In what appears to be a change to longstanding policy, United Airlines is no longer making all of its “saver level” award space available to members of partner frequent flyer programs. If this is indeed a new trend, it will certainly impact the usefulness of partner programs like Air Canada Aeroplan or Avianca LifeMiles for many US-based travelers.
Is United Airlines Restricting Some Award Space To Partners?
First, a point of clarity. United offers award space on virtually every one of its flights to MileagePlus members. Since United eliminated its award charts, prices vary and are often loosely tied to revenue prices.
When you search for award space on united.com or on the United mobile app, you will see a little code after the flight:
- Business Class
- JN: “Everyday” award for all members (dynamic pricing)
- IN: Saver award for Premier Platinum and 1K members
- I: Saver award for all other customers and partner redemptions (at least until now)
- Economy Class
- YN: Everyday award for all members (dynamic pricing)
- XN: Saver award for elite members and select credit cardholders
- X: Saver award for all other customers and partner redemptions (at least until now)
To be clear, I am not talking about JN and YN space here…that’s always been exclusively for United MileagePlus members. I’m also not talking about the IN or XN inventory, which is additional saver space for certain elite members of the MileagePlus program.
Instead, I am talking about “X” and “I” space, which has always represented “saver” space (and is still labeled as such) and has been accessible not just to MileagePlus members, but to all Star Alliance partners. Put another way, if your flight has “X” or “I” space it should be bookable via any Star Alliance program, not just United.
Only it appears something has changed and United is restricting this space.
I played around and found this on a number of routes, but let’s just take Houston – San Francisco. Note that on April 16, 2024, United has made saver “X” space available on a number of nonstop flights:
But these are not bookable via Air Canada Aeroplan:
Or via Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer:
Or via Avianca LifeMiles:
Instead, only the last flight of the day is bookable using partner miles…
A Reasonable But Disappointing Change
If this is indeed a policy change (and Live And Let’s Fly has asked United to confirm), this would mark a devaluation of partner miles for North American flyers who use the points for travel on United. Last-minute award space on united.com booked on partner carriers like Air Canada Aeroplan can be a huge money-saver.
But if this is the new policy, United is hardly alone in implementing it. British Airways was the most recent to do this, but we see this with many carriers including Lufthansa, Austrian, Etihad, SWISS, Air France, and KLM.
And it does make sense in that it encourages loyalty to MileagePlus and theoretically makes more award seats available to United members, even if it undermines the idea of an alliance.
To be clear, I’m not in favor of the policy, but I do understand the phenomenon of limiting award space to your own members.
CONCLUSION
It appears that United is limiting a subset saver award space to its own MileagePlus members, which would be a first for the program. While theoretically, this could be a glitch, United would be hardly alone in doing this…we’ve seen a lot more of it lately.
Well, heck. I’ve in good shape since I’ve got a bunch of MileagePlus miles that I haven’t been using, but my Aeroplan backup reserve for use on UA has just gone down the toilet. I’m planning an ORD-FCO trip next year and was planning on taking the UA non-stop, and now I need to recalibrate with other Star carriers. Good to know this well in advance.
Yea, sadly it’s been a common phenomenon for partner premium cabin redemptions. CX, Qantas, EVA, SQ for at least a decade, LH in advance, etc…
Go even farther. All partners are banned from United redemption. All partners forced to accept United awards at saver rates or they will be bombed.
Burning miles is best because mileage awards are not indexed to inflation. As prices increases, eventually you should, but won’t, be able to redeem at a rate of 5cents per mile.
The other effect is less cooperation overall – i want more partner awards available via MileagePlus as well
Short sighted move
This is most certainly not reasonable. Apparently the rocket scientists at United may not have considered that retaliation is pretty much inevitable. That vastly devalues MileagePlus, which being the most valuable part of United, devalues the airline. In short, this is a stunningly stupid move. United already had a perfectly good mechanism to differentiate between elites/cardholders and general award availability. Now they’ve wrecked it for no good reason.
Who are you going to retaliate to? There are only a couple of airlines which is why they all operate as an oligopoly. When one airline does this they all do. You have no recourse. No “retaliation”. No power. You just have to take it. It’s not a short sighted move at all, just the opposite; it puts more money in the hands of stock holders and the CEO gets to buy a third vacation home.
