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May 19, 2008

United Frequent Fliers: Changes on “Short Flight” Miles

Filed under: Frequent Flyer, United — Rick Seaney @ 10:47 am

United Airlines’ frequent fliers have always received a minimum of 500-miles, no matter how short a trip they took. Not anymore.

Starting July 1, if you fly, say, LaGuardia to Dulles, you WON’T get 500 frequent flier miles; you will ONLY get the actual number of miles the trip took — about 230 miles.

Just one more way the airlines are cutting back in the face of those off-the-chart jet fuel prices.

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2 Comments »

Hi Rick,

If you think that 230 miles is bad, with last week’s Hawaiian/United partnership deal (which I described here: http://tinyurl.com/522uzf), MileagePlus members will only earn 109 miles for example between Honolulu and Lihue.

Aloha, Jeff
http://beatofhawaii.com

Comment by beatofhawaii.com — May 19, 2008 @ 4:01 pm
I’ve thought about this since it was announced last week. Being a UA frequent flyer, and one who flies mostly on segments of under 500 miles, I had to. At first, I was pretty annoyed at this change, thinking, how could they take away a perk that really costs them so little. I’ll lose miles over this, probably hundreds or possibly a couple of thousand a year.

However, UA also runs on segments, which is how I usually earn my status - and that won’t change because of this. Other airlines have varied ways of giving out less. Some don’t use segments, which would likely leave me without status, or others only give 25% or 50% of mileage on lower fares, something that might do the same to me.

But to be honest, it could have been worse. They could have stopped using the segment system. They could have followed Air Canada, which only gives 25% miles which don’t count for status on the lowest fares. Or they could have raised the mileage required for a round-trip - to 30,000 or even 35,000 for a trip within the US.

Besides, thousands of less miles outstanding in the system mean I might have a better shot at being able to use my miles. And lastly, I suspect that one of two things will happen - either the other US-based airlines will follow suit, or they won’t and UA will have to rescind. After all, I suspect like with fares, where airlines have to match to be competitive, UA would hate to be seen as the airline that offers the least value.

Comment by Elliot Campbell — May 19, 2008 @ 9:28 pm