United MileagePlus Tutorial

[Ryan]

My sister (and husband and 6 month old son) are being transferred from DC to Hawaii, so the family is looking to vacation out there next summer.

I got the idea to shift our spending over to a United card to try and earn up enough points to make some of the trip on an award, since we've done very well putting as much spending as possible through the AGR card to help make Amtrak travel affordable for us.

It looks like Chase also has a United card and is currently offering 25,000 miles for opening a card, along with other bonuses for adding authorized users and spending over $25,000 in a calendar year.

Are there any other tips/tricks that you're aware of? Any major differences from AGR that I should be aware of? Is redeeming miles for a IAD-HNL trip realistic?

I've tried looking around on FlyerTalk, but that's the varsity level of discussion - I'm hoping some of you folks that don't hate the airlines can give me the Cliff Notes version of what's going on.

Thanks!

Edit: I'm focused on United because of the fact that I can get a direct flight from IAD all the way out there - if another airline has a significantly better program, I'm all ears.

 

[Trogdor]

One thing to note (which I'm sure you're already aware) is that the UA card carries an annual fee, whereas the AGR card is free. The UA card carries a few perks for flyers (free checked bag, priority boarding, a couple of one-day club passes to the United Club), but otherwise seems to function very similar to the AGR card.

(EDIT: I should clarify, lest there be any confusion, that by "card" I'm referring to the credit card, not the general program membership card)

As for availability, you might want to do a few spot checks/sample reservations on United.com to see what space is available, and at what redemption rate. It's not like AGR where, if any room/seat is available for purchase, you can get it for the flat stated redemption rate. UA has two "buckets" of redemption rates, and the high bucket costs twice the low bucket. So, you might find a domestic ticket for 12,500 miles each way (25,000 r/t), but the next flight might be 25,000 each way. I don't know the rates to Hawaii offhand, but the same basic concept applies.

 

[the_traveler]

Hawaii from the mainland is one of the hardest redemptions there is, because EVERYONE wants to go there!

All airline cards are similar to AGR - except for one BIG difference! They all charge an annual fee (usually $95 a year - sometimes they waive the fee the first year).

I don't know the routes they fly, but I do know Jet Blue recently signed a joint airline pact with Hawaiian Airlines. I think Jet Blue flies to at least one of the area airports.

BTW - I only fly if I have to be there yesterday. That's why I only have 250K miles left! In my younger (stupider) days, I flew all the time. However luckily most was on CO and UA - and all those miles transferred to AGR!

 

[Ryan]

The first year is waived on the United card, which seems nice.

It also seems that one of the perks on the credit card is that you don't have the capacity controls - you can book any seat at the "standard" rate, which should be helpful.

Since this is likely to be a one-trp endeavor, the passes for the United Club look like they might be handy as well.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

I assume you're currently looking at the MileagePlus Explorer Card?

The best non-targeted offer for the MPE is a 50K sign-up bonus, plus 5K for adding another user within two months, plus 10K for spending 25K within a calendar year, plus free first bag check for two ($100/flt), plus two United Club passes per year ($100/yr), plus first year fee waiver ($95). To find this offer be sure you already have a UA/MP account with a balance of at least one mile. If you need help with that just let me know. Once you have at least one mile you should clear your cache and sign in to MP again. Look for this advertisement...

That's the easy way. However, if you're willing to put a little more effort into it then I'd probably try for a three-way chain.

Start with the Chase Sapphire Preferred card (40K). Thanks to some recent changes you'll receive a lower initial sign-up bonus versus the MileagePlus Explorer card. However, you'll also gain more flexibility than straight UA/MP points and have a better overall earn ratio. Since you're not exactly married to United these points can be transferred to whichever carrier has availability on dates you can work with. And that's what's most important really. There's no guarantee you'd ever be able to book the direct flight on a saver award anyway, which is what I'm guessing you're going for.

Here's where things start to get interesting. You can combine a Sapphire Preferred with an Ink Bold small business card (50K) on the same UR account. You can also apply for both at the same time without running afoul of Chase's automated credit risk assessment algorithms. There is a lot you can do with the Ink Bold card, but the primary benefit is that it earns 5x points on office supplies, including some prepaid debit cards.

