United Airlines this week announced a series of changes to its MileagePlus frequent flyer program, involving fees and stopovers for passengers flying on award tickets.
United says it's streamlining the fees, and I'm pleased to say that for once this does not appear to be corporate double-speak from an airline. Currently United offers a patchwork of fees for changing and canceling itineraries, which are being combined into one set of fees for both changes and cancellations.
The changes will take effect for tickets booked beginning October 6, 2016. Whether you'll like them or not largely depends on your frequent flyer status with the airline. Let's start with the good news:
Cancellation fees. Most passengers wanting to cancel tickets booked with frequent flyer points will be pleased. The maximum fee to cancel a ticket and refund the miles to your account will drop from $200 (for general MileagePlus members) to $125. Members with elite Silver and Gold status (who respectively fly more than 25,000 and 50,000 miles annually with the airline) will see these fees drop to $75 and $50 respectively, both down by $25.
Premier Platinum flyers (over 75,000 miles annually) will be less enthused. Currently they pay nothing to cancel a ticket and refund miles to their accounts, but that will rise to a max of $50.
United’s top tier Global Services and Premier 1K flyers (100,000 miles and up) will continue to pay no fees.
International Stopovers. "Many members found the stopover policy to be confusing," United says (I'm one of them), so it's revising this policy for overseas travel. Say you're flying from Los Angeles to Vienna and would like to stop off in Dublin on your way home. Under the current system, the Dublin visit would have to be less than 24 hours long (a "stopover") or the return trip would count as two separate itineraries (Vienna-Dublin and Dublin-L.A.).
United's replacing this requirement with what it calls the Excursionist Perk - I'll forgive the ungainly name because it actually is quite helpful. On my recent Vienna-Dublin-L.A. trip, the Excursionist Perk would have saved me the 15,000 miles I used to fly from Vienna to Dublin. (And I can now confidently say that there's no way to experience Dublin in a mere 24 hours!)
Now for the bad news:
Ticket Changes. For elite members (Silver and up), it’s going to be a lot more costly to modify a mileage ticket once it’s been issued.
Currently, elite passengers can change award tickets up to 21 days before departure with no penalty. For tickets booked beginning October 6, Premier Silver and Premier Gold passengers will pay $50 or $25 respectively for changing or canceling a mileage ticket from the moment it’s booked. If that change is made 60 days or fewer before departure, the fee rises to $100 and $75 respectively.
Higher-level flyers have been exempt from change fees. But under the new system, Platinum members will pay a $50 penalty for changes made within 60 days of departure. Premier 1K (100,000 mile) flyers will continue to be exempt from change fees.
General MileagePlus members currently pay $75 to change tickets more than 21 days before departure, and $100 after. That $100 will rise to $125 and will kick in at 60 days before departure.
60-day limit. Under the current system, Silver and Gold members pay no change fees until 21 days before departure. Under the new system, that’s being nearly tripled to 60 days, and some fees kick in immediately after booking.
Moral: unless you've got super elite status, you'll want to be sure of your travel plans before booking award tickets.
Domestic Stopovers. The Excursionist Perk applies only to travel booked to other continents, so if you’re traveling only with the U.S., for example, no dice. In fact, United is getting rid of its discounted stopover program. "Multi-city domestic awards are still available," the airline says, "however, you will be charged for each one-way award within the itinerary."
So what to do? These changes apply to tickets booked after October 6, 2016. So if you like the current rules and are on the fence about booking travel, it's time to get cracking. You've got about two months.
