Maximizing UA Miles (1): Simple One-Way Award Tickets

Hi everyone—today OneMoreDay is going to talk about redeeming miles with United Airlines (commonly called United).

Tip 0: Why Everyone Loves UA Miles

Among Chinese communities in North America, UA miles are probably one of the most frequently discussed points currencies. Why? There are four main reasons:

1. They are easy to earn: Chase UA cards often come with a 55,000-mile welcome bonus, and Chase’s own Ultimate Rewards (UR) points transfer to UA miles at a 1:1 ratio. Credit cards that earn UR points include:
   • Chase Freedom with a 12,500 UR welcome bonus
   • Chase Sapphire Preferred with a 45,000 UR welcome bonus
   • Chase Ink Plus with a 50,000 UR welcome bonus
   • Chase Ink Cash with a 20,000 UR welcome bonus
2. Excellent route coverage, especially between the U.S. and China. Not only does United itself have extensive service, but Star Alliance (see this introduction to airline alliances) also offers the most U.S.-China round-trip options. UA, Air China, ANA, Asiana, Thai, Lufthansa, EVA, and even Singapore Airlines all operate flights between the U.S. and China, and many provide high-quality service (UA, I’m not talking about you). Air China is especially helpful for people headed to China’s smaller cities: you can fly one of the foreign carriers above into a major gateway city, then connect on Air China to your hometown without paying extra miles. Cash fares from smaller U.S. cities to smaller Chinese cities are often outrageously expensive, which is exactly where award tickets shine.
3. UA awards are beginner-friendly. Redeeming UA award tickets is actually quite simple, and today I’ll walk through exactly how to do it.
4. Generous award rules. You can redeem one-way awards, and round-trip awards (or open-jaw itineraries) can also include a stopover. For an introduction to open jaws and stopovers, see this article. I’ll also mention them in the examples below.

Tip 1. How to Register a UA Account:

Now that we’ve covered all those benefits, how do you actually redeem? First, you need a… UA frequent flyer number. How do you get one?

Type united.com into your browser. The homepage looks like this, and I’ve marked the registration area:

After clicking in, you’ll reach the registration page:

It’s best to use a China address when registering, mainly because of the PQD issue. As for what PQD is, we’ll explain that in a future post.

After filling everything out, once you receive the activation email, you can log in.

Tip 2. How to Search for Award Tickets:

For example, if you want to check flights from Los Angeles to Shanghai for Thanksgiving this year, there’s a booking box in the upper-left corner of the homepage. You can use it to book paid tickets, search award space, and book award tickets. Just enter the airports and dates, then check “One Way” and “Award Travel” in the red box below:

You’ll get a screen like this:

Then click “Search" and you’ll see which dates and flights have award availability:

For each flight, the blue option is what we usually mean by an “award ticket,” also called Saver. In this example, you can redeem 35000 miles for a ticket from LA to Shanghai.

In the calendar above, a yellow date means only Economy award space is available that day; blue means only Business or First award space is available; green means both Economy and premium-cabin award space are available. In this example, all the dates are green, which means award space is quite plentiful. The first result is nonstop, which is great, though there are also connecting options via San Francisco.

Tip 3. What If I Only Want to Search for Nonstops?

Very simple. On the same screen, scroll to the bottom of the page and you’ll see this section. Check “Nonstop Flights Only” in the red box and click “Search” again:

The calendar above will change to this:

As you can see, there are still plenty of nonstop Economy options, but Business Class is much more limited. During winter break, there are basically no nonstop options, which makes sense—that’s when airlines make money, so they’re much less likely to release nonstop award space.

Tip 4. How Do I Book?

On the 19th, we can see the following screen. The nonstop that day looks pretty good, so I’m going to book it:

Click the blue “Select,” and you’ll see your itinerary:

Click “Continue to traveler information,” and the rest is basically no different from booking a regular ticket.

Tip 5. What About Round-Trip Tickets?

For a simple round trip, I recommend booking it as two separate one-ways. That way, if your plans change, modifying the itinerary will be much easier.

Tip 6. What Is a Stopover? How Do I Book an Award with a Stopover?

For example, if you want to fly from Los Angeles back to Shanghai, stop in Seoul for four or five days, and then continue to Shanghai, and later fly directly from Shanghai back to Los Angeles, then Seoul would be your stopover. UA’s award policy is very generous: one round trip can include one stopover. So how do you book a ticket like that?

First, use the Tip 2 method above to search award space separately for LAX-ICN, ICN-PVG, and PVG-LAX. Let’s say I find nonstop award space on November 10, November 15, and November 25 for LAX-ICN, ICN-PVG, and PVG-LAX respectively. Then I go back to the familiar search box in the upper-left corner of the UA homepage:

Click “Multiple Destinations” and you’ll get this screen:

Now just feed in your itinerary one segment at a time, then click “Search.” You’ll get flight options to choose from. After selecting the flights you want segment by segment, you’ll see that the itinerary has been built for you:

See that? We used 70,000 UA miles plus a little over $60 to book a ticket worth $4277 that includes a stopover. That gives each UA mile a value of about 6 cents here!!

Tip 7. Can a One-Way Include a Stopover?

Unfortunately, no. If you use the Tip 6 method to book November 10 LAX-ICN followed by November 15 ICN-PVG, the final screen will look like this:

The 50,000 UA miles shows that the LAX-ICN and ICN-PVG segments are being priced separately and charged separately, which is not a great redemption.

Tip 8. Can You Search All Star Alliance Award Space on UA?

UA’s search engine is powerful, but it’s not all-powerful. For example, it cannot find award space on Singapore Airlines (SQ) or Brussels Airlines (SN). So how can you use UA miles to book those popular SQ flights?

First, you need to search on the Aeroplan website. We’ll cover how to do that in a future post.

After finding the award space on Aeroplan, you can only ticket it by phone. But UA charges a $25 phone booking fee—so how can you avoid that $25 fee? Here OneMoreDay will share a little trick: you can first book a UA flight, then call UA customer service within 24 hours after ticketing and ask them to change it to the SQ award flight you found. Since UA allows free changes within 24 hours of ticketing, you can use this method to book those premium Singapore Airlines flights with UA miles without paying anything extra. Of course, don’t expect to book the A380 First Class Suites—that can only be booked using SQ’s own miles.