Another day, another step back for United MileagePlus. United Airlines announced a trio of negative changes today that further erode the value of its MileagePlus loyalty program. Let’s take a look.
A Trio Of United MileagePlus Devaluations
United sent out an email to Premier members this morning outlining upcoming changes to the MileagePlus program. The news is mostly bad for savvy travelers.
Instant Upgrades For MileagePlus Elites On Y/B/M Fares Ends On August 21, 2025
United Airlines is eliminating a long-time perk whereby MileagePlus Premier members traveling on a Y or B fare (and 1K and Global Services members traveling on an M fares) could receive an instant space-available upgrade at the time of booking. Upgrade space required the “PN” fare bucket for 1K and Global Services members and the “PZ” fare bucket for lower-tier Premier members to be available in order to confirm.
Corporate travelers and government travelers will be particularly impacted, since those fares often book in Y or B class. Passengers who book Premium Plus (premium economy) tickets with domestic connections will also be hurt, since those segments book into B class.
No More Award Chart (Fixed Pricing) For MielagePlus Upgrade Awards
United will pull its award charts for upgrades using your miles on November 24, 2025.
Instead, upgrade pricing will depend on the date, time, and availability on your chosen flight.
It is not clear how pricing will change or whether a co-pay will still be required. I expect every flight will be upgradable, but at a cost closely correlated to the cash price, valuing miles at one cent or less each, making it a very poor deal…you’re better off using a cash-back card than any co-branded Chase-United card.
Elimination Of Excursionist Perk
The odd but often valuable “Excursionist Perk,” is going away for tickets issued on or after August 21, 2025.
United has a complicated quirk that replaced free stopovers in 2016 that it calls an “Excursionist Perk”
Here’s how United describes it:
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.
Here’s an example United provides:
The trick is the free Excursionist Perk does not have to be in any particular region, just in one region…
So theoretically, you could book a ticket from New York to Lisbon in business class for 88K miles, then an “Excursionist Perk” for no extra miles from Dakar (DSS) to Johannesburg (JNB), a ticket that costs 35K in economy class or 90K in business class, then a return to the same region as origin, so if you could book an award from Africa to the USA on United…or if you were flying home via another carrier or program, you could just add on a domestic flight within the USA (the region you started in) to get the intra-Africa segment for free.
That means you could add a 10K domestic US segment to make the 90K segment within Africa free.
That goes away…and it does not appear anything will replace it.
CONCLUSION
As far as I can see, this is all bad news…yet another dismantling of what was once a great program by Richard Nunn, the ex-Comcast VP who now leads MileagePlus. I detest what has happened to MileagePlus under his tenure. Taking away upgrade award charts and the Excursionist Perk is arbitrary and punitive. Eliminating instant upgrades may not hurt me since I don’t buy full fare tickets, but it was a nice perk when connecting on a premium economy ticket (since the domestic economy segment book into B class, meaning an instant upgrade).
What do you make of these latest changes to MileagePlus?
There was another devaluation last week which was a little more subtle.
For transatlantic flights, JN (standard) award prices have depended on what cash business fare was available, and generally have been as follows:
P Fare – 155K miles
Z Fare – 175K miles
D Fare – 245K miles
C Fare – 295K miles
J Fare – 395K miles
Then, in July 2024 (or thereabouts), the price of a P or Z fare went from 155K to 200K miles, but the others remained the same.
Now, I’m seeing flights where a P fare is available, but the price in miles is around 335K one-way. Conversely, I saw a flight where a C fare was available but the price in miles was less…
We are seeing the full Delta SkyMilesification of MileagePlus. It’s very sad and totally counterproductive at a time when they are investing in the credit card portfolio to drive additional revenue.
I’ll look into this. Thanks, Sam.
When Delta announced their huge devaluation plus increased spending requirements I posted United would be watching to see if large numbers of Delta customers bolt. I think I don’t have facts but I think Delta probably lost a some customers most likely within their acceptable margins and since the sky didn’t fall like many of us thought it would United is now following suit.
The days of loyalty being a two way street in the aviation industry are over airlines like Delta and now United are pushing people into free agency. Hopefully in 5 or 10 years we will see a correction and airlines come back to the senses. For now
Just had a great flight with United in economy on the 767 IAH AMS. Plenty of leg room. Well at the least enough. Amazing crew. They even gave me a leftover meal in the rear galley mid flight. Is it unpleasant boarding in group 5 35 minutes after boarding has begun sure ? Spending $22 on a club sandwich in the terminal instead of an Airport lounge no big deal either. The freedom from bondage with American is liberating. It’s like a tough divorce I can’t spend my 80k miles and $850 flight credit with American soon enough. Good riddance. I’m runnin with the Star alliance now.
here’s how I would think through your experience if it were mine and let it guide my future buying decisions:
Most us carriers will seem lux compared with aa. But I would think hard about which miles to earn, when it guides paying for a flight with something other than native program miles, and which airline with which to travel.
Also, I will point out that while your ua flight may have been better than on most aa flights you’ve been on, I wouldn’t consider your experience to be standard on ua whether in y, pe, or j. It’s usually worse than that, on average.
If it were me flying from IAH to AMS wanting a non-stop, spending my own money, I’d choose kl over ua every time. Where to credit (not that it may matter as much for Y)? FB. Earn more FB miles with transferrable currency with chase, amex, etc.
