United’s MileagePlus Program Showing More Awards if You Change This 1 Setting

We’re not sure why, but clicking a button in the top right corner of United’s website might show seats available for using your miles — seats you can’t see if your preferred location is listed as the U.S.

Whether it’s a glitch or intentional, changing your location to Canada can result in additional partner awards. Here’s how to find these additional seats.

Additional Award Space Examples With MileagePlus

United’s MileagePlus program is strangely reporting no available seats on this nonstop Singapore Airlines flight from New York (JFK) to Frankfurt, Germany (FRA) at united.com.

Oddly, changing your settings from U.S. to Canada — requiring just a click of a button at the top of the page — now shows available seats for using miles. Depending on the date, seats are available in economy, premium economy, business class, or a combination of these. To be clear, nothing else was changed — not the user’s profile information, not logging in or out of an account, or searching again from the beginning. The seats show up when changing the user’s location preference at the top of the page.

This oddity was first pointed out in an email we received from Roame.Travel, and we’ve reached out to United Airlines for comment. As of the time of publication, we haven’t received a response to clarify whether this is a glitch or intentional.

Digging further, we also found these flights with LOT Polish Airlines. They were available when searching with U.S. as the preferred location, but changing the location to Canada provided even more seats — a handy tip if you’re traveling in a group. We found 1 extra seat in business class on each flight after changing the settings.

How To Change Your Location Preference

If you’re striking out on award searches, it might be worth changing your settings to Canada. Seats might magically become available. When searching from United’s home page, click on the settings at the top right corner where you see US $. A menu will drop down, and you can change the location to Canada. From here, click on Change to save these new settings.

Final Thoughts

We’re not sure why, but changing your location to Canada can help you find extra seats when you’re trying to use United MileagePlus miles for award bookings. The change could reveal something as small as 1 extra seat, but it also might reveal seats on a plane you couldn’t find when your location was set to the U.S.

We’ll be sure to provide updates once we hear back from United Airlines about what’s happening.