Getting Premier Status Based on Booked Flights?
 

Has anyone had success getting United Mileage Plus to give you provisional status on the basis of booked non-refundable flights? How did you do it? I'm booking a few cross country round trips that will easily put me over 25K miles flown for the year but I'd love to not be stuck in E- until those trips are nearly over.
TIA

AFAIK, that has never happened. You don't get status until after you fly the required miles. You probably know that you can usually buy up to E+ at the time of OLCI.

First off welcome to ft. I doubt this would happen because you could not fly the flights. You could always buy e+ access.

Nope, gotta fly the miles. As it was said, you can cancel the flights. Its a frequent flyer program, not a frequent buyer program.

Years ago, when I was a 2P, I asked for 1P status based on my booked itineraries, and UA granted me a "once in a lifetime" exception. So, YMMV.

For reference, I was living in Japan at the time, and was hovering around 45k EQMs; the return flight would have put me at 1P. I wanted 1P beforehand so I could take of advantage of the *G benefits. It paid off handsomely, because I got *G lounge access, the extra bag allowance, and an op-up on the return flight! :D

Do you have elite status on any other airline? If so, call and ask for a (once-in-a-lifetime) status match or challenges. If not, try asking for a challenge anyway. If you are persuasive or lucky, they might offer you the status for 90 days with the opportunity to make it last (which your flights should do).

Charles

This has happened to me, but it took some patience.

I was sitting at 49,161 EQM and had non-refundable itineraries booked adding up to about 28,600 EQMs, including one to FRA. After about 30 minutes of discussing why I want the benefits on the outbound flight to FRA instead of waiting for the miles to post "within three days" and "checking with a supervisor" I was told I would be given "provisional" 1P status. If I didn't fly the 839 miles within 90 days I would lose the 1P.

It sounds like may have done an 'artificial' status match.

Hmmm... this happened to me, although I didn't ask.

The year I went from 2P-like travel to 1K-like travel, I got an unsolicited phone call in May saying that they would bump me to 1P just before my ORD-LAX-SYD leg rather than just after. (I was sitting at about 48K at that point) I thought that was very nice of UA.

You can try if you are close, like 20K+ miles. Just give UA a call.;)

Why should UA give you E+ while selling that as a value added product to everyone else with <25000 eqm ? You could have done a couple of MR during the DEQM promotion and earned the ability to reserve E+ seating.

Well... perhaps because they do not sell it to everyone else. As others have posted, UA does indeed give away 1P, 2P, even 1K status, depending on the situation. OP asked a legitimate question.

Same here (2P to 1P).

I have a similar story. Although they declined my request over the phone, my status was updated the next day.

Nobody said anything about it being my one comp, so I hope I still have it. I also can't recall if it was GM --> 2P or 2P --> 1P. This was several years ago.

MWRFlyer - Nothing lost by calling and asking.

Hmm... Interesting :D

Will give it a try before I leave for Vegas in december. That flight will push me to 1P but I would like the benefits of being 1P on that flight :D

Currently at 32k EQM but with 2 flights towards IAH & LAS in Oct & Dec I'll be 1P on my returntrip from LAS.

I'll give it a try later this year ;)