pinniped

Honestly, when I opened this thread I thought it was going to be about the taxes/fees on international travel. My response would have been that I agree with the OP but at least UA doesn't add the truly insulting fees to their award tickets. AFAIK, whether you want to call it a "tax" or a "fee", the money goes to the government(s), not United.

Contrast that to BA, where they've effectively eliminated the utility of economy-class awards on their own metal by charging so many garbage fees on award tickets that it rarely makes sense to book them. I'll still manage to spend 350-400k BA miles on four first-class tickets to Africa or Asia in the next two years, but I realize I'm effectively paying about $2,000-2,500 in total value for each round-trip ticket. It's a nice opportunity to fly a very good three-cabin F product but it's clearly not for everyone...and not for anyone who enjoys using their miles for awards with little out-of-pocket cash cost.

The $10 security fee on a domestic award...*shrug* the only thing that annoys me about that one is that it adds a step to booking an award.

fwfdan

For US domestic travel PFCs (code XF) do not apply to free tickets based on government regulation, neither does the $3.70 segment tax (code ZP). The September 11th fee of $2.50 per segment (code AY) does apply on free tickets.

Cantheplanegofaster?

A previous poster in the thread insinuated that I could have somehow found seats for less than 50k miles (using CO, etc). I simply laid out the constraints I was dealing with and said I'd like to see if someone could find a better deal. You pointed out the obvious.......

The price vs miles was at the point where I just used some of my stockpile of miles.

Personally I think the 9/11 fee is another goverment grab for another government agency (TSA). We are not 0.000000001% safer because of the TSA but we're paying for it.

And I do think it is a booking fee because it says 50,000 + $10.00 and then there is a button that says "continue booking"

pinniped

Silly question: if there's a $400 R/T seat available, why are you even thinking about using miles? Looks like plenty of choices on US Airways at reasonable fares...why not just book one and be done with it?

Seriously: keep the 50k for something a lot better than this. I mean, unless you're sitting on millions of RDM's... But even if that's the case, you're blowing UA miles are a very low-value use *and* complaining about ten bucks at the same time? That doesn't make sense.

CIT85

Exactly what I was thinking. I've only used my UA miles for LH FC tickets (even if it's just to Europe) to extrct maximum value.

SkiAdcock

I was thinking the same thing. Only reason would be if OP had multiple people he needed to book flights for & the $400 went up by X # of people/cash flow constraint, or for whatever reason the OP was cash-constrained (which is none of our business).

BTW - the OP is incorrect in his first post stating that UA wants to charge him $10 for booking online. There is no fee to book online.

Cheers.

Cantheplanegofaster?

I am laughing hard at the cash strapped comment. I am paying out of pocket for my daughters 7 year college program as an out-of-state student.

Plain and simple, it hurts the wallet.

As far as pay vs miles, the flights that I found that fit the time needs were over $400. With the holiday week and her classes and ride to airport schedule pinned me down.

Within the next two weeks I will have already "replaced" those 50k miles (and then som). Why spend cash when I didn't need too......

pinniped

OK, so you're flush with so many United miles you can't spend them fast enough...but you're gripping about ten bucks?

If the $10 is a dealbreaker, then maybe the daughter stays in NC for the weekend. I attended school a long way from home and spent a lot of those "long weekend" type holidays either at school or with a friend who lived within a 2-hour drive of campus.

Cantheplanegofaster?

Firstly, the fees charged for what is implied as "free" travel just seems like another way for airlines to incrementally get money. Kinda of like offering a "free" car wash with a 20 gallon fill up at a gas station that charges $0.20 more per gallon for their gas.

As someone else noted, when you stay at a hotel night on points, the bill is $0 if you don't chage anything to the room. If it's such a "token" charge then the airline should suck it up. The whole TSA/air marshall security thing is a joke but for another forum and discussion. Now knowing that's supposedly why we are paying fees/taxes for FFM just exposes how it's a cost drain on the air transportation system.

Regarding my "stockpile of miles". I have them because I've been doing a lot of travel over the last few years and did not use any of them because frankly I wanted to be home, not back out on the road.

Given how much time I've been away from home, having all my family at home for Thanksgivin and Christmas is going to happen, period. But thanks for telling me how I should/should not use my miles

emcampbe

While you may be using the term, I don't believe any airline, at least in North America, has used the term "free" travel to describe using points for a ticket in many, many years. "Award" doesn't necessarily mean "free." There is a reason it is usually referred to as "award" travel or similar.

If you have an issue with the $10 charged for the ticket you are getting with the miles, I suggest you find another carrier where you don't have to pay that when redeeming award travel (oh, and please, let us all know which airline that is when you find it).

Wonder the thread that would be started if your miles were with Aeroplan. As an example, when I was looking at a short transborder flight on AC (believe it was CVG or CMH - YYZ, so we're talking less than 500 miles here), the taxes and fees added up to ~$160. And that's nothing compared to the cost you would pay if you were redeeming a reward ticket (note, not free, reward ticket, is what AC calls it) to Europe or Asia. Feel free to read the AC forum - there are lots of stories in there. I know everyone has their own opinions, but compared to that, $10 sounds pretty good to me.

SFO 1K

At first I felt like you just were confused about an airline booking fee vs a federal tax.

But now I feel like you just want to ..... about stuff. This is NOT a way for the airline to incrementally get money. They take $0.00 of your precious $10.00 9/11 security fee.

Get off it already.

pinniped

The massive Hidden City Ticketing thread on Travelbuzz just called - *it* thinks this is a dumb analogy.

Mods should move this thread to that subforum within Travel Security where people ***** about the TSA.

sinoflyer

This thread is ridiculously pointless. OP apparently doesn't like the answers because they don't agree with them, or they have a hard time understanding that UA collects $0 for this ticket. Save the boilerplate complaints about TSA for someplace else.

rankourabu

To be fair, Aeroplan only charges high fees on Air Canada metal. Just avoid it, and you are paying same fees as UA/CO.
The AC forum has gotten very good at minimizing the damage by avoiding AC metal on rewards.

anc-ord772

2x 1W J Award US->UK->So. Africa 150k miles + $725.80 (not including $250 for seats on BA)

2X *A F Award So. Africa->GER->US 150k miles + $284.60

Must we talk about skypesos?

*A is still great value.