United Airlines MileagePlus members are being targeted with a promotional offer when purchasing miles.
Offers vary depending on the account holder, but it’s likely you’ll either have up to a 50% discount or up to 100% bonus.
Discounts and bonuses on miles purchases will apply through May 27, 2022.
Let’s take a closer look at the offer.
United’s MileagePlus Miles Discount or Bonus
If you’re targeted with the 50% discount, a maximum of 175,000 miles can be bought for a total of $3,292 — that’s a discount of 50% on the usual price of $6,125 with the 7.5% government tax added.
To put 175,000 into perspective; that could get you a round-trip business class flight with United from New York to London or Los Angeles to Tokyo with tens of thousands to spare.
United Polaris business class. Image Credit: United
However, the first thing you’ll need to do is log in to your account to check what you’ve been offered. Then you can work out whether you personally will get value for your money if you take up the offer.
Is Buying Miles Worth It?
Let’s do the math.
On average, the promotional discount is 50% — that means instead of the 3.5 cents per mile that United typically sells its miles for, you’d be getting miles for 1.75 cents.
To put that into perspective, that’s still 0.45 cents more expensive than the 1.3 cents per mile than what we value United’s MileagePlus miles at.
Hot Tip: Buying miles can be a quick and easy way to boost your MileagePlus account. However, if you’d rather not stump up that kind of cash, there are many more ways you can earn yourself a ton of MileagePlus miles without handing over excess cash.
For example, a round-trip flight in business class with United from New York (EWR) to London (LHR) using miles would set you back 120,000 MileagePlus miles.
To buy those miles outright using this promotion would cost you $2,100. That’s around $160 cheaper than the lowest fare we were able to find for a round-trip cash fare in business class.
So, if you were sitting on no miles in your account and were hell-bent on flying to London in business class, buying miles using this promotion would save you a little money.
A very low business class round-trip fare with United from Newark to London. Image Credit: United
In fact, you’d probably find yourself saving even more money as the average round-trip fare for the business ticket is quite a bit higher — all the way up towards $10,000 in some months.
Image Credit: United
Bottom Line: The above example is just 1 very specific example of where snapping up this promotion would actually save you some money. However, if you have no specific trip in mind, and already have some miles in your pot, then it’s probably not the best value for your money to just buy miles for the sake of it.
Final Thoughts
United is targeting MileagePlus members with promotional rates on purchasing miles.
While there are savings to be had, it’s not always a good idea to purchase miles unless you have a specific trip in mind.
Featured Image Credit:
United
