Contents
The Changes
United have announced a number of changes to their MileagePlus loyalty program. These changes will go into effect on October 6th, 2016, all bookings made before this date will be honored. Â Below you can find a brief summary of the changes:
- Round the world awards are being removed
- Stopover/open jaw policy being changed, being replaced with Excursionist Perk. Rules of the Excursionist perk are as follows:
- 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.
- Discounted stop overs are being removed
- Improvements to search engine, this should mean less awards need to be booked via phone
- New fee structure (see below)
Our Verdict
I hate booking awards, I find the rules to be complicated and I usually find myself getting extremely frustrated whenever I book anything. I know some people enjoy this part of the hobby, but it’s what I hate most. Apparently United are introducing these changes to simplify the program and make it easier for users to book awards with stop overs, unfortunately this means for savvy consumers a lot of value has been lost.
Hat tip to TPG
