As early as 2019, the United MileagePlus frequent flyer program abolished the previously fixed mileage table for award flights. At least the cheap Saver awards’ prices had remained fairly constant so far.
At least until recently. Apparently, United is taking the currently high flight prices as an opportunity to also increase the price of award flights. On some routes, the cheapest tickets are now more than twice as expensive as before. Award flights to/from Europe are also affected, but so far only those with United.
“Saver” Awards up to 156% More Expensive
Apparently, these changes were rolled out over the last week. When we first searched for award flights for the Island Hopper in Micronesia, we noticed significant price increases. In the Flyertalk forum, however, the reports of mileage devaluation are piling up across the board.
We have collected some one-way prices reported by users in Flyertalk and from our own observations:
Economy class:
- Guam – Chuuk (Island Hopper):
- Old: 8,000 miles + €6
- New: 20,500 miles + €6
- Change: +156%
- Honolulu – Guam:
- Old: 27,500 miles + €6
- New: 40,000 miles + €6
- Change: +45%
- Frankfurt – San Francisco:
- Old: 30,000 miles + €120
- New: 42,500 miles + €120
- Change: +42%
- Munich – New York:
- Old: 30,000 miles + €107
- New: 35,000 miles + €107
- Change: +17%
Business class:
- New York – San Francisco:
- Old: 27,500 miles + €6
- New: 47,500 miles + €6
- Change: +73%
- Washington, D.C. – Frankfurt:
- Old: 60,000 miles + €6
- New: 72,500 miles + €6
- Change: +21%
These are samples based on current United.com “Saver” award prices. There may be some cheaper tickets available. In any case, one thing is clear: the prices have been raised significantly.
These are supposedly cheap saver awards. The prices of them had remained relatively constant since 2019 and were only partially increased by around 10%. It should be noted that the “cheap” tickets are sometimes only available on a few days per month, depending on the route – a problem that is just as big as the price increase.
Up to 395,000 Miles for a Business Class Flight
However, things are not looking any better for the Everyday Awards regarding their availability. US blog Running with Miles reported business tickets costing nearly 400,000 miles, and we were able to find them straight away:
To be fair, connections with a layover in Munich are also available for 155,000 miles. Nevertheless, the prices for award flights are slowly becoming absurd.
Conclusion
The miles of the competing program Delta SkyMiles are often ridiculed as SkyPesos. United seems to like it and is now taking dynamic pricing one step further. Let’s hope this doesn’t turn into a downward spiral. Unfortunately, since the mileage table was abolished, this is to be expected.
It is not without reason that an earn-and-burn strategy for miles and points is usually recommended. Bunkering a lot of miles has never been a good idea, but sometimes there’s just no getting around it.