Questions and Answers

Hi, this is my first post & my first attempt at booking with Mileage Plus so I hope you’ll forgive me if my question is obvious/dumb/both.

We’re in the U.K. & my wife & I have accumulated around 35000 miles each over various trips to the US. We’re considering another trip late next year (2017) and had hoped to factor in a free stopover in Toronto to visit relatives but the recent change in Mileage Plus rules has just confused us all the more.

The plan was to pay for a return flight to the US, ideally Boston or Chicago as we haven’t visited either city before, but New York would be OK too. Once we’ve got to the US we’d like to book the rest of the trip on award miles if possible.

The trip would consist of 3 legs – a few nights in Boston/Chicago/NYC & a week long beach holiday somewhere warm, maybe California, the Caribbean or Mexico – preferably not Florida as we have visited on several occasions.

Somewhere along the line we would like to stopover for a few days in Toronto – either before or after the “beach week” would be OK.

We don’t have enough miles to cover the 3 separate legs so would need the Toronto trip to be “free” but I’m not clear if we can do that now under the Excursionist Pass scheme.

Any advice would be gratefully received – thanks.

Hi [USER=2517]@JJBhoy[/USER], and welcome!

It sounds like a fun trip, but if you are staying within North America you wouldn’t have been allowed a stopover under the old rules either.

Under the new rules, if your travel starts in Region A, and returns to Region A, your EP can’t be within Region A. So one way to make this work would be to flip the trip, and buy your ticket from the UK to your warm-weather destination in Mexico or the Caribbean.

Then your award ticket would be Mexico to Boston/Chicago/NYC, Boston/Chicago/NYC to Toronto, Toronto to Mexico. That would be 35,000 miles per person in Economy, as the Boston/Chicago/NYC to Toronto segment would qualify for an Excursionist Perk.

Hi Tiffany,

Thanks very much for the reply & for the suggestion. It hadn’t occurred to me to fly into the Caribbean or Mexico from here but I will definitely look into it now.

Thanks again.