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Mileage doom approaches: on October 6, 2016 United will restrict its generous stopover award policy on award tickets. They spin it as reducing confusion. Confusion to others is gold to us.
United’s flexible award routing rules and its Star Alliance partners have made United’s my most valued miles. I have taken trips around Africa, in particular, that would have been financially ruinous if paid in cash. I am chasing all the countries in the world so a mile is most valuable to me when it carries me to a place where there is no economic alternative. United’s current flexibility allows multi-destination trips for the price of one. On October 6, much of that will be gone. Poof.
It is not just stopovers that are being cut back, there is also the potential that tickets with egregious numbers of connections will become more difficult to book.
Each day to the 6th I will post an idea from an actual trip I have booked. Here is a recent example of my trips, a 40,000-mile one-way ticket:
Key reading to get up to speed is:
Travel is Free for how you can take it to the limits:
View from the Wing for the details on the changes:
- United Announces New Award Change Fees, Limits on Free Stopovers
- 16 Tricks and Things You Should Know About United MileagePlus
Wandering Aramean for the crucial missing piece:
The last one is critical because things are already changing.
My tips:
1. Study the referenced articles for the way things should be.
2. Dream up the craziest things you want to do. Don’t hold back.
3. This is not just about stopovers, this is also tacking many sub-24 hour connections on international tickets to quickly see multiple places. You can do a lot in 24 hours, tour the Vatican for instance.
4. Not all partners show online, and some show intermittently. You can use other Star Alliance airlines sites such as Air Canada Aeroplan to find availability for some, though keep in mind certain airlines limit certain premium cabin availability to their own members.
5. Use brute force trial and error on the United website to see what sticks. Important: if one flight option causes an error, another might work even if it makes no sense for it to be different, try all the options the website provides.
6. If the United website errors out, you can call agents as a backup, though getting good agents is not easy even with elite status. You may need United phone agents to use the ‘old system’ rather than the ‘new system.’
7. Don’t waste your miles on a trip ‘just because’ it can be done. United miles will still have value from October 6. Book something you really want.
Good luck!
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[…] the best round-up on maximizing current United stopover rules, I recommend this post on Rapid Travel Chai It has links to other blogs, so you’ll have all the tools you need. If you are confused or […]
An example of “brute force”.
Trying to book (XXX)Home-PNI(Pohnpei)-ROR(Pulau)-(XXX)Home via the Pacific Island Hopper.
LAX-HNL-PNI-ROR-XXX [Worked, proves pricing and legit routing from North America]
XXX-IAD-HNL-PNI-GUM-ROR-XXX [error]
XXX-IAD-HNL-PNI-ROR-XXX [error]
XXX-HNL-PNI-ROR-NRT-IAD-XXX [error]
IAD-HNL-PNI-ROR-NRT-IAD-XXX [error]
XXX-IAD-HNL [works]
XXX-HNL-PNI [works]
XXX-HNL-PNI-ROR [works]
XXX-HNL-PNI-ROR-GUM [works]
XXX-HNL-PNI-ROR-GUM-NRT [error]
XXX-HNL-PNI-ROR-GUM-XXX [error]
XXX-HNL-PNI-ROR-GUM-IAD [error]
XXX-HNL-PNI-ROR-GUM-HNL [error]
XXX-HNL-PNI-ROR-GUM-NRT-XXX [SUCCESS!]
Will also post comment in the Island Hopper post for any others trying to book.
bwahahahaha, I second the banana pancake eaters! It seems like there is a healthy 50% of travelers that make the effort to go to the ass end of the world to simply sit in a hostel with other travelers. While your rate is a bit fast for me, I also second that an incredible amount of activities can fit into 24 hours. Usually when you are home you dont realize this. Commuting to work and back and then watching TV it feels like days are just wasted. But when all the time is yours in a foreign place it is… Read more »
@john – and I do not always go so fast. Iran I spent 9 days, for instance. China, Russia, India, Brazil I have made numerous trips and still more to come. And so on.
Sorry, but that one way 40k award in your example is ridiculous. How many of the 100+ countries that you’ve been to did you truly experience?
@Joey – I don’t get into the business of telling other people how to travel because it is a personal decision, only you experience you travels, after all, and however you travel there is someone to pop up and say you are doing it wrong. I don’t have time or inclination to leave life and wife behind, sell my possessions, and drift around the world. On the flip side, there is an awful lot you can do in 24 hours and the people who don’t believe that are the ones who arrive and spend the first day eating banana pancakes… Read more »
I’m actually not that disappointed about the United stopover changes. Some of my favorite aspects of United MileagePlus are still there. Frequent Miler mentioned some of these characteristics in one of his posts before. They’re in Star Alliance, so they have access to the best partner award space on international flights. It’s one of the few Star Alliance frequent flyer programs that have no fuel surcharges on any awards, and offer one ways for half the price of a round trip. Oftentimes, there’s only award space to the destination I want, on the date I want using United miles (well,… Read more »
@Brandon – all excellent points and why I do not advocate burning mileage balances. A lot of great trips will still be possible. For the small group of us who take things to the max, the known changes to no stopover on trips wholly within a region and well as requirement to have awards with stopover start and end in the same region will restrict what we can do. Africa in particular will lose a lot of value on United awards. The unknown is how much of the piecing together segments will change with the new system.