Every Day From February 1 Onward United Has Tons Of Transcon Business Class Saver Award Space

United Airlines is returning to New York JFK starting February 1 with two flights a day to Los Angeles and two to San Francisco, operated by a premium-heavy Boeing 767-300ER. Each flight will have 46 business class lie flat direct aisle access seats.

Traditionally non-stop cross country flights in premium cabins are tough to get but that is a lot of premium cabin inventory at a time that business travelers aren’t flying. Or – perhaps this is an early mistake on United’s part that won’t last. But every single day between the February 1 start of service and the end of the airline schedule 11 months from now has numerous business class saver award seats open.

Searching as a non-MileagePlus elite, without their credit card, there are tons of seats every day. Searching with elite status you’ll see 9 or more seats available.

Now is the time to book United’s premium cabin transcon flights as awards. These are accessible with miles from United MileagePlus, from Chase transferred to United or Singapore Airlines, with Avianca LifeMiles, Amex points transferred to Air Canada etc. They should even be bookable with Turkish Airlines Miles & Smiles for the lowest possible price.

What United didn’t share when announcing their return to New York JFK, though, is that technically they’ve only secured access to the airport February 1 through March 26 and plan to try to leverage that into a permanent stay.

If you book awards on the JFK flights though and for some reason United isn’t able to continue operations there, you should have no problem getting the airline to move you to the Newark non-stop of your choice.

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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Comments

  1. Are they going to truck the catering over from EWR?

    Those fruit cups have a long shelf life.

  2. Gary – given that UA abandoned JFK and doesn’t have the connectivity they have at EWR…any thoughts as to why whey are using the J-heavy 763s, vs. running those ex-EWR (like they are w/some 777s/787s) and using the 757s ex-JFK?

    Maybe they think that premium A/C will build demand (look at our amazing hard product!) but man they are going to be empty early on.

  3. Never seen this much space in my life. Debating jumping on it for summer travel, but who knows if we will even have summer travel to Europe.

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