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Given that I have written at length on how to make the most of United MileagePlus Miles (Part 3 of that series coming soon!), you might think I know more or less everything there is to know about United Miles – but no, every day is a school day when it comes to Points and Miles, regardless of how much you may know. My latest reminder of that came last week when I stumbled on this article over at GodSaveThePoints. It explains how Gilbert (who runs GSTP) managed to upgrade from Business Class to First Class on an ANA flight using United MileagePlus Miles.

Yep – using United Miles to upgrade on Japanese airline ANA. I was confused too.

What’s the story?

It turns out that you can actually use United Miles to upgrade select fare classes on many Star Alliance partners, not just ANA!

What is even better is that the amount of Miles required to upgrade seems to be remarkably reasonable – Gilbert was able to upgrade from Business Class to First Class between Tokyo and San Francisco (an ~11 hour flight) for just 25,000 United Miles. He also says that 25,000 Miles is a pretty good rule of thumb amount when it comes to upgrading from Economy to Business or Business to First Class on other similar length routes too, though I haven’t had chance to verify that myself.

Downside?

The main issue is that you need to be booked into an upgradeable fare bucket – and that tends to be the very expensive flexible buckets as you can see here. There are some interesting exceptions though – not least on ANA where even some deeply discounted Business Class buckets are eligible.

Anything else?

What is potentially very interesting is that this doesn’t seem to just be a United thing, but a Star Alliance thing – so other Star Alliance member programmes offer similar opportunities. I’ve not had a look through the various upgrade award charts yet, but it’s certainly something worthy of further research!

Bottom line

25,000 Miles to upgrade from Business to First Class on a ~11 hour flight is clearly an excellent deal and something well worth knowing about.

It’s also great to be reminded about the importance of never being complacent when it comes to Points/Miles – there’s always more to learn!