Partner and *A airlines that offer good availability can retaliate by killing off partner awards from United. The less premium cabin partner award space I can use my United miles on, the less the program is worth to me and others.
I suspect they are trying to push people to get and use the MileagePlus cards instead of generic bank cards or partner cards. At the very least, it will make those other cards less valuable for flying on United. The point of partner awards was originally for people living in the country of the carrier to use the awards, but those carriers have gotten greedy by pushing cards to US customers who virtually never fly the airline associated with the card.
One way they might be able to make these changes less bad would be to open the N version of the fares to people in the Star Alliance Gold in the other airlines frequent flyer programs, but only if they qualify based on actual flying on the foreign carrier or cash fares on partners. I’d be OK if United didn’t count PQD from credit card usage credits toward *Gold if the other carriers had comparable restrictions. If the partner didn’t handle *Gold that way, no N fares for their customers. This way, for example, a Dallas based customer flying to Europe a lot on Lufthansa could still get preferential United award tickets, but not someone who just got a Lufthansa affiliated credit card, and never flew Lufthansa.
United app/site doesn’t show partner space in abundance either
Building a fence between you and your parties bad for business.
Also for customers, but we all know customers are just incidental to the miles/credit card business. A minor annoyanve.
We’re likely going to see more of this unfortunately. This is because more people are learning the secrets of obtaining low business class fares by purchasing air miles from alliance partners for less to book saver flights with miles instead of paying cash, which is usually ridiculously higher, sometimes by as much as 75%.
Airlines are becoming victims of their own greed, especially considering the fact that many people are earning their miles through credit card purchases, which the airlines are also making money from.
This cat and mouse game will continue, but savvy travelers will always have a back door. US airlines have been terrible at squeezing the most out of passengers while giving the least in return. We’ve also seen Delta airlines aggressively devalue its award miles too, making America Airlines and One World the most generous reward program in the US. That is until they decide to follow in the footsteps of the the other two
Could this be focused on/restricted to domestic flights? I have recently needed to get some award availability from the USA to Europe and UA options were surprisingly plentiful for using partner miles- I had basically been assuming that the vast majority of the space would have been nabbed by Mileage Plus members well in advance, but X class was available on a large number of flights and I class could be found with a bit of flexibility re dates, connection points etc.
And, having now flown with them, I am definitely not in a rush to repeat the experience. Multiple encounters with rude ground personnel at IAH, no espresso machine on the 787, main course meat served swimming in a disgusting sweet-and-sour ketchupy sauce, breakfast dish was even worse with some tasteless egg white thing, FAs who never checked on pax for refills or even said ‘please’/’thank you’/’you are welcome’ disembarkation from one door without priority given to business pax etc. Even the likes of Lufthansa and Avianca offer a superior soft product in business class- AF, Aeroméxico, TAP etc are light years ahead.
The seat and the ORD lounge were fine, so I would be prepared to fly with them again, but only if the price/availability/schedules are substantially more attractive than the competition.
Hey Mat – any confirmation from United’s end? I have been playing around with it and have noticed this is basically applying to domestic routes as international routes are not too affected. Have you seen the same? Like looking for space SFO- SEA even when X is avail. No luck but when looking IAD-FRA in I and many others – the avail. Seems to match up correctly
Nothing yet.
Don’t they get money from partners for the awards? If so, this actually feels incredibly dumb. They’re cutting off a source of external revenue.
This will put an end to people using TK and other programs to snag cheap saver seats on UA. Which can be good or bad depending on your perspective.
It has been almost three days now that Lufthansa Group (LH, LX, Brussels, and Austrian) has no availability on Lifemiles, no route, and no class despite being available on United, Air Canada, or SAS. Is this the same policy LH is applying to Lifemiles?
Will investigate. First I have heard of this.
Would be interesting if you could investigate. I have been recently seeing LH F award availability with Aegean miles (poor value in most cases as the surcharges are huge, plus my reliably underwhelming LH flights within Europe mean that I don’t have a burning desire to fly them intercontinentally) despite blogger reports that ‘partners’ are being blocked.
Would you consider posting about UA blocking SK awards and/or reaching out to UA about it? Other partners such as AC can see and book SK awards until SK’s exit date from *A (8/31).