AWESOME Airline Redemption Trick Using United Airlines Mileage Plus Points
If you have United Airlines points, there's a cool redemption technique that you can use when you redeem points with United that can save you one out of three book airline legs.
Check out the example screenshot from above.
The routing is from Honolulu to Taipei on the first leg.
Then Bangkok to Bali in the second leg.
Then Taipei to Honolulu for the third leg.
Notice that its 60,000 United points on the first leg (for business class), but then the second leg is 0 points (for business class). The third leg, which isn't pictured, is 35,000 United points (for economy class). So in total, these 3 legs together would be 95,000 United points ... which is actually a great redemption value!
How Does this United Points Trick Work?
First Leg Booking
Basically, identify where you will be flying from the start to where. You need to pick a starting city in one continent that ends in a separate continent.
For example:
North America to Europe
North America to Asia
Asia to Oceania
Europe to Africa
Note that people think it'd need to start from USA, but it doesn't, just needs to be two separate regions deemed by United.
Second Leg Booking
The second leg, needs to be a routing "within" the same region from point to point city. So it doesn't matter which region, as long as it's within the same region.
For example:
Bangkok to Bali (Asia region)
Chicago to Los Angeles (North America region)
Note that this excludes certain US regions like Hawaii doesn't count. Hawaii is considered it's own region even though it technically is part of the US/North America.
Paris to Athens (Europe region)
Third Leg Booking
Now the third leg needs to be in the same point to point regions that was in the first leg.
So if you booked a North America to Asia, then it would need to be Asia to North America. So on and so forth.
Other Notes
If on the first leg, you chose economy class point redemption, then the second leg will yield results of 0 points for ONLY economy.
If on the first leg, you chose business class point redemption, then the second leg will yield results of 0 points for both business AND economy. But why choose economy when you can choose business. Just makes sense.
Anyone else try to use this cool United redemption technique?
Never tried it. I think I am only at around 30K points on United. I usually fly American or Delta.
Delta has some great business class point redemptions with point to point cities with partner airlines outside of the USA. The worst Delta redemption rates are within the US and from US to other regions.
American has some good redemptions, although a bit harder to find since their search results don't account for majority of Oneworld partner airlines. Better way to search them is with British Airways Avios search engine ... and/or I've used Qantas partner airline search.
Good ideas. I mostly use Delta. I have only redeemed on US origin flights. The latter you suggest, US to other regions is definitely true in my experience. I think my Peru flight was 35k miles and a short flight to NYC was 25k. I gave my American miles to my daughter for some job interviews. I can't recall what the rates were, but I believe they were higher than Delta. By quite a bit.
This is so cool! I'm going to try this next time around.
I already use VPN's and book the return as if I'm from the country.... that yields good price reductions on most carriers
I've tried that method sometimes when looking for country related prices.
Okay, thanks