Update: The offer mentioned below has expired and is no longer available.
United Airlines MileagePlus members are being targeted with a promotional offer when purchasing miles.
Offers vary depending on the member, but it’s likely you’ll have up to a 100% bonus.
Discounts on mileage purchases will apply through September 21, 2022.
Let’s take a closer look at the offer.
United’s MileagePlus Miles Bonus
United Polaris business class. Image Credit: United
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.
On this occasion, the more miles you buy increases the more bonus miles you’ll receive. This is the breakdown:
- Buy 5,000 to 14,000 miles and get a 50% bonus
- Buy 15,000 to 39,000 miles and get a 75% bonus
- Buy 40,000 to 87,500 miles and get a 100% bonus
If you’re targeted with the 100% bonus, 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 $6,584.
With 175,000 miles, you could score a round-trip business class flight with United from New York to London or from Los Angeles to Tokyo with tens of thousands of miles to spare.
Is Buying United MileagePlus Miles Worth It?
Let’s do the math.
On average, the promotional discount is 50% — that means instead of purchasing for the usual 3.5 cents per mile, you’d get miles for 1.75 cents apiece.
However, note that this price is still 0.45 cents more expensive than what we value United MileagePlus miles at (1.3 cents apiece).
Hot Tip: Buying miles can be a quick and easy way to boost your MileagePlus account. However, if you’d rather not fork over that kind of cash, there are many more ways you can earn yourself a ton of MileagePlus miles without handing over excess cash.
Let’s take, for example, a round-trip flight in business class with United from Newark (EWR) to London (LHR) using miles. This would set you back 120,000 MileagePlus miles.
With the promotion, it would cost you $2,100 to buy the necessary miles outright. That’s around $2,000 cheaper than the lowest fare we were able to find for a 7-day round-trip cash fare in business class.
One of the lowest business class round-trip fares with United from Newark to London. Image Credit: United
So, if you were sitting on a zero balance in your MileagePlus account and were hell-bent on flying to London in business class, buying miles using this promotion would save you quite a bit of money.
This is one of the lowest cash fares we could find, and often round-trip business class fares between New York and London can go for several thousand dollars, so it’s likely that you would save yourself quite a bit of money with this promotion if you were to purchase miles needed for a redemption you already were keen on making.
Then again, if you have no specific trip in mind and already have miles in your account, it’s probably not a great idea to buy miles just for the heck 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. If you do opt to purchase miles, consider using a United co-branded credit card to maximize your earnings!
Featured Image Credit:
United Airlines
