Is United Airlines Raising The Price Of Anytime Awards?
The price of most mileage awards goes in one direction, up. We hunt for deals, and find some great ones. But, the ceiling on the most expensive awards continue to rise, even as those deals persist. A recent observation makes me think United has raised the maximum amount they’re charging for business class awards.
One of the members of my Slack community, Nate, noticed something interesting earlier today. It’s a common practice for some airlines to release a seat or two in a premium cabin when they open up a new date on their schedule (usually about a year ahead of time). Nate was searching for a trip he has early next year and noticed an odd pricing pattern at the outer edge of United’s schedule (open through January 4th, 2026 as of this moment). What he noticed was that after January 1st, 2026 (a year from today), the maximum price for a one-way business class seat from SFO to Auckland, New Zealand went from 300,000 miles to 500,000 miles.
Being the nerd I am, I needed to dig into this. Sure enough, here’s what the calendar looks like in December:
As you can see, 300K is a pretty standard maximum price for awards on the SFO-AKL route. Side note: December 1st, 3rd and 8th are great days to go to New Zealand!
Even January 1st still shows a lower price of 350K:
But, once we roll to January 2nd, it’s a different (and more painful story):
Pricing to Europe is pretty ugly as well:
It’s possible this is a mistake, but it’s unlikely. Increases like this rarely are mistakes by airlines. It’s also possible these prices have been around for a while and I’ve missed them. I think that’s unlikely as well.
Incidentally, I find it interesting that United currently has prices of roughly $5,000 one-way for coach seats to Auckland (and $16,000 one-way in business class), whereas Air New Zealand is pricing the route at about $1,000 one-way in economy class. It’s possible they’re pricing these flights this way because they don’t actually want to sell seats right now, they may be killing the route or adjusting the seasonality of it. I’d be a bit surprised if that were the case, but it’s possible.
The Final Two Pennies
I feel like I’m the boy crying wolf, but at some point increases like these (if, in fact, this is a new maximum award price) cause customers to lose interest in loyalty programs. The genius of loyalty programs is to help customers make irrational decisions by choosing an airline they “love” because they collect their miles or points as opposed to making the best financial decision for themselves.
For years, I started every flight search at United.com. However, after some recent issues, I’ve started searching on Google Flights and picking flights that best serve my needs, which is still most often United based on where I live.
500,000 miles is an incredible sum for a one-way flight to New Zealand. It even makes some of the Delta award pricing look reasonable. Stay tuned…
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I used to be willing to pay more to fly my favorite airlines. Now that earning miles by flying is more difficult and awards are much more expensive, I’ve given up on frequent flyer programs. It’s just not worth chasing miles anymore. I now have 2 camps of airlines, preferred and not preferred, but no single airline or 2 airlines that I fly on.
The pandemic is partly to blame because I lost elite status and did not attempt to get it back. Now I am trying to burn miles.
Derek, I still think frequent flyer programs can be worth participating in, but mostly using flexible currency programs like Chase Ultimate Rewards, Bilt Rewards, Cap One and AMEX.
Kirby is a bean counter. It’s tough for people with that mentality to understand loyalty and what engenders it or destroys it. He’ll cheerfully talk about loyalty, even when he patently doesn’t comprehend it, but only in ways he’s convinced himself he understands. That leads to him saying how wonderful so many aspects of MileagePlus are when the facts are nuanced at best or contradicting him at worst.
Christian, spot on. Kirby definitely comes from the operations side of the business, not loyalty. I don’t see any of the big airline CEOs “eating their own dog food”. Spending more time with their product would help them get a better understanding of how to improve it.
All the fare buckets except Y and J are zeroed right now, so it’s likely the proper availability isn’t loaded yet for 2026 dates.
That could also explain the higher award prices, but that’s hard to know.
I’ve noticed the United award prices, too. I’ve been looking at October this year for ICN flights and they were around 195K, now topping much higher, with the occasional 100K sprinkled in. But the main fares are indeed about 20-60K higher.
I personally have thought UA lost their minds years ago. They, along with Delta are managing to charge the most absurd award prices ever seen, and Virgin , Flying Blue are close behind. I still manage to find some deals but the party seems to have lost it’s luster. I think airlines will price themselves out of their own market, their frequent flyer programs will die off, and either we go back to sanity or ..*poof*, the points game ends.