I had heard rumblings of this nearly six months ago, but now it’s official. United is offering one way award redemptions, and we should all be happy about that. Not only that, but they’re letting you pay with cash plus miles. These changes make your Mileage Plus miles much more useful, but of course, there are some restrictions. Let’s dig in a little bit more.
American has been doing one way awards for awhile, and my guess is that’s what spurred United to follow as well. Even though Delta may be the largest airline around these days, American and United have always seen each other as chief competitors. The shared O’Hare hub and long history certainly contributes to the rivalry. So United is matching American with one way awards and stepping up with cash plus miles.
Like American (and unlike some international carriers), United will simply charge you half the number of miles required for a roundtrip ticket to go one way. That means you can get a one way domestically for only 12,500 miles. This makes your miles much more useful.
For example, when we found an inexpensive one way fare to Indiana for the holidays, we wanted to use miles to get back home. I actually would have preferred to use my United miles, but they didn’t have one way awards. So I used American miles instead. Now I have a choice.
This also creates an opportunity to mix and match awards. Before this change, if you found saver awards available one way but only standard (double price) awards the other, you have to pay the full standard award amount. But now, you can simply buy two separate one way awards at different levels. That saves you a lot. You can also go one way on United and the other way on American, if availability dictates it.
But what if you don’t have enough miles for your trip? Well, you can use miles plus points. This to me seems like the beginning of moving toward a revenue-based mileage system. Right now, it looks like the miles and cash are zone-based, but eventually I would bet it would be able to move toward a dollar per mile valuation. Let’s see how it works now.
A roundtrip from LAX to Chicago is 25,000 miles on random dates. You can also do 15,000 miles plus $110 (actually $131 after taxes). The same award from LAX to New York is 15,000 miles plus $120. For LAX to San Francisco, it’s 10,000 miles plus $90. Nonstops versus connections don’t seem to make a difference, but these are only available on roundtrip saver awards on some routes. So it is restricted now, probably to see how it works.
Is this a good option? For LAX to San Francisco, I’d say not at all unless you’re traveling at the last minute. If you bought a ticket on those flights today, you’d save $83. That means you’re getting less than a penny per mile. For the JFK option, you’d save $266 so that’s up near 2 cents a mile. The point is, you really need to look at your specific flight to see how much it would cost to just buy it. You just can’t make a blanket statement here.
No matter what, this is a really nice option to have. I know some people are sad that this means the death of stopovers (you now need 3 one way awards), but that’s only for awards using United. If you do Star Alliance awards, then the old rules are still in tact.
This adds a lot of value for fliers and doesn’t take much away. I always like to see that.
Hey Cranky, replace the second Delta with United.
Even though Delta may be the largest airline around these days, American and Delta have always seen each other as chief competitors.
But great post as always!
1mile + your soul…….well my soul isn’t worth much so that could be a deal……lol I have miless for free trips on UA, AA, CO but since travel these days is a chore and not a pleasure I haven’t gone anywhere in years except for anything work related that the company pays for. I even donated all my US miles as I didn’t want to go anywhere and they slapped an expiration date on them. I can see oneway rewards being as smart of a business model as oneway (low) fares. Not everyone goes roundtrip and if you don’t offer… Read more »
Alaska has also been doing this for at least a couple years now. I just bought a one-way mileage ticket LAX-ANC, while paying full price for the ANC-LAX ticket, to take the sting off of what would otherwise be a $700+ airfare. Total cost ended up somewhere around $400.
It’s great to have the opportunity to mix and match options, rather than laying out either the full cost, or using all your miles (and in my case, there weren’t any cheap roundtrip mileage tickets anyway).
This is great. Living in San Francisco and having grown up in Chicago, there have been dozens of times that I’ve wanted to have the flexibility of one-way miles (either to team up with something else or because of the varying availability of rewards). Not quite sure why this took so long to happen, but glad that it finally has.
I hate the co-pay option for the upgrades with United now. The one perk left is now no longer an option to me – the odd C class upgrade – as I’ll have to fork out my own cash for the pleasure. The unlimited domestic upgrades are totally useless for lower tier MP members, such as scummy me.
Why is the ability to mix award levels on two legs of a round trip considered such a innovation? Northwest and Continental have had this for many years (not sure about Delta).
Just checked – not available on the UK site. Cheers, United.
Ron wrote:
It’s not an innovation but it’s certainly a big improvement for Mileage Plus members since they haven’t had that option.
Bobber wrote:
Oh yeah, forgot about that. It’s starting in the US only.
I looked at using my UA mileds for an award ticket and yet they do offer one way award ticket, however for a SFO – LAS, it was 10,000 miles + $80. I have used my one way award tickets on AA quite a bit and it’s 12,500 and a $5 fee, not a hefty $80 like United. I am wondering if it is because I am executive platinum with AA that they waive the fare? If I was a regular member on AA, would I also be charged that approximately $80? I wouldn’t think so but I will let… Read more »
GID – I just looked and I see it on United for 10,000 plus $2.50 each way