I am going to get into a lot more detail below, but will first offer a summary of the recent changes to the United MileagePlus program that sadly constitute a massive devaluation of your United miles.
- Award searches must be from origin to destination, whether performed online or over the phone
- This practically eliminates the ability to customize routings by using the multi-city search tool
- Searching using the multi-city tool results in cumulative pricing, no matter what the search parameters
- Thus, searching Los Angeles to Newark via Boston as LA to Boston then Boston to Newark will result in 25K miles rather than 12.5K miles even if you just have a short connection in Boston
- United still maintains award charts and routing rules, but they matter little — whether booking online or over the phone most agents are unable or unwilling to override what the computer prices an award at
- This is highly problematic because United’s IT is woefully bad, often failing to offer even reasonable, logical, and straightforward connections that are available and necessary in order to reach your destination
- There may be a way around this, which I write about below, but it is highly cumbersome and prone to failure
- The United reservation agents I have spoken to are incensed about this change and are already pushing United to undo the strict new routing rules or at least allow them to more easily override them in situations of apparent error
Understanding the United “Excursionist Perk”
All United awards now price as one way and stopovers are gone. Instead, United has introduced an “Excursionist Perk” that essentially gives you a stopover within a single region on a round-trip award, a more limited stopover opportunity than before. These are the rules for the Excursionist Perk:
- 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.
I wonder if these rules are looser than United intended? As it turns out, none of the legs have to touch. The following is a valid example of what you can now do with the “Excursionist Perk”, here a business class redemption–
- Los Angeles to Frankfurt (70K)
- Buenos Aires to Santiago (Excursionist Perk – no extra miles)
- Seoul to New York (80K)
That’s quite an excursion! But it is valid and prices on united.com. Why? Travel covers more than one region, begins and ends in the same region, and the Excursionist Perk is within a single region.
By limiting the Excursionist Perk to within a single-region, stopovers in Japan on the way to China or Australia or a stop in Europe on the way to Asia or Africa is over. But you can fly from Munich to Istanbul for free on a round-trip award from Chicago to Shanghai. Go figure…
United Award Routings Cannot Be Easily Customized
When United announced changes to the award booking process in August, there was some concern that United would do away with the ability to customize routing. The following appeared in a FAQ section outlining the MileagePlus changes:
I always used the multi-city search feature on united.com to route over a favorite city. Can I still do this?
Yes. When you tell us the origin and destination of your trip, we’ll find the best routing. Furthermore, we have features that allow you to specify a preferred connecting point in your search query. Select “All Search Options” when you go to book award travel, and under “Locations and Dates,” select “My Search Preferences.” If you use the multi-city search path to route over a favorite city, you may be charged more miles.
The last sentence is key — using the multi-city search “may” result in more miles being charged. United should change “may” to “will” because the multi-city search is now only good for creating stops in your journey, not connection points.
An example is the easiest way to show how this works in practice.
Let’s say I want to travel from Pittsburgh to Frankfurt. If I search from Pittsburgh to Frankfurt a number of itineraries come up. Pittsburgh to Newark on United then Newark to Frankfurt in Lufthansa First Class looks good and prices the same as before at 110K miles.
But now let me try to book these two flights using the multi-city search tool, searching first from Pittsburgh to Newark, then from Newark to Frankfurt:
The first search results page shows me the PIT to EWR leg and I choose the same flight as before:
Next I choose the EWR to FRA flight, again choosing the identical Lufthansa flight in First Class:
Same 110K price, right? No stopovers, just a connection in Newark.
Nope.
United now prices the segments cumulatively, so 10K for the coach segment from PIT to EWR and another 110K for the EWR to FRA segment, bringing the total to 120K.
You might ask why would you want to search for these segments separately? In this case, the question is fair but my point was to illustrate that even the simplest one-stop routings, like PIT-EWR-FRA will price out as two one-way awards should you use the multi-city tool to search for flights. Often a multi-city search will be necessary in order to piece together a logical connection that does not show up on united.com when only searching origin to destination.
Okay, now I’ve presented the problem, but is there a solution?
My Experiment Goes Deeper – A Potential Workaround
Fighting the booking engine now in place online and via the call centers is futile it seems — there is no way to avoid the cumulative pricing when booking an award. But what about modifying an existing award? Could that be a way to customize routings?
I booked the Newark to Frankfurt in Lufthansa First Class alone for 110K miles. One reason why I booked that particular flight is because there was only one seat left so United agents would be forced to work with my existing reservation rather than just create a new one…
First I clicked on “change” online and a new box pops up that has three options–
I chose “See options” under “Change a flight” and received an error message. So much for a functioning website…
So I picked up the phone and contacted Reservations, where I was connected with a competent and friendly agent. I provided the record locator and stated that I had just booked the Newark to Frankfurt flight but had forgotten to add in the domestic leg from Pittsburgh to Newark. I asked if it was possible to add in it.
The agent responded that “she thought so” and within 30 seconds added in the flight. She mentioned that it was easy to do “because it is a United flight” and that “this doesn’t work for partners”. She stated the ticket would be an even exchange (no additional miles required), but when she tried to re-issue the ticket she said “she got an error” and had to put me on hold.
It took her 15 minutes to come back and tell me that “a supervisor had manually stored the fare” and that the ticket “would be sent off for manual reissue”.
Ok, so far so good. We got a leg added for no extra miles that presumably should have cost 10K more under the new pricing system.
But I wanted to do more. How about adding a leg from Frankfurt to Hannover?
So I clicked on “change my reservation” again and the same box popped up:
This time when I clicked on “See options” in the “Change a flight” box the following popped up:
First thing I did was click on the blue “edit” button to the left of EWR-FRA and changed it to HAJ, the airport code for Hannover.
As expected, though, when I performed the search only economy options showed up because I had taken the only first class award seat earlier and the system was not smart enough to use the seat I had already taken: 
So I navigated back to the change page and instead of modifying the second segment I clicked on “Add another destination” and typed in Frankfurt to Hannover:
What came up really surprised me. Several options appeared from Frankfurt to Hannover and economy class showed zero additional miles while business class showed 30K additional miles. On the award chart, intra-Europe flights are 15K miles while business is 30K. So why was this add-on zero miles? It’s not like the system was working as before, because then business class would have been no additional miles either since I had already paid for a first class award from the USA to Europe.
I chose an afternoon departure to give me some time in the First Class Terminal and came to the review screen, expecting to see an add-collect for $34 in taxes but no additional miles:
Nope. The system wanted 10K more miles — for the PIT-EWR flight? What?!
What it appeared the system did was make Frankfurt to Hannover the free “Excursionist Fare”.
But that defies the Excursionist Fare rules, which again state–
- 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.
If “Travel must end in the same MileagePlus defined region where travel originates” this itinerary does not apply for an Excursionist Perk. Travel starts in the US and ends in Europe. This is either a break in the system or some very odd fare logic.
But I did not click continue, because I did not want to pay 10K extra miles. Instead, I called Reservations again. I reached a nice agent in Houston and explained what I was trying to do. She understood and attempted to add in the extra segment. She found it but when she sold it and re-priced itinerary, the system wanted 30K additional miles for business class from Frankfurt to Hannover.
I explained that this was not a stopover but just a continuation of the the one-way journey and thus should not be charged extra miles. She agreed and put me on hold, coming back every few minutes to tell me she and a supervisor were working on it.
Eventually (45 minutes later) she told me that her supervisor was manually storing the fare and she would be back in a moment to take credit card information for the extra taxes.
15 more minutes went why and the agent sheepishly came back and said that they could not get it to work but took down my number and said she would call me back. Nothing like a wasted hour…
About an hour later I received a call back from United. It was a very nice, very competent service director from Detroit. He apologized for the mix-up, fumed that changes like this used to take five minutes, then said something about “the new system” not allowing any partner space to be added. He thought it was only a “temporary” glitch.
He then said that he had found “another solution” and proposed flying via Washington rather than Newark. The itinerary was better and oddly…perhaps not surprisingly…had not shown up on united.com when performing the initial Pittsburgh to Hannover search.
Then he said something strange:
“This wouldn’t work for me in the new system, but I was able to book it using the old system.”
There’s a valuable data point.
He added that “we are having a round-table meeting on this next week” and promised to push for more agent power to override the system, again apologizing over how “ridiculous” the new system was.
The ticket was issued–
Interestingly, the old style of award coding was used, here AF53O, designating a partner first class award from North America to Europe:
My earlier itinerary was ticketed like this–
With S110K being the new “award code”.
I realize that is very technical info, but it is instructive to demonstrate the new way United is classifying awards and that the old way is still possible.
Tips to Outsmart United’s New System
The United website was ripe for abuse before this policy change. One of my favorite all-time award bookings was a one-way business class ticket from Frankfurt to Chisinau, Moldova via Oslo, Reykjavik, Stockholm, and Munich for 20K miles.
Obviously, that was taking advantage of a generous system and I don’t begrudge United for not allowing routings like this any longer.
But the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction. The new restrictions are truly draconian and represent a huge devaluation to the MileagePlus program because the website remains as crummy as ever in coming up with every viable routing option between two city pairs on an award ticket. The website still errors out and agents are now hand-tied to help when booking an award.
You may be able to get around these rules by booking what you can first and calling in to add in the rest. As my story above showed, it will not be quick and it will not be easy, but it is possible and may certainly be worth it in cases where a lot of miles are at stake.
Agents, at least some of them, still have access to the old system. Sort of like booking Emirates or Cathay awards with Alaska Airlines, we may soon find ourselves in a game of having to delicately ask an uninformed agent to use the old system when s/he has been instructed not to. But at least the old system is still alive.
Please, let United know that these new changes are unacceptable by e-mailing CustomerCare@united.com. Let Oscar Munoz know that you feel taken advantage of, especially when these changes were spun as positive enhancements. Even Delta still allows award routings to be manually constructed over the phone — United truly has sunk to a new low with this customer-unfriendly change. (click link for contact info)
Final Thoughts
I reached out to United for comment and received the response that everyone else seems to be getting:
The new MileagePlus redemption award changes have been designed to make multi-city searches easier, give our customers greater flexibility, offer the Excursionist Perk, and provide efficient options that meet their travel needs. Selecting the multi-city option where United offers nonstop service will break up the search into two separate awards. We believe our multi-city pricing is consistent with the industry. Additionally, our customers have greater flexibility when booking multi-city travel. United.com offers ways to optimize searches – for example, you can select preferred connection cities, specific airports, etc.
This is so disingenuous. The website remains dysfunctional and limiting consumers/agents to a broken system is the opposite of making searches “easier” or giving customers more “flexibility”. Kacee on Flyertalk nicely translates the spin above:
We’ve made award bookings more difficult and in many instances, significantly more expensive. We don’t think most of you are smart enough to notice the substantial devaluation of Mileage Plus, and for those who are, we believe that industry consolidation leaves you with no meaningful alternative.
That may be correct, but let’s work together to at least allow telephone agents use the old system to piece together awards–the new system is a travesty. United treated a splinter with naplam: rather than correct the abuses by implementing more stringent segment or MPM requirements, it just killed an otherwise functional system and in the process alienated thousands of customers.
Putting best United contact info in this would go a long way toward ensuring we actually follow-up. I know myself, and I know the minute I leave this page I will be on to the next shiny object and completely not do it if I have to hunt for the info.
Very informative article and I dont even fly United.
@ZMASTER – contact info added. Thanks for the suggestion!
@ALLISON S – thank you for reading!
Any information on trips involving SQ? I saw on FT people were struggling to get them priced.
United’s contact information seems to be incorrectly linked..
You get a nice agent in Houston. How? i always get very nice Manila, but without authority in the rare cases that they have knowledge and experience.
Wondering if asiana from north america to siem reap has disappeared as of a month ago, and siem reap via china has become rare as well.
want to know before i bail my marriott points into united.
Thanks for putting this together. I really should have done some reservation maintenance before October 6. We’ll see how it goes now.
This is a phenomenal write-up; the technical call outs on the saver awards are such good catches – well done.
Extremely frustrating change by united. I’m not someone who historically has booked particularly elaborate awards, but I book, cancel or weak a lot, including moving to better flights and flight combinations. These changes really rocked that flexibility and your points above are helpful in that regard.
Have you noticed if all award redemption codes have changed? 100% of my old awards, when cancelled, get the “ERROR!” instead of a cancellation confirmation screen, making me wonder if the codes under which they were booked are no longer being recognized as valid by the system and therefore processed appropriately.
@ANDREW: Singapore is one of the gaping issues that United must step in and fix if it is at all an ethical company. Currently there is no way to get around each Singapore segment pricing separately.
@KEVIN: Fixed, thanks!
@ANDREW: Since I have elite status with United, I rarely (never as far as I can recall) get connected to the overseas call center. I’d say if you can’t see it on united.com, you won’t be able to easily book it. But keep in mind Asiana has blackout dates which may be impacting your results.
@HEWHOBOARDSLAST: All redemption codes have changed in the new system and I also experienced the error in redepositing 100% of the time over the last few months. You are probably on the right track that it had to do with the new coding.
Hong Kong, as well as Taipei, does not seem to belong to the North Asia region as far as the system is concerned….
Exhausting to read. The short of it is that UAL is no longer a first world carrier. It’s not just their IT problems, but management, decision making apparatus that is a failure.
I havent tried the old system before but this new system is horrible I was trying to book a one way from Houston to Lahore and it kept giving me errors. Finally one time it showed me a flight with a 10 hour lay over in Atlanta. I left the page and tried finding it again but wouldnt show.
Continued to mess with it and found it again but went to go book and it said the ATL>IST IST>LHE was not available. Called and they said the same. So I continued to click around. And it kept showing the ATL>LHE so I tried booking it again and worked. Had no idea why it didnt before.
So I got to thinking about making the change like your workaround said to do it so changed it from Houston and it allowed me to make the change adding in Houston>ATL and it didnt charge me more miles. Woohoo.
So I was in bed reading this article and got me thinking if I can add another leg in afterwards so I rush out of bed because my 24hour window is about to close and……the united site is down. I guess it wasnt meant to be.
The workaround example is helpful but do you think I’ll be able to book a TXL-EWR-ZFV award ticket and then change the UA operated TXL-EWR to LH operated MUC-EWR and keep my Amtrak EWR-ZFV segment which apparently does not come up as an option for *A flights connecting in EWR?
I find it much easier and more pleasant not to fly at all. If a destination is too far to drive to in twelve hours (over two or three days), I stay home. Next month I will let $350 in flight credits for a cancelled trip on Southwest expire. I canceled the trip because I did not want the stress of flying Southwest. There is no reason to spend nine hours round trip on a plane to go somewhere I really do not want to visit just to use up the credit. The elimination of the stress of flying is worth $350 in already spent money.
Thanks for the info. Do you think it will still be possible to book awards flying through FRA on the way back to the US and then within 14 days of travel change from business to first class awards. With the new system that doesnt allow free choice of individual legs i worry we might have seen the end of ever getting LH first class on awards booked in advance.
This was a really helpful article. But how much swing did you have because I presume you are an elite UA member? For us non-elites, would we be able to do this or would the Philippines based agents just say, sorry not possible?
@askmrlee: I think you may find agents in the Philippines who will help and you will certainly find agents in the USA who won’t help. You can always be transferred to an on-shore call center just by asking, but the key is a willing agent + patience, so don’t count out anyone.
I had to make a change — a simple change — to an award ticket today and it took one hour on the phone with a 1K agent. It should have taken just two minutes.
Have you found that the excursion perk truly can not route outside of the region to make the one way? for example the ep one way is LHR to DXB to DME or GUM to ALK to NAN (oceania to oceania)
the rules say that the origin and the destination of the EP one way must be in the same region but it does not say that the one way cant touch other regions to get you there. Agents are not sure as well. some say yes and others say no. what have you found?
Always yes — excursionist perk can be for any intra-region flight. Certainly does not have to be in same region as previous segment. But UA pricing has been off lately.
The agents seem to be very unwilling to force things through now and even their supervisors are saying that you cant. For ex I am trying to book a Denver to Munich with a stopover in Barcelona and then MUC-DEN direct back. There is plenty of saver availability all the way there on each segment but none of it shows up on the site when searching – when I call in they piece it together DEN-IAH-FRA-BCN-MUC but then it does not price out at 30k..they want to make it 30+15k or more saying that BCN-MUC it does not qualify for the execution perk even though all other segments are just short connections of a few hours since they had to do it segment by segment. I really didnt think this change was much of a problem when I first read about it..but holy shit this is BAD. I would have burned a TON of miles on a bunch of elaborate trips if I knew it would be this bad. Ugh.
I guess I will just try to do the route without denver at the start and see if I can just get them to add it on…has anyone else had any luck doing this other than the author??