United Airlines is making 3 big changes to MileagePlus that no one is likely to be happy about. They’re making changes to award rules, upgrades, and upgrade pricing.
Here are the 3 changes:
- August 21, 2025, United will eliminate the “Excursionist Perk” for all new bookings. That’s United’s limited free stopover program. Existing bookings will be honored but not if any changes are made after August 21. This is a big loss for award maximizers who would build in a second side trip onto their awards. The excursionist perk was the concession United gave members when eliminating free stopovers eight years ago.
- Also August 21, 2025 will drop instant upgrades at the time of booking for elite members buying the most expensive (Y, B, and M) fares. Customers could immediately confirm an upgrade if seats were available at booking on these fares.
These higher fares will still receive higher priority in the Complimentary Premier Upgrade waitlist but will no longer benefit from immediate confirmation. All upgrades not using PlusPoints or MileagePlus miles will be processed exclusively through Complimentary Premier Upgrade, which means uncertainty for those who would have done instant confirmation on the highest fares in the past.
- November 24, 2025 United will stop displaying their MileagePlus Upgrade Award chart. The only reason to hide the price is because it’s likely to change regularly (dynamic pricing) and on net to go up. That’s certainly what we saw when United eliminated its award charts for free tickets in 2019.
I’m not sure whether dropping stopovers and instantly confirmable upgrades is worse than eliminating upgrade award charts. I suspect there will be partisans debating which of these three changes is worst, but I don’t really see any upside for members in what the airline is doing to its loyalty program.
(HT: The Points Guy)
Not huge losses in my opinion
1. Excursionist was neat in principle but in practice you need to have an elaborate multi-leg trip planned to use it – I never found the opportunity to make it work despite multiple summer trips to Europe.
2. Instant upgrades – sorry to see them go but the one time I used it was on a painfully expensive last minute ticket… if I’m buying full fare Y, something is probably wrong.
3. Award chart… I didn’t realize there was still one? I do think this could be a harbinger of a more significant devaluation later this year. The 88K Europe J deals come to mind.
Instant upgrades have been capacity-controlled anyway. There needs to be space in a specific fare bucket for an instant upgrade. This will mainly if not only affect people who can purchase discounted Y fares, since usually if not always when instant upgrades are available, so are P (heavy discount first) fares, and cash upgrades are cheap too.
Go woke, get devaluated.
It’s a race to the bottom. I hope Chase holds United’s feet to the fire on this. This is devaluing not only United miles, but by extension Chase’s United Credit Cards and Ultimate Rewards cards that transfer to United. No soup for you when we renew!
United appreciates its loyal customers less and less. My other long distance airline is Turkish and they leave United for dead! I’d sooner fly a slightly longer distance in comfort than the shorter United routing with mediocre service and horrible food!
They are responding to business conditions. Sorry. Look I miss the fixed award schedules and value available in the 1980s and 1990s. However, that is what happens with inflation. Awards are hit with 2 types of inflation. First of all ticket prices have gone up so the corresponding number of miles for a ticket (everyone uses some form of dynamic pricing now except Alaska and, trust me, it is coming) and secondly there has been a huge increase in the number of miles available. This is the downside, which no one wants to seem to recognize, of credit card sign up bonuses and easy ways to earn miles without flying.
Back in the day it was true road warriors (and only road warriors) that had large mileage balances. These were truly the airline’s best customers and also, due to smaller numbers of elite members, it was easier to recognize and reward them. Now an airline has no way of really knowing if you are a great customer or just simply max spend to generate miles (in an extreme case).
This all greatly dilutes the value of elite membership and also means there are many more miles chasing the same, or fewer, award flights (or hotel nights). It amazes me how otherwise likely intelligent people seem to not understand the laws of economics don’t apply to this. Airlines and hotels as not simply going to give away product to make you happy. They are doing just fine without any of the “never going to fly/stay there” people. Trust me on that. You really don’t matter as much as you think.
BTW 8 million miler with lifetime status on DL, AA and UA plus Marriott Lifetime Titanium and Hilton Diamond so I’ve put in more than my share of “butt in seat” miles and thousands of nights in hotels over the 40 years I basically lived on the road. Like I said, I miss the “good old days” also but there are valid reasons that ship has sailed and bemoaning things won’t bring them back.
Why does the wind blow so hard in Chicago???
United SUX
@AC, Alaska does a version of dynamic pricing already. It’s not as fine grained as some of the other US players, but they’re no longer the holdout
Lots of united passing gas
@AC: “Now an airline has no way of really knowing if you are a great customer or just simply max spend to generate miles”
Au contraire. The airline knows how you earned your miles or points. The airline PREFERS non-flight earnings.
The purpose of a system is what it does.