Questions and Answers

I frequently fly Brussels to Australia in C using miles.

Purchasing such a ticket would usually cost around 170k miles

To get away cheaper as UA used to allow a stopover I used to use United miles & start my trip weeks or months earlier in TLV (Asia to Australia is closer and costs only 120k miles) and do a stopover for weeks/months at home in Brussels than fly to Australia and on the return I used to fly connecting through Brussels (checking my bags only to BRU) and once in BRU I called UA saying I can’t fly further and I was left with a 1 year valid open ticket to TLV.

I gained that instead of paying 170k to Australia I paid only 120k and for that price also had a return ticket in C to TLV

With the changes to the UA program this doesn’t work anymore.

So thus my question is there any other airline out there where this still would work?

Most programs that allow stopovers do so in the hub city, i.e. LHR for BA, Tokyo for JL, DXB for EK, etc. Beyond the stopover the key to your itinerary was the ability to piece together flights. No other program allows that to the extent that UA did. Plus your itinerary has backtracking TLV-BRU which isn’t allowed by virtually every program. I know folks think the new free one way is great, it might be, but the inability to piece together flights like yours was awesome. Will be missed.

The only thing you can do is look at either Asia Miles or JAL Mileagebank. TLV-BRU-SYD-BRU-TLV route is just under 25,000 miles. A business class seat using Asia miles is 160K and JAL is 150K. (Getting flights to these cities under that mileage cap is another issue) You could do the stopovers no problem as they are allowed. I think the only limitation is that you’d have to finish the trip within a year of ticketing. I’d verify that tho.

Good luck.