A Really Useful New Award From United Airlines

In case you missed it, United Airlines made some changes to their award charts a couple of weeks ago.  For the most part they weren’t in our favor.  But, they really weren’t too horrible.

For a recap of those changes, read this post and this one.

As usual, I’m behind on my reading.  While I was on an airplane this weekend, I came across a piece of the United award changes that I clearly missed.  Matthew Klint, who writes Live And Let’s Fly, details the new 8,000 mile one-way award.

I’ve used a similar American Airlines award in the past.  Most recently, I redeemed 10,000 miles apiece to fly between Sicily and Salzburg on the now defunct airberlin.  Okay, so that didn’t work out so great, but it was a great value.

Anyway, these awards are for flights 800 miles or less in distance.  The only real downside is that you can’t redeem this award for flights in the US.  However, in Europe 800 miles casts a pretty wide net.  Lufthansa’s Frankfurt and Munich hubs are located within 800 miles of a lot of places you want to go.

Availability looks really good for these award.  I searched a bunch of city pairs and dates.  Plenty of seats and plenty of dates:

Here’s How I Would Use These Awards

I don’t like to stay in one place when I travel.  My wife strongly prefers it. So, my style might not work for everyone.  We frequently fly into one European city and out of another on our vacation.  We use the train network (when I’m actually smart enough to remember to buy tickets) and the occasional discount airline.

Keeping a stash of miles around for short-haul awards like this represents a great value.  Think of this in terms of stringing together a handful of cities on your next trip abroad, for only a few more miles than what it cost you to get to your destination.

Alternatively, if you can’t find round-trip flights to Europe or Asia using miles, think about an open jaw, with one of these 8,000 mile one-way tickets in between.  An open jaw is when you fly into one city and out of another.  For example, IAD-FRA as your outbound, VIE-IAD on the way back.  Draw it on a map and it kinda looks like…..an open jaw.

I’ll definitely be taking advantage of this.

Thanks, Matthew!

The post A Really Useful New Award From United Airlines was published first on Pizza in Motion