United Airlines MileagePlus has just launched its latest sale on purchased points, which is in line with the best offers we see from the program.
In this post:
Buy United MileagePlus miles with a bonus
Through 11:59PM CT on Tuesday, September 28, 2021, United MileagePlus is offering a sale on purchased miles. Different accounts may be eligible for different offers, so you’ll want to log into your account and see what you’re targeted for.
All the accounts that I manage show a bonus of up to 100%, structured as follows:
- Buy 5,000-14,000 miles, receive a 30% bonus
- Buy 15,000-29,000 miles, receive a 60% bonus
- Buy 30,000-87,500 miles, receive a 100% bonus
If you max out this bonus you can purchase a total of 175,000 MileagePlus miles at a cost of $3,292.19, which is a rate of 1.88 cents per MileagePlus mile.
Other accounts may very well see different bonuses, so you’ll want to see what you’re eligible for.
United offers promotions on purchased miles quite often, and when the program does, the bonus tops out at 85-100%. As you can see, this is line with the best offers we see from the program.
You can purchase a maximum of 175,000 MileagePlus miles (including the bonus) per account per calendar year. With this promotion, it can take up to 48 hours for purchased miles to post to your account.
Should you buy United MileagePlus miles?
Personally, I value MileagePlus miles at ~1.4 cents each, though there are ways to get more value out of them than that.
Keep in mind that a lot of negative changes have been made to MileagePlus in the past couple of years:
- United introduced dynamic award pricing as of late 2019, and that’s bad news for members, as it means that many awards on United have gotten more expensive
- United started charging more for last-minute award tickets as of late 2019, for both United and Star Alliance partner flights
- United increased many redemption rates on Star Alliance partners as of mid 2020, typically by 10%
Nonetheless, with a specific use in mind, it could make sense to buy miles, either for redemptions on United or for redemptions on partners.
Which credit card should you buy United miles with?
United mileage purchases are processed by points.com, meaning they don’t count as an airfare purchase for the purposes of credit card spending.
Therefore I’d recommend using a card on which you’re trying to reach minimum spending, or otherwise, a credit card that maximizes your return on everyday spending. See this post for more on which credit cards are best for buying points.
- Earn 1% cash back when you make a purchase, earn 1% cash back when you pay for that purchase
- $0
- Earn 3% Cash Back on Dining
- Earn 3% Cash Back at Drugstores
- Earn 1.5% Cash Back On All Other Purchases
- $0
- Earn 2x Venture miles on every purchase
- No Foreign Transaction Fees
- Global Entry/TSA Pre-Check Credit
- $95
- 2x points on purchases up to $50k then 1x
- Access to Amex Offers
- No annual fee
Other ways to earn MileagePlus miles
If you’re looking to earn United miles, MileagePlus is a Chase Ultimate Rewards transfer partner, so you can convert Ultimate Rewards points into United miles at a 1:1 ratio.
Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card
Chase Sapphire Reserve®
Chase Freedom Flex℠
Chase Freedom Unlimited®
Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card
Ink Business Cash® Credit Card
Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card
See this post for the best credit cards for earning United miles.
Bottom line
United MileagePlus is offering up to a 100% bonus on purchased miles, which has the potential to be a good deal. This is a way to acquire MileagePlus miles for 1.88 cents each — while there are circumstances where that could represent a solid value, personally I wouldn’t speculatively buy miles at that price, and I’d rather transfer miles from Chase Ultimate Rewards.
Do you plan on buying United miles with this offer?
I will probably buy some. While it is true that it is getting harder to find a good value redemption on United I like to have United miles for emergencies and backup purposes and I occasionally get what I consider a good redemption out of them.
Over the summer I had a partner redemption on LX to DBV and there was a schedule change that caused a misconnect in ZRH. I called UA and they...
I will probably buy some. While it is true that it is getting harder to find a good value redemption on United I like to have United miles for emergencies and backup purposes and I occasionally get what I consider a good redemption out of them.
Over the summer I had a partner redemption on LX to DBV and there was a schedule change that caused a misconnect in ZRH. I called UA and they were able to open space on a UA non-stop from EWR for 60k miles instead of the 75k partner redemption. Score! Good luck doing that with LifeMiles.
Unless I needed a few miles to top off miles to get an award ticket right away (better be quick thanks to "dynamic" pricing) I would never ever buy United miles. United miles are worth next to nothing to me now with dynamic pricing and especially because I can usually buy an international business class ticket for what United is selling miles on another carrier. The difference of course is that I would actually be...
Unless I needed a few miles to top off miles to get an award ticket right away (better be quick thanks to "dynamic" pricing) I would never ever buy United miles. United miles are worth next to nothing to me now with dynamic pricing and especially because I can usually buy an international business class ticket for what United is selling miles on another carrier. The difference of course is that I would actually be earning miles in the latter scenario. It used to be worthwhile going out of your way to earn elite status or to accumulate miles in specific programs now that simply isn't the case anymore.