Maximizing United's New Stopover Rules

Just assanine they thought creating anew concept instead of keeping the existing stopover rules was a way to solve whatever problems they were having with abuse. Now we have a broken system with idiotic pricing and new abuses.

I've read a few articles like this and on paper I get it. However, with united not letting you use multi-city search and only selecting what the computer returns; how do you add a IST-MUC leg on a round trip SFO-PVG for example?

You say that Drew "beat" you to the punch. Sure he didn't actually "teach" you these tricks? Did you really work all this out separately, and he just was quicker to publish? If you, both of you deserve credit for these discoveries. Nice job!

Agree with Tom. This seems like a total and blatant rip off of Drew's post from last week. Not a single additional thing beyond what he has already covered...

99% of customers don't create creative itineraries like we do. I don't think anyone really care much 🙂

This is some serious reading. Going to have to circle back to this.

Hmmm, there is a lot you didn't mention here. But probably on purpose... there is so much you can do with this trick it's not even funny.

MileValue has a post on this too:
http://www.milevalue.com/new-united-free-one-way-rules-as-of-october-2016/

Can you give some USA-South Africa examples? (Combining with cash or other miles for difficult regions (think Johannesburg, Australia), and having segments to use later)

Disappointing to see a total ripoff of Travel is Free with only the smallest acknowledgement - I expect better from you guys.

Tom & Dima, but Point me to the Plane handily beat Drew and posted about this almost as soon as the new engine was live but no one gives Drew any shit. Besides his writing style is terrible, and Tiffany has done a better job here explaining the concept. Even better, go to Milevalue and read his take, best I've seen so far.

Wow, not only do you rip off Drew's post but then you delete comments expressing disappointment with your lack of full acknowledgement?

Seriously, the way you've put the analysis is helpful, and I read you guys regularly, but I guess I'm starting to know which travel blog *not* to to keep on my reading list if you're not going to play nice with fellow bloggers who contribute more than you do to tricks like this...

Roberto you would be surprised at how many of us get creative with award travel and TPG gives us great advice. Prior to the change at United I booked a Delhi Jeddah Cairo Istanbul Porto one way Star Alliance business award ticket for 45000 miles with long connections and stop overs in each. It is these helpful hints that encourage our creativity. And, I was able to book with the United GS agent in about 20 minutes total having my itinerary all planned out. Did two more trips before the change with unusual routing grabbing free stop overs along the way. So keep this tips and tricks coming so when I travel on points I am maximizing as best as possible.

I understand the rules, but I don't see how you can book them without using the Multi-City search. I'm not even trying to maximise it - all I want to book is a trip to HKG, then a leg to RGN, then a return back to origin. That falls entirely within the rules, there's plenty of availability on each leg but the Multi-city simply doesn't work and therefore it seems to be unbookable.

not bad. round trip SF- New York is at 17.5K in economy
tokyo- osaka - 5K
sfo-new york - free
new york-sfo - 12.5K

total 17.5k

if you could find business class tokyo to osak you would get sfo to new york (one way) business for free.

The more of these posts that "demystify" UA's new multi-city award booking rules we have, the better! Rather than jumping on the bandwagon and crying foul after UA announced their multi-city award booking changes, Drew Macomber over at 'travelisfree' did what I believe travel bloggers need to do every time there is a change in a loyalty program, which is to take the time to understand the change and then to "demystify" it for their readers, while offering remedies, if any. Well, I will just recycle here my take on this whole UA multi-city award booking change, as I had provided it over at "travelisfree":

"Laudably proactive way for a travel blogger to react to a “devaluation”! Learn about it and let the readers know what it means for them and suggest remedies!

What’s been presented here jibe’s with what I have learned. I had the chance to speak with a UA 1K Desk supervisor about their “new” multi-city award booking rules and what I was told was that it was essentially a “bug fix”, and I tend to agree because that would now explain some weird multi-city award prices that I got before, which seemed too generous and I could not explain why I got them (like allowing me a stopover on a one-way award when that was verboten). According to the supervisor, the way things are working now is the way they were supposed work all along, but did not due to an IT problem. The system was way too generous with stopovers. So, this is a “selective devaluation” because people booking award trips that include no stopovers or have a single connection outside of one’s departure region to which they would return would get a free segment, i.e., a stopover. Open jaws are allowed galore on multi-city awards.

The notion that the sky had fallen and that UA awards got as bad as DL’s as a result of the new rules were unwarranted exaggerations. I was, in fact, puzzled and wondered why UA would institute something that was as unfriendly as was initially claimed, when Oscar Munoz was trying to turn the company around? The answer is that they had not done anything that was overly unfriendly, like a wholesale award chart devaluation would have been. They just fixed a bug to avoid bleeding revenue at a time when they wanted to turn things around. The major change involved a redefinition or enforcement of “stopovers”, that are now working as initially intended: Good only on round trip award travel, with one allowed in a region other than the one where one originated and would return to.

