United MileagePlus Offering Up to a 90% Bonus When Purchasing Miles [Targeted]

United Airlines MileagePlus members can take advantage of a new promotion when buying miles. Offers vary depending on the amount of miles you purchase, but you can purchase them with up to a 90% bonus.

This promotion is valid through July 31, 2024, at 11:59 p.m. CT.

Let’s take a closer look at the offer.

United’s MileagePlus Buy Miles Bonus Promotion

First, you’ll need to log in to your account with your MileagePlus credentials. Then, you can determine whether you will get value from buying miles with this promotional offer.

You may be targeted to score a bonus of up to 90% on purchased miles. For this promotion, receiving up to a 90% bonus brings the cost down to roughly 1.98 cents per mile.

With United, you only can purchase a maximum of 200,000 miles per calendar year. If you’re targeted with the maximum 90% bonus, you can buy 200,000 miles for a total of $3,960 after taxes.

There’s plenty you can do with that many United miles. For example, a round-trip business class flight from Los Angeles (LAX) to Tokyo (HND) starts at 140,000 miles.

Is Buying United Miles Worth It?

Let’s do the math.

If you were to max out this promotion with the best offer, you’d end up snagging the 90% bonus on the purchase of miles. Instead of purchasing miles for the usual 3.5 cents per mile, you’d get them for 1.98 cents apiece.

However, note that this price is still significantly more expensive than what we value United MileagePlus miles at: 1.2 cents apiece.

Take, for example, a round-trip flight in business class with United from Washington-Dulles (IAD) to Los Angeles (LAX) using miles. This would set you back about 120,500 MileagePlus miles in business class.

With the promotion, buying the necessary miles outright would cost you about $2,385.90. But, the cash cost of the trip is only $1,196, meaning purchasing the miles is not a good use case in this scenario.

So, if you had a zero balance in your MileagePlus account, you’d still want to pay cash for this flight rather than spend far more to purchase miles.

It’s usually not a great idea to buy miles just for the sake of it, though if you think it makes sense for you, check out our current round-up of monthly purchase point promotions.

Final Thoughts

United is targeting MileagePlus members with promotional rates on buying 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 and the cost of the miles purchase is less than the cash purchase.

If you do opt to purchase miles, consider using a United co-branded credit card to maximize your earnings!