After you've met the minimum spend on both of those cards you can chain a third card in the form of a Chase Freedom (30K IIRC), which earns UR points that are not normally transferable but become "unlocked" with an active Sapphire Preferred account mentioned in the first step. The main benefit for Freedom is that it has a rotating 5x bonus. Carefully planning your spending to match up with the bonus rotation can result in a substantial improvement in your point accrual over the CSP and leagues better than the United MileagePlus Explorer card.

Counting the minimum spend points, you should be approaching something like 130,000 UR points that can be transferred to anyone's UA/MP account. If you never carry a balance, move all your points before closing the first card, and cancel all cards by the 11-month mark you shouldn't be owing anybody any additional fees. As always YMMV, but that's what I would probably do.

The next big/flexible program for domestic use would be AA's AAdvantage/One World. I'd say they're pretty much on par after the not-so-beneficial UA/CO merger. If you use the dual sign-up trick you can secure 100k AA points for $6k worth of spending in three months and then add a business card for another 50k after you've cleared the first two hurtles.

All of these suggestions are per person, so if everyone can meet all of the minimum spend requirements with conventional spending you could have several hundred thousand points in no time at all.

In exchange for this (and any future) advice I only ask one thing. Please think twice about using points for travel and then criticizing others for saying today's revenue fares are too expensive. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, including those who'd rather not spend $1,000 or more for a 1970's fiberglass bedroom that makes solitary confinement look spacious. :lol:

 

[Texan Eagle]

I am myself a novice when it comes to using airline miles and am keenly reading this discussion, but I would like to remind one thing, if you have overlooked it- United/Continental and US Airways are both a part of Star Alliance (as of now at least, there are rumors that US will merge with AA and effectively become a OneWorld member soon) so you can, in theory, also use US Airways miles to "buy" a seat on United/Continental. So, see which of the two airlines offers a better deal and get that card. Remember, you CANNOT combine miles from two airlines, even of the same alliance, to buy a reward ticket.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

I am myself a novice when it comes to using airline miles and am keenly reading this discussion, but I would like to remind one thing, if you have overlooked it- United/Continental and US Airways are both a part of Star Alliance (as of now at least, there are rumors that US will merge with AA and effectively become a OneWorld member soon) so you can, in theory, also use US Airways miles to "buy" a seat on United/Continental. So, see which of the two airlines offers a better deal and get that card. Remember, you CANNOT combine miles from two airlines, even of the same alliance, to buy a reward ticket.

You can sometimes combine points across multiple airlines if you really want to, but unless you're just adding a few miles for top-off purposes the value proposition is terrible. I'm not as familiar with America West US Airways as I am with United and American, but I pieced together an international First Class award including Europe and Asia for around $1,500 per person in this thread in case you're interested. This was a quick back-of-the-napkin equation so, as always, YMMV. There's also the whole minimum duration vs. bonus expiration window to consider as well, which according to my math would be rather difficult to work with unless you already started the clock on your USDM some twelve hours ago or so.

 

[the_traveler]

Unlike AGR, if you make ANY transaction with that airline (such as from their shopping mall, dining club if any, etc...), it resets the account time clock!

 

[Texan Eagle]

While we are at this topic, I have a bunch of "garbage" miles lying around in different airlines. Can someone suggest me the best use of them? I have the following-

~42,000 US Airways Dividend Miles

~9,000 Delta SkyMiles

~3,000 American AAdvantage miles

~16,000 Qatar Airways miles

and of course some 33,000 odd AGR points.

I can continue booking all future flights on Star Alliance airlines and pull those miles into US Airways account since that's where I have maximum amount, but I want to know if there are some good offers/alternatives out there to deal with the other "orphaned" miles that are not enough to get me free reward ticket?

 

[Devil's Advocate]

While we are at this topic, I have a bunch of "garbage" miles lying around in different airlines. Can someone suggest me the best use of them? I have the following-

~42,000 US Airways Dividend Miles

~9,000 Delta SkyMiles

~3,000 American AAdvantage miles

~16,000 Qatar Airways miles

and of course some 33,000 odd AGR points.

I can continue booking all future flights on Star Alliance airlines and pull those miles into US Airways account since that's where I have maximum amount, but I want to know if there are some good offers/alternatives out there to deal with the other "orphaned" miles that are not enough to get me free reward ticket?

