Thanks to the international date line, you may well miss Christmas this year if you are in the air. But if you are traveling on United, expect a little bonus in your MileagePlus account.
All westbound United flights to Australia and two flights to Asia leave in the evening and arrive technically two days later, thanks to the crossing of the international date line. Those include:
- San Francisco to Chengdu
- San Francisco to Auckland
- Los Angeles to Melbourne
- San Francisco to Singapore
- Houston to Sydney
- Los Angeles to Sydney
- San Francisco to Sydney
On Christmas Eve, December 24th, all of those flights will not arrive until December 26th, meaning Christmas Day is lost. To compensate, United will automatically deposit 2,500 bonus award miles into the account of every MileagePlus member traveling on any of the flights above departing on 12/24.
Customers who do not have a MileagePlus account are welcome to join within 30 days of their flight to receive these award miles plus the award miles for the flight itself.
United also created a great infographic including information on:
- Flights closest to the North Pole
- Cups of Hot Cocoa served each day at United Clubs around the world
- First flights to leave in 2019 (domestic and international)
- Two eastbound flights that cross the international date line, allowing for two New Year’s Eve celebrations
Have you ever missed Christmas Day on a transpacific flight?
Based purely on Christmas gifts, I would prefer to take Virgin Australia. From their website, they seemed to provide a much better present to pax than United. 2,500 is pretty measly.
“It seems Virgin Australia’s Velocity members were on the ‘nice’ list this year, with all Velocity members on board having their membership status upgraded. Red Velocity members were upgraded to Silver, Silver to Gold, and Gold to Platinum. Platinum Velocity members were gifted 100,000 Velocity Points.”
Hahaha I wonder how many frequent flyers are on those flights!
Darn – flying Air NZ instead this Christmas Eve!