Of course you may have other considerations, but as US programs deliver less and less (esp to those with status in those programs eg lower buy-up prices if you DONT have status), I push on crediting any miles to those US-based programs.
Another reason why United will lose more of my business. I’ll probably pull the trigger on canceling my United card too. Quite unfortunate the changes that drive away the most loyal customers.
STOP OVERPAYING FOR A MID PRODUCT!!!!!!!!!!!! Book away. United Elite status is not worth chasing. Book cash FC or BC fares on foreign flag carries for way less. Domestically just book whoever has best Domestic First class Cash fare
@Matthew, beyond writing this article, do you ever say to UA directly your opinions?
If you do, does UA say anything?
Inside baseball: I used to be really tight with MileagePlus when Luc Bondar came onboard…but the program deteriorated under his tenure and has only accelerated under Richard Nunn…
There was a recent embargoed call over the credit card changes led by Nunn that I was NOT invited to…the MileagePlus team does not like that I have been critical of the program, but I’m shedding a tear as it is dismantled before our eyes…
wonder if UA is going to follow DL and allow an option of booking domestic connections to O tickets in domestic F?
May be one reason for removing instant upgrades
I don’t think it’s accurate to pin this on Richard Nunn. The decimation of MileagePlus is a Scott Kirby project and has taken place under Kirby’s leadership. Nunn is there to distract and deflect.
Scott Kirby markets himself as a visionary and an innovator and a great leader. All that is debatable. But it’s time to tell it like it is about who he most certainly is: a corporate slasher of loyalty and value.
This is Scott Kirby’s United and Scott Kirby’s MileagePlus.
Maybe…I’m not convinced Kirby, even though he is a micro-manager, would be the one dictating these specific changes. To listen to Nunn drone on about the new “coupon-style” Chase card portfolio is nauseating doublespeak. They look at Delta and are trying to emulate…it’s tragic.
The head of the Mileage Plus once said the loyalty progrm he most admires is Mariott Bonvoy. Kind of says it all.
To be accurate, government Y fares are actually YC in terms of price and not straight Y. Where they have contract fares between cities, you can see the one way prices here. But I think YC is treated like Y in terms of upgrades.
https://www.gsa.gov/travel/plan-a-trip/transportation-airfare-rates-pov-rates-etc/airfare-rates-city-pair-program
Yes that is correct, they are treated as Y. Of course the days of instant upgrades on transcons or hub-to-hub (mostly IADORD) are a thing of the past, but they do occasionally pop up for me on mid-range segments, most typically on Express segments.
Since they have happened so infrequently lately, this doesn’t hit that hard, but still was a nice perk.
The lost of the excursionist perk is sad. It’s the worse thing since SkyMiles became SkyPesos. I burned all of my United miles recently to 800 miles but was planning on maybe growing it again. I think not. It will grow just by chance now as a free agent.
another thought I had
Could UA be preparing to sell domestic F under the O A R fares instead of P Z D C J?
Loss of a fixed mile upgrade chart is worrying.
Feels right out of the Delta playbook.
My engagement with Delta Amex cards has plummeted since their devaluation.
United be warned.
It’s interesting that I am noticing less and less 1K’s boarding earlier compared to last year. On average it’s around 5 per flight now and it used to be double this. Will be fascinating to see how this plays out with the numbers next year and the decisions made. I guess I will still go for it again. Even though I am feeling more and more like a guy with a mediocre hand that’s hoping for a bluff.
Wow. Booked my first Excursionist flight for this fall. At least I get to try it once. If United is going to decimate its rewards program, will they at least being the cash prices for Polaris back to Earth?
This is a larger loss for some of us than you think. For ORD-LHR and EWR-LHR, buying B fare class and then using MileagePlus Upgrade Awards all but guaranteed a cheap upgrade with a close to 100% success rate.
These routes were exclusively operated by a high-J 763, with 46 Polaris seats in a 167-seat jet, and you could pretty much guarantee enough PZ seats opening up close to departure (maybe with the exception of some extreme peak travel days like special holidays).
If you booked B class (which was truly “full fare” costing thousands of dollars in the past but is now basically at Economy Plus prices, about $200 more each way over the cheapest non-basic economy fare), the upgrade cost was 20,000 miles with zero co-pay (although you had to pay $128 UK departure taxes on the return leg).
So for about $550 + 40,000 miles round trip, you could have an almost guaranteed upgrade from the cheapest non-basic economy fare to Polaris. That was exceptional value (the cheapest cash upgrade was usually around $1800 RT).
The thing I cared about most was international upgrades, and it has been years since I’ve seen those. For business class award tickets, I’ve still found several on partners for 80k (would have been 88 without the credit card). So while these are negative changes, they won’t really affect me much.
As a nearly two decade consecutive 1K flier, I suspect I will wash out this year. I fly a lot but that’s apparently not what is important. The airlines have attached themselves more and more to credit cards and this model drives more revenue. Remember – these are for profit businesses and at the end of the day, you as a customer are a means to make profit. Their loyalty is to their shareholders. Not you. Loyalty programs are a delusion to make you think you’re special. You aren’t. You are a wallet and they want as much of that wallet as they can get. Corporate greed.
Corporate greed, yes, but I think it hurts the company and will ultimately hurt the bottom line.
Agree with Kyle; 2026 will be my last year as a 1K (already qualified this year).