Feb 1 - One-Way Awards and Miles & Money Awards now bookable on ual.com
 

According to the 1K desk, starting on Monday, Feb 1, one-way awards will be bookable on united.com as a "test." More details to come undoubtedly.

Coupled with the elimination of close-in fees, this makes UA miles pretty useful! Mind you, I think the 1K desk has always waived the change fee for me when I change the date of the inbound leg of an all-UA-metal award - and the same goes for DBCFREE tickets.

Finally!!!

this new, improved UA almost scares me. It all seems to bode for merger with CO... I hope not though.

Is it still going to be a 1K only feature or will it be opened to all? Half price?

For half the miles?

1/2 price might go, and it seems nice, but from an economical standpoint, UA SHOULD charge some premium for this. This makes so many "illegal ticketing" situations cost so much less, it takes the one way fare, which in itself has a very high premium cost in many markets, and it makes it so much cheaper, so much easier to use miles instead of big bucks. The revenue dilution from a purely "opportunity lost" case on revenue tickets that would have been sold at a premium makes the potential revenue hit to UA pretty hard. Sure, there may be more passengers that fly UA for this, but true lost revenue is easy to see and empiricize, but potential incremental revenue from passengers that don't fly UA and MIGHT switch is much tougher to prove.

Urghh that fallacy again from a bean-counter.

Just because I book a one-way award from A to B, this does not mean that UA has somehow lost the exact value of a paid seat, that I would otherwise have paid some ridiculous price to travel on UA's one-way fare.

Same applies to the bean-counters' fallacious view of hidden-city-ticketing: if I book a low fare for, say, XXX-ORD-MKE and travel only XXX-ORD, UA has not "lost" the huge one-way fare for that sector. On the contrary, it's filled an empty seat and gained some revenue.

If one-way awards encourage MPers to burn UA miles, that's a bonus for UA, just like UA selling an otherwise-empty seat to a hidden-city-flier.

Edit - and it's the best thing that could happen to MP, for the customers. I'd even think of crediting to UA again.

Half the miles makes sense; I can't see UA/MP coming up with all new charts just for one-way awards. Also it sounds, from the OP, as though this is a 1K-only benefit. UA/MP can of course "control" redemptions by forcing people to the Standard Award, or maybe they will just choose to use 50% of the standard award? Finally, I assume this is for UA metal only.

Do other programs allow for one-way awards?

I hope this test is successful and it becomes a standard benefit for 1Ks!

Since it's just 1/2 on American, I'd expect it to also be just 1/2 on UA. My guess is UA metal only, but this is great for constructing brand-new routings!

It all comes down to whether or not a free stopover will still come with a roundtrip award ticket.

I believe that with AA, if you fly, for example, JFK-LHR-(anywhere else in europe you can't get to directly), you cannot get a free stopover at LHR. You need to book two awards, one JFK-LHR and the other an intra-europe award. Then you can book a one-way back to JFK. Overall, it costs more miles to have that one stopover en route.

If UA does this, it's going to be a detractor, not an enhancement, to MP.
I really like the free stopover you get with a roundtrip award ticket. I believe many others do as well.

Thus, if it means paying an extra premium for a 1-way award to keep the free stopover on a roundtrip award, then I'm all for that.

I'm one of those people who can live without the free stopover in Europe or elsewhere (with AAdvantage they're still allowed in N. Am., in the gateway city). Depending on how much of a premium you're willing to pay over 1/2 R/T for a stopover in Europe, then AAdvantage might work for you in many cases: adding another European destination after a stop in LHR would only cost you 10K in each direction (in economy), so there's your premium.

yeehaw!

glad that wish i made on a falling star wasnt wasted.. ok not really, but this is excellent news, ^

Good point. It's still a bit high of a premium. I was thinking more like 5K miles more for each one-way.

I can see people (and myself) booking 1-way with AAdv and the return with MP. Will basically give us added flexibility in finding available flights and dates. I still worry that UA will take something back and end up being the one who gets the better of it. It might be an avenue to increase the mileage for all awards by 5K on the one-ways. Just a thought.

I do like one-ways though. In Australia, all domestic flights are purchased as one-way tickets. A return ticket is always buying two 1-ways. You can fly Qantas from MEL-SYD and Virgin Blue or Tiger or Jetstar from SYD-MEL. Internationally, Virgin Blue, V Australia, Jetstar and Tiger al do only one-way bookings to make roundtrips. Only Qantas has the more American system of having a RT cost less than the usually over-expensive two one-ways.

What if the price is based on standard award values? Then does it make sense? The inventory still has to be there for 1k's to take advantage of this which on many flights we know there isn't. I'm hoping xy and ny inventory are both available for this redemption opportunity.

AA has one way awards.

BTW I'm curious if this will actually happen. I just called the 1k desk and the 2 agents didn't know about this. :confused: