3 Days Only – Buy United Miles With 100% Bonus

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United Airlines’ MileagePlus program has launched a promotion for anyone interested in purchasing the airline’s miles. The promotion offers MileagePlus members the opportunity to purchase miles with varying bonus sizes depending on how many miles they’re willing to purchase – the more you buy the grater the percentage bonus offered.

Buy United Miles With 100% Bonus

What you need to know:

Access the promotion via this link.

• Promotion ends 11:59pm CDT 27 May 2016
• Must buy miles in increment of 1,000
• Must by a minimum 5,000 miles to be eligible for a bonus
• Maximum number of miles you can purchase in a calendar year is 150,000
• Bonus miles count towards the yearly purchase limit
• Promotion processed through Points.com so no category bonus available for credit card spend

The bonus tiers:

• Buy 5,000 – 19,000 miles – Get a 25% bonus
• Buy 20,000 – 39,000 miles – Get a 50% bonus
• Buy 40,000 – 75,000 miles – Get a 100% bonus

Pricing

Within each bonus band the price per MileagePlus mile remains the same:

• 5,000 – 19,000 miles – 3.01 cents/mile
• 20,000 – 39,000 miles – 2.51 cents/mile
• 40,000 – 75,000 miles – 1.88 cents/mile

Should You Buy United Miles?

The first thing to say is that this is a better value proposition than the current British Airways Avios Flash Sale I posted yesterday.

Both loyalty currencies cost around the same in the promotions but with MileagePlus miles you can avoid paying fuel surcharges when using them on United and a number of other airlines and, on top of that, you can purchase long-haul premium cabin awards on United for fewer miles than you can on British Airways.

Having said that, 1.88 cents/mile is still not a great price for MileagePlus miles unless you already have a very specific use in mind (one where you know you’ll get good value out of the miles).

A Business Class Saver Award for flights between the 48 Contiguous States and Europe costs 115,000 miles round-trip so, if you were to purchase miles at the cheapest rate this promotion offers (1.88 cents), that award would cost $2,162.

Link to United Airlines Award Charts

That’s not a terrible price for a Business Class flight but price based purely on the cost of miles isn’t the only thing that should be taken into consideration.

With award travel (as opposed to travel where you pay cash for a ticket) there are a number of other factors that need to be considered:

• There will be taxes and surcharges to add to the total cost
• You’re restricted to flights that United decides to open up for awards – you may not be able to fly when you want to.
• You’re forgoing the redeemable miles you would earn if you paid cash for your ticket
• You’re forgoing the miles that contribute to Elite qualification (PQM)

Convenience, redeemable miles and PQM all have inherent value that you’re not getting when booking an award and this needs to be considered when working out the value proposition of an award booking vs a cash booking.

Getting Value

Having read all of the above you may be thinking that this promotion is a dud…but that’s not actually the case.

The promotion is only a dud if you’re just looking to buy miles on the off-chance that you’ll find a good use for them in the future – that’s a very poor miles & points strategy as I’ve said numerous times before.

If you have a specific need for the miles – like for a close-in booking – then a promotion like this can save you quite a bit of cash.

Let’s take an example of a traveler who wants/needs to fly Chicago – London in Business Class at reasonably short notice.

According to the ITA Matrix search the cheapest non-stop flights available in June are for $3,400 (round trip)…..

…and that’s with Delta. If you want to fly United it will cost substantially more:

If, however, this traveler was to purchase miles in this promotion he/she could book a non-stop, round-trip flight, on United for a lot less:

115,000 miles would cost $2,162 (in the promotion) and, when you add on the fees and taxes for the award, that brings the total spend to $2506.

That’s almost $900 less than the cheapest cash option. Now that’s good value 🙂

Bottom Line

If you only purchase miles when you have a set plan for what you’re going to do with them you’ll rarely go wrong. If you purchase miles in the hope that you’ll find an economical use for them somewhere down the line you’re going to lose money in the long run. That’s as close to a certainly as you can get in the miles & points world.