Man, the hits keep on coming. After learning earlier this morning that Citi is putting the ThankYou kibosh on the 10% annual points rebate enjoyed by Rewards+ cardholders, we’ve now discovered that United is killing one of the last remaining sweet spots in its program: the Excursionist Perk.
Here’s Greg’s simplified explanation of the Excursionist Perk:
- If you book a multi-city award that begins and ends in the same region, then:
- You can book a free one-way segment in the middle of your trip as long as that free segment is in a different region from where you began.
- Your free segment must not cross regions.
This has been very cool feature of United Mileage Plus for years now, and one that Greg used to great effect in the 40K to Far Away Challenge, after which Nick took excellent advantage on a trip to Africa. Unfortunately, as one of several updates that United published today, it announced that award tickets using the excursionist perk would no longer be possible as of 8/21/25.
The News
- In a published announcement today, United announced several changes to its Mileage Plus program, including:
- The Excursionist Perk will no longer be available on award tickets, starting 8/21/25. Bookings made before that date will be honored.
- United will no longer publish a mileage upgrade chart, starting 11/24/25.
- Instant upgrades will no longer be offered at booking for elite members on expensive economy fares (Y,B,M), starting 8/21/25.
Quick Thoughts
Pour one out for our good friend, the Excursionist Perk. I think that everyone one on the FM Team has used it for one reason or another, as it effectively allowed you to buy two, get one free on United award tickets.
United has been steadily chiseling away at Mileage Plus for years, to the point that it’s now difficult to find redemptions in the program that can’t be done more cheaply or efficiently through other Star Alliance carriers. The Excursionist Perk was a shining exception that we hoped would fly under the radar (pun intended), since it’s complex enough that not many people would take advantage of it…or so we thought.
The eye of Sauron United has finally landed on this last bubbling bit of Mileage Plus joy and decided to plug it up, once and for all, on August 21st. I suppose the good news is that you can still take advantage by booking an Excursionist ticket before then, just know that if you make changes after 8/21, you’ll lose it.
The other two changes will be fairly banal for most folks. United doing away with the award chart for upgrades indicates that it will now start pricing them dynamically, according to demand. That could cause some upgrades to be cheaper, but will undoubtedly mean that others will be dearer. The complimentary upgrades at booking for elite members flying top-end economy tickets will likely only will affect those whose work would pay for them. They’re not cheap, and sometimes those fare classes are actually more expensive than buying directly into discount first class.
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to me the Excursionist perq was not worth it all. I used it once to fly to Europe and then fly for “free” withing Europe. But that “free” was not actually free as you still pay taxes and fees and giving that United charges much more miles now to fly to Europe than other airlines, you are better off to avoid United for this kind of trip.
“The other two changes” is a larger loss for some of us than you think. For ORD-LHR and EWR-LHR, buying B fare class and then using MileagePlus Upgrade Awards all but guaranteed a cheap upgrade with a close to 100% success rate.
These routes were exclusively operated by a high-J 763, with 46 Polaris seats in a 167-seat jet, and you could pretty much guarantee enough PZ seats opening up close to departure (maybe with the exception of some extreme peak travel days like special holidays).
If you booked B class (which was truly “full fare” costing thousands of dollars in the past but is now basically at Economy Plus prices, about $200 more each way over the cheapest non-basic economy fare), the upgrade cost was 20,000 miles with zero co-pay (although you had to pay $128 UK departure taxes on the return leg).
So for about $550 + 40,000 miles round trip, you could have an almost guaranteed upgrade from the cheapest non-basic economy fare to Polaris. That was exceptional value (the cheapest cash upgrade was usually around $1800 RT).
Kirby really seems to get his juices flowing by screwing over the people doing business with his company. I’m trying to see how any of this screams premium but I’m coming up empty.
It’s quite niche but this was one of the dwindling ways to still get outsized value with United. As long as United keeps occasional Polaris flights for 80K around the program won’t be useless (just as Sky Miles are sometimes valuable) but MileagePlan keeps moving closer to a fixed value redemption.
I’m in a OneWorld hub and worry how much longer Alaska and American will keep up their great redemption options. I think regulatory eyes from the Hawaiian merger will keep Alaska good for a while (and they seem to be more interested in the points crowd) but for both their main domestic competition are gutting the value of their loyalty programs. At some point the axe will fall if they have no competitive need to provide better value. We can hope American keeps up their good redemptions to make up for poor customer satisfaction scores!
Nooooo! I just used the excursionist perk for the first time last month to snag a couple free first class trips.
Happy I got to use it once, but sad it’s going away. 🙁
RIP…and h/t to Carrie and Drew for demonsrating how to get the most out of it. I last used the Perk in Africa, where ALG-CPT//VFA-MBA//ADD-TUN was just 40K + $115 tax. Combined it with a Chase Portal redemption of only 36.7K for SFO-ALG//TUN-SFO plus 22 hours in Paris.
Finally wanted to use it next year but now it is dying…
Condolences to Nick.
Yeah, this is sad. But honestly, it’s not going to impact many people – it’s very obscure, and even if you know about it, it’s hard to actually use for anything you actually need/want (other than for bloggers). I’m surprised it lasted as long as it had.
If United had to kill something, better this than some other things I can think of.
BTW, you seem to have (inadvertently?) turned off comments for the Avios Transfer article. I had a question on that, but no can post.
Ah, thanks for the heads up. Occasionally, that happens, but it’s not something that we intend! Should be fixed now.
Indeed, it is now fixed, and thanks. Question posted.
I use it several times a year. Will definitely miss it, and will be looking for bookings to make before they kill it off.
I disagree. If the Excursionist perq is niche then it’s not costing United much and should therefore be retained. Why wipe out something that doesn’t cost you much and keeps people loyal?