There are other nuances I learned about, like UA agents now see fewer *A awards than travelers booking a multi-city award online. Apparently, that’s because *A carriers now release and control their own awards, which are accessible only through general or public booking engines, but not through individual *A members’ systems — something which I was able to confirm.

All in all, call it a “stopover” or a “free segment”, that’s still better than what either AA or DL allows: neither program offers a stopover so that even after this so-called “bug fix”, UA still offers more flexibility. Importantly, however, they have stopped bleeding revenue by doing away with the prior overly generous and “buggy” stopover rule and implementing a more competitive stopover rule at a time when they are trying to turn the company around."

And, no, I am not on the side of the loyalty programs. I am just keenly aware of Reinhold Niebhur’s “Serenity Prayer”:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.

In short, I am a realist…

Bottom line:
“Devaluations” are a fact of life for anyone who is going to play the miles/points game, but crying foul whenever a program “devalues” is an exercise in futility because I am not aware of single instance in which a “devaluation” was ever rescinded. In the end, we’ve always accepted the changes and adapted. Therefore, what travel bloggers need to do is to figure out the implications of a change for the loyalty game and then to inform their readers, as well as to suggest remedies that would lessen the sting — exactly what 'travelisfree"'s two-part blogpost had done proactively, and this one and others have begun doing to benefit as many folks as possible.

When we were told that UA’s latest “devaluation” made things as bad as DL’s, I’d written elsewhere: “I am nearly certain that once reports of people redeeming award travel on UA to various destinations and for varied itineraries start to pile up, the claim that the sky has fallen as a result of these rules changes will turn out to be a gross exaggeration, if not altogether bogus.”

Maybe not “altogether bogus”, but definitely a “gross exaggeration”, and in some ways — like a more reliable multi-city award booking engine — things got even better!!!

Glad to see my point made emphatically even sooner than I thought, with just dummy bookings!

G'day!

@ Tom -- Yep, I'm sure. We talked about some of this in Chicago right after the changeover happened, and we've all known about the possibility of a third region stopover from Day 1. What I hadn't played around with yet (given that I spend most of my time on itineraries normal people actually want to take), was having the last segment be Region A to Region A, and so credit goes to Drew there, as mentioned in the post.

@ Jack -- In that case there might have to be some tradeoffs. You can filter the results to hopefully show the routings you want, then when you use the multi-city tool you'll want to put in a "chunk" of the award, not necessarily just a segment.

@ Cdog -- 😉 Besides, apparently people are plenty mad at me for posting anything at all.

@ Brent -- Sure! Paid business class fares out of South Africa have been super reasonable lately, so maybe combine a paid fare with other miles and put together a big trip.
• UA award from the US to Europe
• Other award Europe to maybe Nairobi or Seychelles or something
• UA award from other African city to JNB
• Paid fare from JNB
• Domestic UA segment in the US to use later

It all depends on how you piece things together, basically.

@ Daniel -- I didn't delete anything. If it's the first time you're commenting on the blog it's automatically held for manual approval, and we were on a plane when this published.

@ NB -- Well, if you want an Excursionist Perk you will have to use multi-city. Can you tell me more about the errors you're getting? I've been seeing weird stuff too, but mostly within Japan.

I had a 3hr phone call last week where the agent could not get the excursionist perk to price at zero for an inter-Europe segment. I ended up booking an itinerary I did not want online including the zero miles segment I did want and then UA supervisors changed the rest of the itinerary back to what I wanted. The agent really stuck at it and was determined to get my itinerary ticked. The availability I was seeing online did not correspond to what the agent was seeing on her systems. A big mess, but it got done in the end.

DCS is as clueless as ever...toes the party line that "this isn't a devaluation", then also admits "UA agents now see fewer *A awards than travelers booking a multi-city award online". Again, not surprising given his myopic HH posts.

@Andy said: "The availability I was seeing online did not correspond to what the agent was seeing on her systems. A big mess, but it got done in the end."

Bingo! That is what I meant when I wrote above: "There are other nuances I learned about, like UA agents now see fewer *A awards than travelers booking a multi-city award online. Apparently, that’s because *A carriers now release and control their own awards, which are accessible only through general or public booking engines, but not through individual *A members’ systems — something which I was able to confirm."

The way I confirmed the above was that I had amended my YUGE multi-city Year-end Asian Escapade(tm) to allow me an extra a day -- a stopover -- in Tokyo before I flew to ICN on OZ and then ICN-PEK-SIN on CA -- all of which was booked and confirmed. The agent made the change I requested, inserting Tokyo in the itinerary, and then she told me that there was no longer availability for PEK-SIN! I told her I'd already confirmed ICN-PEK-SIN, what did she mean there was no longer availability? She said that all she could find was where I would have to spend nearly 12hr in PEK (instead of 1h:45min) before continuing on to SIN! So, on a whim, I decided to do the search myself and, lo and behold!, I found all kinds of availability for ICN-PEK-SIN on CA, INCLUDING the very same one that I'd already booked and confirmed, which was no longer visible to the agent!

