Award Tickets Question
 

Good afternoon.

I have a United JFK-NRT-SIN-NRT-JFK award ticket booked last year at 90K miles. If I want to change the ticket to EWR-IAD-NRT-SIN-NRT-IAD-EWR, besides the change fee, will I have to also pay the additional "mileage"? The award tickets are now 120K... :confused:

I think you will have to pay the change fee (unless you're 1K) as well as the new mileage. In essence, you'd be canceling one reservation and making a new one.

If you don't change the routing, you should be able to keep the old mileage amount.

With your proposal, you would have to cough up the additional mileage.

Another question about a milage bought award ticket...when you take that flight do you still earn miles on that flight?

OK - thank you very much for your help. :)

No miles earned (RDM or EQM or lifetime) on award tickets

No - you don't earn miles on award tickets.

Are you sure it's 120K?
I believe it's 125K.

No, you do not earn miles on award tickets.

One time I earned miles.. It happened 11 years ago from DTW to DEN. I took an ealier flight (standby). I guess GA changed my booking class. My whole trip was ICN-SFO-DEN-DTW / DTW-DEN / DEN-SFO-ICN.

So, here is my dilema. I need to travel from CA to VA in august. I have 20,000 + miles, I need a little over 4,000 miles. I had intended to fly myself and kids back, but my oldest has school exspenses for the fall that I can't pay for and also pay to fly them back. So, now I am looking at trying to book the cheapest way possible for myself, and I got an email today saying the miles were reduced in price to .025 per miles. Looks like I can buy the remaining miles I need to purchase my ticket for under the cost of the ticket itself. I have never booked a reward ticket, so not sure how it works first of all, and if it is worth buying the miles to book the ticket or just buying the ticket outright and saving the miles for another trip. Not sure of the cost affiliated, if buying the miles and using them to book a ticket costs the same (fees for using miles for a ticket?), then I should probably just book my ticket outright and save the miles for another future trip. Checking all airlines in the area, flying United remains the cheapest and convienent, since I am at a small airport, and driving to a larger one takes time, gas and by the end of it, does make up for a small savings. So, it seems like a no brainer to me, to keep flying with United and banking my miles.

You should consider the cost to you both in terms of dollars and miles. If you're able to get a fairly cheap fare to VA, that's probably the best bet. Many around here value their miles around 2 cents per mile, meaning that if you could get a RT for less than $500 (which it sounds as though you can), it may be better to keep the miles and use them on another occasion when flights might be more expensive.

Let's say your roundtrip costs $350. If you were to book an award ticket, you'd be purchasing, say, 5,000 miles which would cost you $125 plus some taxes and excise fees. You'd end up saving somewhere on the order of $225 by getting the award ticket. On the other hand, if you purchased the ticket, you'd be able to accrue the extra miles (probably around 5,000) for your trip that would put you over the 25,000 mark so you'd be able to book your next trip without having to buy any miles. So basically, you're looking at whether you're willing to spend 25,000 miles to save $225. I'd buy the ticket and use the miles at another time. This argument, obviously, ignores whether the purchase of the ticket would cause an undue hardship to you financially or whether you have an anticipated use of the miles for an award ticket in the future.

I think you've go this wrong, but the FAQ on UA's site is long gone. IIRC:

If you now change region or cabin of service on an award made before Jan 1, 2009, you will have to pay the higher redemption rates.

If you change city, dates, or routings, you will not.

OP is still flying to the same region with the suggested routing change, so should be OK.

I just checked on an award ticket made last year that I changed on January 23. I changed the outbound from JFK-VIE to IAD-MUC and an intra-Europe segment from LED-VIE to LED-VCE and it did not cost me additional miles.

Makes sense, thanks!

Is Japan considered the same region as SIN, though? On the award chart, a Japan Business class seat from North America costs 120,000 miles.... while a North/South Asia business class seat (would include SIN, I assume) costs 125,000 miles.