United MileagePlus Extends the Validity of PlusPoints by 6 Months

United Boeing 777 AMS

One of the most valuable status benefits at United MileagePlus is the upgrade points that their most loyal customers get: Members with 1K status receive 320 so-called PlusPoints per year, which they can redeem for up to 8 long-haul upgrades from Economy to Business Class. Premier Platin members at least get 40 points as well.

Because of the pandemic, however, many of the points are still unused in many accounts. The majority of these PlusPoints would expire on July 31, 2022, without replacement. Those who haven’t used them yet can breathe a sigh of relief: United announced today that all points which were to expire will be extended by 6 months.

Specifically:

  • All points that would originally expire on July 31, 2022, will be extended to January 31, 2023
  • All points that would originally expire on January 31, 2023, will be extended to July 31, 2023

Important: The PlusPoints must be valid on the day of travel, otherwise they cannot be used. For example, it is not possible to use PlusPoints with an expiry date of January 2023 for a trip in April 2023.

The extension is already displayed in the account. The following points would originally have expired in July:

Frequent Flyer Status also Extended to January 2023

After much back and forth, United issued a second round of status extensions in December 2021. At least in Europe, most frequent flyers are allowed to keep their status until January 2023:

At the same time, the existing PlusPoints were extended until July 2022. So now there are another 6 months on top of that. It is unclear whether there will be other goodwill rules this year to continue to bind frequent flyers to United.

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