash fares were all $323. They want butts in seats.