Earn Up to 18,250 United/Continental Miles Per Year for Social Media Airport Checkins

by Gary Leff

It’s not even added to the list of programs you can earn with yet, but United Mileage Plus and Continental Onepass have been added to TopGuest, the website that allows you to earn miles and points for check-ins via FourSquare and Facebook.

Connect with Facebook or Foursquare and you’ll get 50 reward miles each time you share your location at or near select United® and Continental® airports. Plus, you’ll receive special offers within minutes for nearby airport retailers, car rental agencies and restaurants.

Eligible airports are here. Some of the offers they’ll send to you earn miles via Thanks Again and require a Thanks Again account. They’ll also send you Rewards Network dining offers, which of course require being signed up for a free dining program account to earn miles.

With a Washington National checkin, an email was instantaneously generated with rental car offers. It seems the retail establishment offers are only loaded for five airports so far.

You can add both a Continental and a United account, some airports are eligible to earn with both, I suspect that you can only earn 50 points a day for checking in at an airport in one program or another. We’ll see if that’s the case and whether if registered for both United and Continental miles which account generates the earning activity. Please share your experiences in the comments.

I find it exceptionally interesting that the offer says you are eligible to earn when checking in at or near eligible airports. In the past TopGuest has said they’re quite persnickety about your having to actually be at the location you’re checking in from in order to earn points, although that hasn’t been everyone’s experience (many folks who have had problems have checked in multiple places in rapid fire succession from their computer rather than with a location-tracking phone, I’ve not had problems even when my phone doesn’t actually think I am where I’m checking in, an unfortunately all too common occurrence.

For the past year and a half I’ve been earning 50 points per day with Priority Club and then with Hilton HHonors, Best Western Rewards, and Choice Privileges (though not participating in their other offers) for checkins on my blackberry. I live and work in a cluster of participating hotel properties. Now I can earn up to 18,250 miles per year for free with United… Great to live by a participating airport to boot!

Again, some folks have had problems doing ‘phantom’ checkins for points so I’m not encouraging that, but if you’re at the airport you can check in for points the same as you can at a participating hotel property.

(HT: MilesQuest)

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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  3. Would’ve been great to know a few weeks back when I did a 13 flight MR (and I’ve been to airports three or four times since), oh well.

  5. I’ve been doing this to get Hilton points since early this year. It’s been working great. (I use a FourSquare account that I setup for just this purpose) I was also checking into some Wyndhams and Priority Club properties, but got a nasty-gram from TG in regards to abuse. So I went back to only checking into Doubletrees.

    I have a question though — how do you ‘check-in’ to a place using a regular web browser on Facebook and/or FourSquare?

  6. If you have an iPhone I believe there is an application called fake gps in the jailbreak apps mall. You can check in from these airports from your home.

  8. @Brent I haven’t had a problem getting credit for checking into a place I wasn’t near on my iPhone. I was hoping there was a way to check in from a desktop so I could tell my non-smartphone owning friends on how to do it.

  10. What #2 means is that you can sign up your Mileage Plus or Onepass accounts through those links above, but if you just go directly to the Topguest site, you will not see those programs listed yet.

  11. I got banned from Top Guest several months ago for checking in too often. They said after a period, I’d be able to use the service again but every month I try and it doesn’t work. Any idea how to get them to reset my account?

  13. @mark: in the first sentence, click “United Mileage Plus” and “Continental Onepass” to add them to to your TopGuest account.

  14. @ Serion

    There should be a thread on flyertalk under the SPG section talking about the bonus a month or two ago from foursquare check ins. There is a way to use firefox to make foursquare think you are logging in from a mobile device and you can check in using that method as well. Pretty easy. I used that method to check in about 10+ times at Starwood hotels for the promotion.

  15. @Brent Thanks!!

    I registered my Milageplus and OnePass #s. Then I checked into my local airport (BHM). According to the airport list, BHM should have only been supported by United. However, I got an email from OnePass saying I got 50 points for the check in. Has anyone been able to get both MP and OP credit under the same topguest account?

  16. I just did a drive by at BUR, checked in and got the email confirming 50 miles. Hmmm, BUR is on my way home from work each day.

  17. Brent
    how do you use a browser on a desktop to check in?
    instructions please? i do not have a smart phone.
    thanks

  18. The UA/CO registration links put me in an endless loop requiring re-entry of my MP/OP # and then an error message telling me the box for my # cannot be blank. Would be nice it is worked 🙁

  22. How long after registration did it take to get an email from Continental? I registered fine and checked in at MSY afterwards. However, I received no confirmation email.

  23. Android phones have an app to fake your GPS location.
    You could check in at any airport you like with it I suspect.

  24. Do you have to have a separate TopGuest account, or does this work if you just register your frequent flyer numbers for each program? Also, when I use Facebook to “check in” I get a list of multiple names for an airport–is there a way to tell which of these I should use, or will any one of them work?

  25. So, I can’t get any UA or CO miles to post. I’ve checked my Foursquare account, and it shows that I’ve linked to UA and CO TopGuest. However, no confirmation e-mails after about a dozen different airport check-ins. I’ve tried different spots at the airport to check-in, and tried re-registering my numbers with TG and FS. Weird.

  26. Has anyone seen any of these points actually post yet? Despite getting the email confirmations from Mileage Plus after check-ins, no points have posted. It’s been at least 2-3 weeks if not longer.

  27. Continental included the onepass.topguest.com link in the OnePass statement I received today.

    “Earn 50 reward miles when you share your location at or near select United and Continental airports on Facebook and foursquare. Then, receive earning opportunities for airport merchants, car rentals and restaurants.”

  28. I was at ORD today and tried to check in for the first time but ran into a problem: There are a ton of O’Hare locations to be checked into. You got all the terminals, pretty much all the restaurants, some gates, the airport train and even security lines.

    Which on I am supposed to check into?

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