Nick148

Hi, totally new member here, I’ve had a good search through the forum and there’s some great advice 👌🏻
I have $1200 ETC and 28k air miles with UA, i would like to use them both to get my GF and I out to Jakarta in December.
what would you recommend the best way of using these are to get the most out of them, they’re all gifted due to a delay and further issues.

If I want to book with *A airlines, I can’t use the ETC and UA don’t fly to Jakarta from what I can see?
Thanks.

any advice would be welcome 👍

Lux Flyer

Those forms of payment are non-combineable with each other. It‘s miles + credit card or etc + credit card.

You can use the ETC on any flights you find on united.com including *A if the website offers it.

Nick148

Yea i figured that, i was just thinking how i could get the most out of what i have got?
Uniteds app doesn’t show flights coming up in Dec. I’m wondering if I’m best booking with SQ and buying more miles while they’re on sale, then using them to upgrade on there?

jsloan

You cannot use United miles to upgrade Singapore Airlines long-haul flights, and even on the short-haul flights, the fare class you need to purchase to do so is prohibitively expensive.

My advice is, forget about the miles, as you don’t have enough to be useful for what you’re trying to do, and buying more is going to cost you way too much to be effective. When you say “December,” do you mean “around Christmas, when half of North America is trying to travel,” or do you mean “early December, during a relative dead period?”

Nick148

so I’m flying from the UK, aiming to leave 13th of Dec, return is flexible but after Christmas /early Jan is the aim.

I used SQ as an example but could use any of the *A airlines.
I looked up the cost of miles, £1000 will get 55k miles, so 80k total, that’s cheaper than paying for the upgrade.

I’ve been travelling long haul for years surfing etc and I’m kicking myself for never actually looking in to miles etc!

jsloan

Dec. 13th is early enough that you might not face peak Christmas (lack of) availability.

Upgrading on other *A airlines with MileagePlus miles isn’t all that easy or cheap either. You’ll need upgrade space — not readily available — as well as a relatively expensive fare to start with.

*A upgrade awards are done segment-by-segment and cost something like 25K miles each. So even at 80K miles, you don’t have enough to upgrade even a single long-haul flight round-trip for two people. If you’re willing to reposition — e.g., start by taking a flight to OSL on a separate ticket — you can sometimes find round-trip business class deals to Southeast Asia for less than £1500. I would not pay anywhere close to £1000 for miles, especially if I were unsure that I could upgrade in the first place.

Being UK-based and trying to fly to DPS, you’re going to run into two basic problems. The first is that you’ve got a currency issue — unless you have a US-based credit card, UA is going to want to charge you in GBP but your certificate appears to be in USD. You may be able to resolve that by calling. The second is that UA isn’t all that interested in selling tickets for flights where it doesn’t operate any of the segments, and other airlines often limit their inventory so that UA can’t offer you the best price anyway. So if you go in to use the travel credit, and you’re not interested in going the very, very long way around of LHR-SFO-SIN-DPS, you may find that no flights come up for selection.

Nick148

Ok cool, thanks for explaining it like that.
Looks like I’ll just use it for a separate trip to the states next year.