Tag Archives for award bookings.
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I’ll go ahead and tell you the moral of this story: tend to your reservations.
After booking 4 flights to Honolulu, then adding my little brother into the mix, the final piece of the puzzle was to book the hotel rooms.
Like many peeps, I got in on the fantastic British Airways business class fares to Europe.
There were so many ways to stack that it was hard not to.
And, without a trip planned, I was starting to feel weird.
October is the time of year you have to be on alert for a really good deal. And you have to be ready to jump. I knew this one would be fast-moving, and man, it was.
Here’s how my flight plans came together.
These fares were not kidding around. I casually typed in JFK to BCN not expecting to find much. But wow. The prices were incredible.
Exhibit A
JFK-BCN was pricing out at $436 round-trip in business class!
Exhibit B
Literally every date I tried was turning out fares for ~$450, after the AARP and Avios discounts. Just insane.
Your pick of routes, airlines, and connections, too.
I was poking around the United website and messing with the award search cuz duh that’s an awesome way to spend a Saturday night.
I noticed something weird. I’m not sure if it’s a glitch or pricing error or a legit award booking or what.
But I wanted to share it with you guys in case someone has a better answer.
Here’s what I found.
Here’s what I searched:
Pricing at 65,000 miles.
Now, United isn’t supposed to allow free one-ways or stopovers on domestic itineraries any more according to Milevalue (although you can still get a free one-way on international itineraries and mainland US to Hawaii award flights).
So following that logic, 50K is the standard price for a round-trip First Class award.
And a one-way would be 25K.
But instead of pricing as 2 tickets, it’s letting me book all 3 flights for 65,000 miles. A 10K discount.
Round-trip First Class award with a discounted one-way LAX-NYC-LAX-IAH
When I book the 1st flight in economy and the next 2 in First Class, the price it spits out is 50,000 miles.
That means I’m paying for 2 legs at the price of 25K for a First Class one-way.
But what about the leg in economy? It’s free.
A free one-way after a stopover on a domestic award booking with mixed cabins?
Also weird was that I was able to replicate the pricing with partner awards on European award flights.
When I looked into it, I can book something like:
It prices at 45,000 miles.
Round-trip awards in business are supposed to be 60,000 miles.
Partner award flights are pricing weird, too. Instead of 60K round-trip it’s 45K
So not only do I get a free one-way, but I get a 15K mileage discount, too.
This is as far as I’ve gotten. But I’m wondering if you can add the free economy one-way after a round-trip First Class award flight (I couldn’t find any examples… yet.)
FWIW, I can replicate the discount from the all-First Class example with all-economy flights, too:
This “should” price as 37,500 miles
But it’s more like a 2,500-mile discount.
On the beta website, it prices the 1st leg at 17.5K miles. And then the next 2 at 8.8K miles each.
Same results on the beta site
I haven’t actually booked any awards, so it could all error out before the final pricing screen.
I tried to find info about this on the ye olde interwebs but couldn’t find anything, so apologies if this is old news.
It seems United is pricing 1-ways and stopovers as either free or with a discount. I can force this with partner metal, mixed cabins, and all-domestic itineraries.
Is this a known error… or a new glitch?
Anyone know anything about this?
Hello and welcome to Out and Out! My name is Harlan – I’m a points and miles enthusiast who loves to travel. I am interested in personal finance, the power of positive thinking, and the extraordinary journeys that make life worth living.