Why Do Airlines Cap Mileage Earning? Making Sense of United’s 75K Limit

Nowadays it’s common for airlines to award miles based on dollars spent rather than based on distance flown. While it eliminates some gamification, the incentive is obvious — airlines want to encourage passengers to book expensive tickets, especially when they’re on someone else’s dime.

Understandably airlines have the philosophy that they want you to spend as much as possible, though one airline is unique in drawing a line, and saying it won’t reward people above a certain level of spending. I’d like to take a look at that in this post, because there’s no denying this policy should be updated, and at a minimum, the cap should increase.

The United MileagePlus 75K miles per ticket cap

Generally American AAdvantage, Delta SkyMiles, and United MileagePlus, award you a certain number of miles per dollar spent, based on a combination of your elite status and whether you have a co-branded credit card.

What’s interesting is the restriction that you’ll find at United, but not at American or Delta. For example, below is the MileagePlus mileage earning chart.

What’s unique is that United MileagePlus will award a maximum of 75,000 miles per person per ticket, regardless of how much you actually spend. So if you’re a Premier 1K member, any spending above $6,250 on a ticket wouldn’t earn you any incremental rewards.

For what it’s worth, American AAdvantage and Delta SkyMiles used to have similar policies, but abandoned them years back. They now have no cap on how many miles you can earn per ticket. So if you’d like to spend $25,000 on an American first class ticket to Australia and have AAdvantage Executive Platinum status, that would earn you 275,000 miles (11x miles).

That brings us to a message I received from a friend, who is a United Global Services member (and far too loyal to the airline, in my opinion, but that’s a different story). He raises an interesting point, and of course acknowledges that this is a first world problem:

As fares have risen sharply in the last few months — for those of us who travel internationally, hitting that sort of ticket price is not uncommon. Roundtrip to Tokyo can be up to $9,000, roundtrip to Johannesburg can be up to $12,000.

The maximum mileage per ticket has not risen for years, whilst ticket prices most certainly have gone up with inflation.

He points out how he’s about to buy his third ticket of the year where mileage earning is capped, which is rather frustrating.

Is there any merit to United’s ticket mileage cap?

As I see it, there are two topics here — should there be a cap on mileage earning at all, and if so, should it at least be raised? Let’s address that second point first.

United started awarding miles based on dollars spent rather than distance flown in 2015, with that same cap of 75,000 miles. Between 2015 and 2026, we’ve seen roughly 40% inflation, so airfare is obviously more expensive than it was back then. Even just keeping up with inflation, it seems reasonable that this cap should be increased considerably. United’s lack of updates there is downright cheap, but it seems the airline feels it can get away with that.

But then there’s the bigger question of whether the cap should exist at all, or whether American and Delta have the right idea. Logically, you’d think there wouldn’t be a cap:

• Airlines have increasingly made it clear that they only care about how much we spend (on tickets or credit cards), and not how much we fly, so shouldn’t they be rewarding those who are dropping five figures on a ticket?
• Logically an airline’s margins are better on a ticket that costs $10,000 than one that costs $1,000, so can’t they pass on some rewards for all that incremental spending as well? After all, generally speaking, with rewards programs the incremental return increases, rather than decreases, the more a customer spends

So what’s United’s logic for its current policy? I suspect the answer is simply that United is doing it “because they can.” In other words, United feels like it’s not losing sufficient high yield business by having this cap to warrant changing its policy:

• Most people booking really expensive tickets are doing so because they have a specific flight or schedule they need, and they’re making their decision based on that rather than mileage earning
• A lot of people dropping this much on a ticket have some sort of corporate contract with the airline they’re flying, so miles earned don’t make much of a difference

So like most things in the airline industry, their logic isn’t totally sound. They want to encourage you to spend as much as possible, and they want to reward you for that. But not too much. I do find it interesting how American and Delta have changed this policy, while United hasn’t.

Another aspect of this policy that I find questionable is that the hotel cap is the same regardless of your elite status, even though a top tier elite earns double as many miles as a non-elite. In other words, while a Premier 1K member gets rewarded for the first $6,250 in spending, a non-elite member with a co-branded credit card gets awarded for the first $12,500 in spending.

To me it seems like it would be more logical to make the cap around “base miles” earned, and then allow elite bonuses on top of that. It doesn’t make much sense that the cap is so much lower for elite members than non-elite members. I imagine their thinking is that an elite member is more likely to book that airline anyway when on an expensive ticket, so the incremental miles won’t make much of a difference.

Bottom line

United caps MileagePlus members at earning 75,000 miles per ticket, regardless of how much it costs, and regardless of elite status. While a vast majority of customers aren’t impacted by this limit (which is reached when spending $6,250, at an absolute minimum), the super high yield customers who are subsidizing airfare for the rest of us certainly are impacted.

Given that this policy was introduced over a decade ago, at a minimum, it feels like it’s time to update the cap, to reflect the roughly 40% inflation that we’ve seen since then. Personally, I’d argue that the cap should be lifted altogether, to match American and Delta. But obviously United feels it can get away with this, and not lose too many customers over this policy.

What do you make of United’s cap on mileage earning?