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I posted a few days ago about how until 12th November 2017 you can buy United MileagePlus Miles for between 0.84p-1p per Mile. I ended that piece by saying I’d share some thoughts on how to get massive value from those Miles, so here’s Part 1 of the lowdown on United MileagePlus sweetspots.

The first thing to say is that United just had a devaluation last week, so a lot of the prices you’ll see elsewhere on other blogs are now out of date. You can check out the new award charts here – note that MileagePlus has different pricing for using Miles on United flights than it does for redeeming with Star Alliance partners.

A quick look through the award charts will show you that on the face of it there aren’t many obvious United MileagePlus sweetspots these days. There are still a few, like Oceania to Oceania (the distances can be vast!) for 12,500 Miles in Economy or 30,000 in Business Class one-way; and the introduction of new 8,000 Mile awards for direct flights within a single region (not including North America) that are under 800 miles:

To really exploit United MileagePlus sweetspots though, you’ve got to dig a little deeper into the programme and make use of some of the quirks:

‘Transiting’ a third region…

When you search for award flights, MileagePlus will quite often throw up routes and pricing that seem a little surprising. It’s not uncommon to see results come up that include connecting in a region outside of the two regions you are actually travelling from/to – and the crucial point is that the amount of Miles required isn’t necessarily any higher despite the fact you are going through a region that would otherwise require more Miles to travel to.

Say, for example, you would like to fly between Addis Ababa and Lisbon, you would normally be charged 30,000 Miles in Economy and 55,000 in Business Class, as according to the regions list that’s Central/Southern Africa to Europe.

Instead, you can search for Addis Ababa to Casablanca (Northern Africa region) and you’ll probably see options like the below, which routes through Istanbul and Lisbon, for 20,000 Miles in Economy or 45,000 in Business Class:

If you don’t have any checked bags (or ensure there’s an overnight connection so you can pick up your bags), there’s nothing to stop you ending your trip in Istanbul or Lisbon rather than carrying on to Casablanca. There are a huge amount of examples like this that you can have some fun researching. There’s actually something even better though that I want to get onto…

The ‘Excursionist’ perk

Forget everything you know about how award tickets normally work – it’ll only serve to confuse you here. The Excursionist perk is plain weird, just accept it and enjoy the benefits.

United explains it as follows:

“The Excursionist Perk is a free one-way award within select multi-city itineraries. Members who book an itinerary with three or more one-way awards will be eligible to receive one of those one-way awards for free, if it meets all of these conditions:

• The Excursionist Perk cannot be in the MileagePlus defined region where your travel originates. (For example, if your journey begins in North America, you will only receive the Excursionist Perk if travel is within a region outside of North America.)

• Travel must end in the same MileagePlus defined region where travel originates.

• The origin and destination of the Excursionist Perk is within a single MileagePlus defined region.

• The cabin of service and award type of the free one-way award is the same or lower than the one-way award preceding it.

• If two or more one-way awards qualify for this benefit, only the first occurrence will be free.”

It’s probably easier if I just show you what that actually means:

As you can see, the itinerary above is Manchester to New York, staying there for a few nights, then continuing onto Los Angeles (also staying for a couple of nights) and then flying back to Manchester. What is interesting is that the New York – Los Angeles leg prices at zero Miles.

At its most basic level, the Excursionist perk allows you to add on a free one-way within the region you’re traveling to, when you book a Return flight (use the multi city search function on the United site to add the free intra-region leg in).

That’s useful, but it gets a lot better (and weirder!) than that.

Before getting onto the really interesting stuff, I need to point out that you can have as many open-jaws as you want with these tickets. In the above example, it would have been just as easy to book an award that went Manchester – New York – open jaw to Chicago (use Avios or whatever to get there from New York) – Los Angeles – open jaw to San Francisco (again using Avios etc) – Brussels:

As long as the the award ticket ends back in the same region it started in (in this case Europe), you can fly back to anywhere within that region. That’s useful, but the sharp eyed may recall two other rules I mentioned earlier:

• The Excursionist Perk cannot be in the MileagePlus defined region where your travel originates. (For example, if your journey begins in North America, you will only receive the Excursionist Perk if travel is within a region outside of North America.)

• The origin and destination of the Excursionist Perk is within a single MileagePlus defined region.

Note how the rules say nothing about the free one way having to be used within the region you’re traveling to – only that it can’t be used in the region you originate in and that the free one way must be within a single region. 🙂

That’s all I’m going to say for now as I don’t want to overload anyone, but I’ll be moving onto the really good (if slightly advanced) stuff very soon!

Ok, a final hint to whet your appetite: