United has announced changes (via TPG) to their loyalty program ‘MileagePlus’. These changes will come into effect on November 1st. Here’s what we know:
- They will be moving to a dynamic pricing model where the price of award tickets fluctuates on market conditions
- United will replace their standard awards with ‘Everyday Awards’
- These awards will only apply to flights operated by United & United Express. All partner flights will still be available under the current saver pricing
- Economy saver awards will stay the same price (one way will continue to cost 10,000 miles for flights under 700 miles or 12,500 miles for all other flights)
- Unrestricted access to these awards will still be available to Chase United MileagePlus Explorer cardholders
- They will still have a public award chart (this will show ranges)
- Flights booked before November 1st will not be affected
- They will increase the number of saver awards available by 10%
- No show fee of $125 will be charged for customers who cancel an award booking but decline to cancel before depature (fee is charged for the miles to redeposited)
- Upgrade awards will be staying the same
- New award charts can be found here
Devaluations suck but they are part of this game, on the surface this doesn’t look like a terrible change and I’m happy that they are keeping an award chart available to consumers rather than a hidden one like Delta. It’s also good to see them increasing the number of saver awards available. A lot of international rates in business class seem to be increasing by 5,000 miles. The biggest increase is Australia in first will now cost 100,000 miles (80,000 miles previously).
What distinguishes between Saver and Everyday flights? Is it how full the plane is at the time of booking?
It looks like my average award flight will now give me about 1.69 cpm net of lost mileage accrual as opposed to the 1.80 I used to get. Not that big of a difference all things considered.
And what I suspect is that as ticket prices continue to rise, it will be back to 1.8 cents soon enough anyway.
This move in turn also devalues all Chase UR cards.
well if you ONLY use UR pts for United Star Alliance then yes. otherwise, no.
Wrong. It devalues it even if you only use it sometimes for UA.
I’m glad this decision came out before the annual fee on the Chase Sapphire Reserve comes due, and before applying for the Freedom Unlimited to optimize the CSR. This gives me a few weeks to reevaluate my commitment to Chase Ultimate Reward points.