jsloan

In many cases, people who are purchasing flights to/from the US can purchase via United.com, even if not flying United. People who are earning UA status through economy flights from Europe to Asia are simply not UA's priority.

And that's generally what I recommend. I will continue to credit to MileagePlus because E+ at booking is a valuable perk to me -- it's like getting a 15-25% discount on many of my domestic flights, as I would otherwise purchase it -- so UA becomes the cheapest fare on the cheapest airline for me. For you, in your situation, it probably won't be.

dkc192

This has not been my experience when booking 3-5 NH F awards through VS in the past several years. What is your source or experience on this?

angetenar

seats.aero shows a HNL-NRT F seat on June 7 that you can book via UA and not VS. It shows another HND-SFO F seat on May 10 that is bookable via both UA and VS. It is possible that seats.aero is not correct about the HNL-NRT not being bookable via VS though.

Intl359Widget

Most of my UA miles were earned prior to Covid so now they're basically worthless compared to those redemption values circa 2019 unfortunately but the name of the game is earn and burn so I have no one to blame but myself.

dkc192

seats.aero doesn't show NH award availability bookable via VS but via VA. The former is not bookable online (probably hence why seats.aero doesn't show it), the latter is a less known way of booking NH awards.

Boraxo

• Nobody in FT collects miles for domestic travel (there are much better redemptions)
• nobody on FT should be “erasing” charges at 1 cpm. If you have a credit card that earns points you can do much better transferring them to an airline (many options besides UA) or even a hotel (I routinely get better than 2cpm at Hyatt).
• where this really sucks is for the folks who earn BIS miles by flying UA. They don’t have any other options for cashing in those miles. (Of course one can credit to other *A but I typically refuse to do so bc many have hard expiration dates).
  

WineCountryUA

But that is the predominate use of miles by the real world

jsloan

Nonsense. I've gotten a ton of value out of domestic redemptions.

A 1K will earn close to 200K miles per year just from flying. Those can't exactly be transferred to Hyatt.

Well, right. But while there's nothing wrong with getting good value out of credit card purchases, primarily this is a forum about flying. I think you're underselling the impact.

tth6133

What kind of value? How much better than 1cpm on those domestic redemptions?

Shouldn't they think long and hard about keeping crediting their flights to UA? Or better yet, think about whether they should avoid UA flights in the first place (I understand some of them may not have a choice). DL at least offers a somewhat better product to keep their elites flying DL.

rankourabu

If you don't credit to United, you won't be 1K.

cfischer

Not exactly 'domestic', but I more recently bought BOS-ORD-YVR r/t in IN for 30k one-way for 2 pax. At 1.5 cpm that would be $900 which, for a TCON premium cabin, is pretty much rock bottom (and that is ignoring that YVR will ordinarily be much more expensive than that)

That is the problem I see with UA's approach. They assume their 1K/GS are captives and they might very well be ... for part of their spent. I'd say from $70k last year maybe 1/2 just made the most sense on *A/UA, but the other half could have easily gone to OW or ST, no problem. So here we go, I kept it with UA knowing that I can make good use of the earned credit from that. If that is no longer true ... that means going dual top status and spreading it around will be a very likely scenario for me. Significant loss for UA ...

mecabq

A lot of posters here are saying that they find value in last-minute domestic redemptions when cash fares are high. I've never had to do this, but many members seem to.

I just booked one-way biz in September DXB-CAI-YYZ-PHX for 88K miles, with MS on the first two legs (widebody at least from DXB, then 2-3-2 seating on a B777 to YYZ) and Air Canada Rouge (or is Jazz?) on the last leg on an A321 with 2-2 seating, so I assume it's like UA domestic F. Long layovers in both Cairo and Toronto.

Pretty bottom-of-the barrel itinerary! But this is what counts as a good redemption nowadays I guess and I might as well burn miles. New airline experiences for me at least (I know, with no alcohol on MS).

cfischer

I am burning right now as much as I can. I would say 88k is a good redemption here. Check and re-book if there are better options coming up closer to departure

36902BRF

Not United (I actually haven't found United terribly useful for what I consider reasonable cost domestic redemptions post Covid) but I regularly in last last several years get 2.5-3.5 cents per point for short haul/direct domestic Y to get my kid home from college and fly me and my ex up for parent's weekend (so like 10 flights a year). I use VS points on DL and BA/AA points on AA. I have also gotten a couple of decent trans-continental J flights in lie flat on AA in the 2-3 cents per point range on AA using AA points. The VS and BA angle have both been devalued some starting late last year (at least for VS the shortest haul Y was not and that is what I use for my kid) so it is likely I'll see a decline in my redemption values.

My observation with at least my travel patterns is United is the worst at releasing saver/cheaper domestic award flights and in fact I don't believe I have ever booked a United domestic Y ticket on points and certainly not since Covid. DL and AA are much better and with AA the awards are often decently priced on their currency or you can use a partner and often save some more. DL is generally not well priced using their currency but they do often have a decent amount of saver space you an book with partners though generally these partner redemptions are higher than they would be with AA's partners (especially domestic F). And I should add while I am not a United elite I do hold their CC so I do see the increased Y saver availability granted to CC users (it basically has never been useful).

As to the topic of this thread I earn seven figures of points across multiple programs each year largely from CC spend/shopping portals (mostly in transferable currencies these days). I have a United CC and I have about 500k of United miles earned over the years. It was always a secondary program for me but I would earn miles in it via CC or their shopping portal when it made sense. Aeroplan is my current *A main squeeze. With these changes United has officially joined Delta as a points program I really have no interest in engaging with (I have earned a grand total of less than 2500 points with Delta since I started earning points). I will cancel the United CC when the AF comes due later this year (that was probably going to happen anyway but this seals its fate) and I'll discontinue earning points via the United shopping portal. This further pushes me more to what I was doing anyway which is continue to focus on transferable currencies and take strategic advantage of transfer bonuses when available to foreign carriers some of whom, unlike United, are keeping their redemption prices competitive as a backdoor into the lucrative US CC market. Something that United isn't forced to do. And worst case with a lot of those transferable currencies I can offset the cost of a cash ticket for a higher cent per mile than transferring to United and redeeming that way.

Honestly United and Delta appear to be betting on the fact that most folks either cannot or won't do the math and I am guessing they are right for the most part.

jsloan

Generally 1.7cpm+, and more commonly 2cpm+. And, yes, I'm talking within the last year, not numbers from ten years ago.

I primarily fly UA for these reasons:

• The network is best for the places I travel
• They are the lowest-cost non-LCC option on most of my flights
• Up until late last year, I was able to use PlusPoints with enough flexibility
• They have the best consumer-facing IT of the US3

Exactly.

This, on the other hand, is indisputable at this point.