Wow, those are really spread out, across all three global alliances no less. I'm not aware of any travel awards that would work with those totals besides USDM. So, you can either keep on adding to them over time or close them out by exchanging them into other accounts (bad idea IMO) or converting them into non-travel related uses like magazines or coffee shop gift cards or something (also bad IMO). Given your age and your likelihood of future longhaul travel I would suggest you simply keep these accounts simmering on the back burner and adding to your totals as opportunities present themselves. Be sure to perform some sort of activity once per year just to be on the safe side. Expiration dates can change but once per year is a reasonable time frame for a minor earning event. As for the USDM account you'd still need Y80K/J120K/F160K to reach India on a round trip ticket, but if you bought 4,000 miles (+ 4,000 bonus) for $150 or so (assuming 7.5% tax recovery) you could swing two round trips anywhere in the US or Canada (excluding Hawaii). Not sure if that helps or not?

 

[Texan Eagle]

While we are at this topic, I have a bunch of "garbage" miles lying around in different airlines. Can someone suggest me the best use of them? I have the following-

~42,000 US Airways Dividend Miles

~9,000 Delta SkyMiles

~3,000 American AAdvantage miles

~16,000 Qatar Airways miles

and of course some 33,000 odd AGR points.

I can continue booking all future flights on Star Alliance airlines and pull those miles into US Airways account since that's where I have maximum amount, but I want to know if there are some good offers/alternatives out there to deal with the other "orphaned" miles that are not enough to get me free reward ticket?

Wow, those are really spread out, across all three global alliances no less. I'm not aware of any travel awards that would work with those totals besides USDM. So, you can either keep on adding to them over time or close them out by exchanging them into other accounts (bad idea IMO) or converting them into non-travel related uses like magazines or coffee shop gift cards or something (also bad IMO). Given your age and your likelihood of future longhaul travel I would suggest you simply keep these accounts simmering on the back burner and adding to your totals as opportunities present themselves. Be sure to perform some sort of activity once per year just to be on the safe side. Expiration dates can change but once per year is a reasonable time frame for a minor earning event. As for the USDM account you'd still need Y80K/J120K/F160K to reach India on a round trip ticket, but if you bought 4,000 miles (+ 4,000 bonus) for $150 or so (assuming 7.5% tax recovery) you could swing two round trips anywhere in the US or Canada (excluding Hawaii). Not sure if that helps or not?

Texas Sunset thanks for the advice. Yes, I've got my miles spread out all over the place because I did not know how useful these miles can be earlier and used to grab cheapest tickets on any airline available. In fact, I did two US-India roundtrips on completely non-alliance airlines (Kuwait Airways and Jet Airways) and in the process wasted the opportunity to accumulate 30-35K miles

Then decided to stick to Star Alliance and started accumulating points in USDM but work brought me to Dallas so now all domestic travel almost exclusively goes towards AA, considering how HUGE fortress hub DFW is. Now if US Airways acquires AA and gets into SkyTeam, I guess all my USDM and AAdvantage miles will consolidate into one, good thing in a way, but bad thing it will be OneWorld then, not Star Alliance

Gotta hold on to all of them...

 

[jis]

Then decided to stick to Star Alliance and started accumulating points in USDM but work brought me to Dallas so now all domestic travel almost exclusively goes towards AA, considering how HUGE fortress hub DFW is. Now if US Airways acquires AA and gets into SkyTeam, I guess all my USDM and AAdvantage miles will consolidate into one, good thing in a way, but bad thing it will be SkyTeam then, not Star Alliance

Gotta hold on to all of them...

If US and AA merge then the joint airline will not be in SkyTeam. It will be in One World, which is where AA is.

 

[Texan Eagle]

Then decided to stick to Star Alliance and started accumulating points in USDM but work brought me to Dallas so now all domestic travel almost exclusively goes towards AA, considering how HUGE fortress hub DFW is. Now if US Airways acquires AA and gets into SkyTeam, I guess all my USDM and AAdvantage miles will consolidate into one, good thing in a way, but bad thing it will be SkyTeam then, not Star Alliance

Gotta hold on to all of them...

If US and AA merge then the joint airline will not be in SkyTeam. It will be in One World, which is where AA is.

