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United’s massive award chart changes created a new, separate pricing chart. There’s one price for awards on United and another price for awards on partners. I initially assumed that on flight on a partner as part of an award itinerary would cause the award to be priced at the higher partner price, even if the bulk of the ticket was on United. For instance, if you flew United transatlantic from Chicago to Frankfurt and then connected on Lufthansa to Berlin. Now, if award space is available on United one-way but only on partners in the other direction you can still of course use the United chart for a one-way award and the partner chart for the other direction. That way you aren’t paying the full partner roundtrip price. But what about the majority of Star…

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Note that I do not receive referral credit for this offer at the time of this writing. British Airways and Chase are back with a 100,000 Avios signup bonus. You will get 50,000 bonus Avios after $2,000 in purchases within the first 3 months of account opening.2 25,000 bonus Avios after $10,000 in purchases within the first year of account opening.2 Plus an additional 25,000 bonus Avios after you make an additional $10,000 in purchases also within the first year of account opening.2 Together that’s 100,000 bonus Avios, which is enough for a round-trip business class award flight.3 Taxes, fees, and carrier charges are approximately $1,250 per adult in business class based on travel from Seattle to London.4 As with offers for this card over the past year and a half, you need to spend…

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United announced big changes to their award chart which will go into effect February 1. But why did they do it? United’s Explanation United left the following on my Facebook page. Hi Gary. We are increasing the number of miles required to redeem some Saver and Standard awards – the first time we’ve made such changes in several years – to offset the increased cost of providing award travel, particularly premium-cabin award travel and award travel on MileagePlus partner carriers. In some markets, we have reduced the number of miles required for award travel. Customers who book MileagePlus awards, especially premium-cabin travel awards, will continue to get great value and options, with the most saver-award availability among U.S. global carriers and the greatest number of options for booking United and partner carriers online. ^Rob It’s…

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Delta Skymiles are Skypesos, since they’re worth so much less than competitor currencies. But what about United miles now that they’ve announced an absolute bloodletting of their award chart? Frequent Miler suggests “Stardust.” After Continental took over at United, United’s million miler frequent flyers were promised that they would continue to get annual upgrades. Almost immediately, though, those were taken away. The ‘new’ United increased change fees on award tickets. They prioritized individual transactions over long-term loyalty by giving single trip full fare elites — even Silver elites — upgrade priority over 100,000 mile flyers. They started selling cheap upgrades to anyone at check-in rather than upgrading elites. And they prioritized ‘supported’ upgrades, such as mileage upgrades, over elite upgrades. So a general member with a co-branded Visa could upgrade ahead of an elite domestically.…

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United devaluation: I woke up this morning to an announcement of some really nasty changes to the United MileagePlus award chart. These changes don’t go into effect until February 1, so you will want to issue tickets you may be considering before then (and not make changes to tickets after that). What United has done is Announced an increase in the price of many of its awards Bifurcated its award chart so that partner awards will often cost a whole lot more than awards on United’s own flights There aren’t actually very many changes to awards in North and South America. There aren’t very many changes to awards in coach. The biggest bloodbath is to first class partner award pricing. Here are .pdfs of the current chart and the new chart. But to make it…

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