Triumphantly, I told the agent that there was something wrong because I found several award flights on CA. That's when she told me that she had no control over CA awards; CA releases them and controls those that are available publicly, which may or may not match those can be seen on individual *A members' systems. Some of this makes actually sense because, in the past, I had to wait about 24h for my *A award seat availability to be confirmed by each operating *A carrier involved and UA would ticket them (which they often forgot to do, creating problems). That's no longer the case. What you see online is what you get and it's confirmed and tickets right then. I believe this is an improvement of sort...

I must say that I am still suspicious because one way for UA to force people to use their multi-city award booking system would be for the agents to claim that they could not see awards that were visible through the public booking system. I am glad to see that someone else has "confirmed" that agents seem to see a smaller inventory than customers do, but I still wonder...

@ UA-NYC -- I never wish to address you but I will do it so that I can insult you: You are an idiot, and anyone who has noticed you hound me from blog to blog like a street dog, spewing nonsense, already knows who is clueless.

DCS got this exactly right when we were being told that the sky had fallen. What has been demonstrated here and elsewhere is exactly what I learned from UA and reported in the post that you just criticized as clueless, without having a clue. Do you even understand any of it or the tricks that Drew and Tiffany have helpfully provided us to cope with this change, which I believe is a Good Thing for both UA and the loyalty game player because a financially healthy UA is likely to lead to a healthier and more rewarding MilegePlus? Wanna know what happens when a loyalty program's parent company under-performs financially? Just take a look at what happened to SPG after Starwood under-performed and found itself up on the auction block.

Goodbye!

Come on guys......... "beat you to the punch?" I think everyone knows Drew is the pioneer of these types of posts, to rip it off and act you like figured this all out is pretty bad. Travelisfree should be at the top of this post, not as a hat tip, but giving complete credit.

Has anyone gotten an award involving Taiwan to price correctly? Even something like Taipei -> Frankfurt (layover in Paris) -> Vienna -> Taipei doesn't price the Frankfurt -> Vienna segment as free.

Nothing super out of the box, but I'm using my Chase Sapphire Reserve sign-up bonus (plus a few more points) to get me and my wife from the US to Dublin, Excursionist Dublin to Edinburgh, and then return home from Paris back to the US. We'll take trains from Edinburgh to London to Paris.

This is some hardcore, in depth stuff. Very thankful you put this together. I am looking at flights for my summer adventure. Very helpful to have this guide and I think I can make this work well. Thank you

Website no longer seems to allow flights between Japan and certain Oceania countries such Tonga and New Caledonia. Used to be a great deal at 30K in Biz or 40K in First, because getting there required routing through Asia and Australia/New Zeland.

This worked fine after October 6th and seems to have changed in the last week or so. I haven't tried calling since I am not actually trying to book, but assume this would now force pricing as two awards. Another BIG devaluation!!

Update...I just played with the Japan to Oceania routings some more and HND and other Japanese airports still work fine. Blocking appears limited to NRT at this time.

As a 1K member... is it possible to cancel the last leg after the excursionist leg is complete? Looking at below...

NRT->ORD: 65k business
EWR->SFO: free as excursionist (25k business)
HND->NRT: 5k economy

However I likely would not end up taking the HND->NRT flight. As a 1K member, after completing the first two legs, could I cancel the last one to get 5K miles back? or even if just forfeit the 5k miles (hence still getting 20k in value for free).

@Tiffany I'm getting errors for Japan segments. I'm trying to book SFO>HND, HND>KIX (excursion perk), KIX>SFO. Searching for RT between SFO to HND, it looks like there's flights connecting between HND and KIX but no award travel is showing up between the two Japan airports. Were you able to get any results for Japan? Wondering if these airports are blocked or if it's a specific date limitation, although I tried playing with different dates too. Thanks!

I can't seem to make it all work with the travel originating in Europe. Is this the case? I'm trying SOF-BOS, BDL-RNO, FLR-SOF, and it puts a price on the BDL-RNO segment. Please help?

Thanks,
Gerrit

Using it unnecessarily. Flying ORD ZRH DEL. Return is KTM DEL ZRH MIA. If I book it as a RT, the KTM DEL flight is the excursionist flight. However, if I book it as 2 one ways, the KTM DEL portion is included in the return award anyway. I couldn't figure out a way to maximize the benefit without knowing what I will be needing in the future. So....blew it on an unnecessary use.

I would like to know how I can book a United Award ticket between WAS -> CMB that has a stop in BKK. Is there a way to allow a few days in BKK before traveling the next segment, without paying for 2 separate segments (42K + 25K)? Thanks in advance! _Nathan