Thanks for pointing out jis, corrected

I guess I didn't pay attention because I care about neither, I will be disappointed all my Star Alliance accumulated points will go away to a less-useful alliance (from my travels perspective).

 

[AlanB]

Texan,

I'm far from an expert on airline miles, but I believe your Delta miles are stuck where they are. I don't think that there is any way to get them out to someplace else. The others I'm less sure of.

One neat tool if you're not already aware of it, is this mileage converter program from Flyertalk. You can play with this to see how/where one can move miles from any program into what other potential programs might be doable, and at what cost.

 

[the_traveler]

You're correct Alan. DL SkyMiles can go nowhere else. I've got 220K of them, but may use them for a trip to _______ or just give them away to family.

Not to scare you, but the transfers that Alan mentioned will have a BIG devaluation in miles. Like 10K may become 1,500 miles!

 

[AlanB]

Not to scare you, but the transfers that Alan mentioned will have a BIG devaluation in miles. Like 10K may become 1,500 miles!

That is quite often very true.

However, that may still be better than watching them just sitting there doing you absolutely no good, or worse, watching them just disappear because you haven't taken a flight in a while. Some value may be better than NO value.

 

[Texan Eagle]

Not to scare you, but the transfers that Alan mentioned will have a BIG devaluation in miles. Like 10K may become 1,500 miles!

That is quite often very true.

However, that may still be better than watching them just sitting there doing you absolutely no good, or worse, watching them just disappear because you haven't taken a flight in a while. Some value may be better than NO value.

True. I am keeping a tab on their expiry date and if that nears and I see no use in sight, I will do what is possibly the worst use of points- use them to buy some trivial stuff from their shopping place. I know I won't get anything of great value for 9K points but as you said, something better than nothing.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Not to scare you, but the transfers that Alan mentioned will have a BIG devaluation in miles. Like 10K may become 1,500 miles!

That is quite often very true. However, that may still be better than watching them just sitting there doing you absolutely no good, or worse, watching them just disappear because you haven't taken a flight in a while. Some value may be better than NO value.

True. I am keeping a tab on their expiry date and if that nears and I see no use in sight, I will do what is possibly the worst use of points- use them to buy some trivial stuff from their shopping place. I know I won't get anything of great value for 9K points but as you said, something better than nothing.

Unless Alan can walk us through a specific series of exchanges he believes would be superior to leaving the points as-is I would suggest you avoid that route. Same thing for using them at the airline's souvenir shop. When I looked at your points I couldn't figure out how to create a net gain over just leaving the points alone and adding to them as opportunities presented themselves. Here is a slightly more in-depth view of what I would probably do with each account if I were you.

33,000 AGR points

Um, I think we're all pretty familiar with AGR, so not much more to say about that here. :lol:

16,000 Qatar Airways miles

At first glance this looks like a promising total. Unfortunately Qatar's partnership with USDM is "suspended" and their partnership with UAMP will be ending on 2012-09-14, give or take. I'm not that familiar with Qmiles, but from a quick check of their award chart it would seem you could fly 2,000 TPM or so. Maybe you could use them to book a flight to Tuscon or some other positioning flight on UA metal prior to mid-September. Assuming I'm understanding their system correctly.

42,000 US Airways Dividend Miles

I'd probably focus on trying to make use of the quickly perishing Qmiles first, if possible, but USDM would be my second focus. US doesn't allow one-way awards (except throwaways) but there is still plenty of potential for future round trips across the largest airline alliance in the world. It's true that they may buy/merge their way into OneWorld but for now they're still among the cheapest methods for earning roundtrip awards on *A.

3,000 American AAdvantage miles

Keep resetting the clock at least once per year and dump future OneWorld points here. Remember, you only need to reach 12,500 AA miles to redeem for a one-way award. Perfect for a positioning move before or after a future Amtrak trip. Or consider going all-in with the dual sign-up and have 100,000 miles in three months after $6K if you're feeling up to it.

9,000 Delta SkyMiles

Earn at least one new mile per year and dump future Skyteam miles here if there is no other place for them to go. Otherwise it may be best to simply ignore this account for now. Delta SkyMiles are some of the most difficult points to actually use and are not likely to become any more valuable anytime soon. Leaked internal documentation gives us reason to believe that Delta is also seriously considering a move to a revenue based earning and spending program, much like Southwest has, that would only dilute their already questionable value even further. They don't call them SkyPesos for no reason.

Keep in mind that in many cases all you need is some tiny little bit of barely related activity to keep your points alive. You don't even need to buy a stick of gum. Answer a survey. Watch a commercial. Check-in on Foursquare. Airline loyalty programs do not suffer from a lack of earning opportunities and any little blip on the radar will usually reset the clock for another year or two.

Nursing a half-dozen accounts may not make any sense for pensioner who doesn't fly often, but for a young and frequent traveler like yourself I think it still makes more sense than wiping out most of the value moving things around prematurely. Better to simply keep on nursing them until another account gets seriously close to reaching a desired award and only needs a few miles to push it over the edge.

As for avoiding loss of miles you should consider signing up for a monitoring service like Award Wallet. That should make it easier to keep track of expiration dates in the future. Won't work with AA, at least not automatically, but I guess that's just how things are.

 

[rrdude]

Texas Sunset, you have a new moniker in my book: Frequent Flye/Loyalty Clyb GURU! I am very impressed, very. Although I admit to not knowing squat about loyalty programs (AGR incl.) many of my friends and co-workers "Assume" I know it all..........just because I am constantly redeeming AGR points for free trips, or shopping thru web portals to earn points.

But, the knowledge you have about the questions asked in these forums is unbelievable, I wish I had both the time, inclination, and knowledge to understand the programs as well as you do. Of course, since my family is "cash only" (for reasons I will let readers speculate about......) I am very limited in my participation and earning power, basically travel and online shopping/lodging/partners only.

Just wanted to give a big Texas THANK YOU, for sharing your insights and knowledge on this topic.

Ryan, I will be interested in hearing, (in the words of Paul Harvey) "The Rest Of The Story" as it evolves over time........

 

[Texan Eagle]

Texas Sunset, I really appreciate your detailed analysis. Great job

I remember I read somewhere on the Delta website that SkyMiles no longer expire. Is that true? I have not been on a Delta plane since August 2009 and at least as of today my account still shows the miles are "alive". If they show signs they are dying soon I will make a small transaction with the miles, get a magazine subscription or something.

USDM is where I accumulate all my Star Alliance miles (only 5K odd out of those 42K are miles flown on actual US Airways metal) and I was hoping to gather enough miles to get a free international roundtrip on Star airlines but I guess they might be useful only on American or British Airways if US moves to OneWorld.

Qatar Airways QMiles are strange. Their website let me calculate how many miles required for each trip only for destinations operated by Qatar. I am not sure if those miles can be used for any other airline.

Yes, I have joined Award Wallet but it does not track AAdvantage and Qatar QMiles.

 

[PRR 60]

Texas Sunset, I really appreciate your detailed analysis. Great job

I remember I read somewhere on the Delta website that SkyMiles no longer expire. Is that true? I have not been on a Delta plane since August 2009 and at least as of today my account still shows the miles are "alive". If they show signs they are dying soon I will make a small transaction with the miles, get a magazine subscription or something.

USDM is where I accumulate all my Star Alliance miles (only 5K odd out of those 42K are miles flown on actual US Airways metal) and I was hoping to gather enough miles to get a free international roundtrip on Star airlines but I guess they might be useful only on American or British Airways if US moves to OneWorld.

Qatar Airways QMiles are strange. Their website let me calculate how many miles required for each trip only for destinations operated by Qatar. I am not sure if those miles can be used for any other airline.

Yes, I have joined Award Wallet but it does not track AAdvantage and Qatar QMiles.

Delta SkyMiles do not expire. DL may make e-mail inquiries to ensure a long-idle member is still alive, but as long requests for responses are met, the miles stay put.

OneWorld also includes Cathay Pacific and Qantas. While it is not as far-reaching as Star Alliance, between US/AA domestically, and BA, CX and QF internationally, it is not horrible. A US/AA merger is still a big if.

 

[the_traveler]

Yes, I do believe SkyMiles no longer expire.

TS - Where did you learn of this "leaked internal documentation"?

This is the first I've heard about it. Who leaked it and to whom?