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United is currently offering some excellent pricing for business class awards to many locations worldwide. I’m not sure if it’s a glitch or some kind of unannounced award sale, but it probably won’t last long and so it’d be best to book ASAP, especially considering there are 4+ seats available on some routes.
The Deal
- Book business class award flights through United for 60,000 MileagePlus miles from the US to several worldwide locations.
Quick Thoughts
These lower-priced awards seem to be based on United operating the first leg, with a partner airline operating one or more subsequent legs of the journey.
For example, you can fly from New York to Bangkok for 60,000 miles. If you only need to book for one person, there’s tons of availability. Most routings have two stops, although you can route via Zurich for a one-stop itinerary, with the first leg being on United metal and the ZRH-BKK leg being operated by Thai Airways.
Awards to New Zealand are also pricing out at 60,000 MileagePlus miles in business class which is a fantastic price. In some cases there’s even availability for 4+ seats in business class, although some of the search results appear to be misleading. For example, there are a few days in July with flights from Newark to Auckland showing 60,000 miles availability in business class for four people, but the lowest price displayed is 200,000 miles.
That’s not always the case though. There’s availability for at least four people in July for New York to Christchurch, albeit with a couple of stops along the way. That could be a small price to pay though seeing as it only costs 60,000 miles in business class versus 170,000 miles in Premium Economy and only just less than that in Economy!
Thailand and New Zealand aren’t the only locations pricing out in this way. Dan’s Deals reports that flights to the Maldives, Israel and more are bookable for 60,000 miles one-way. I can’t imagine that this pricing will stick around for too much longer though, so it could be best to book awards ASAP in case this opportunity gets pulled soon.
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I must not be on the right email list to get a heads up on something like this . How do I get to that place?
You can subscribe to our email newsletters here: https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/#Blog_Posts_via_Email
To make sure you get time-sensitive ones like this, it’d be best to select the Instant Subscription which means you’d get an email within 30 minutes every time we publish a new post.
If you’re concerned about getting too many emails and would prefer to just get one per day, pick the Daily Subscription. That goes out once per day early in the morning, but it does mean that there’s the potential for some of the better deals to have ended by that next morning.
Chase doing an “update” stopped me from being able to transfer points. Looks like the deal is dead now too. I’m so disappointed chase does “updates” during the daytime hours. AH
They fixed the price now. I was looking at SEA-BKK… but couldn’t find the business availability from NRT/HND to BKK segment that fits our schedule all this morning playing with dates, plus Chase points transferred from 1 account last night wasn’t showing up… but just noticed price went up to 180k. Now I will have boat load of valuable chase points stuck at united. F!#%#
Yeah, looks dead on my side as well.
yeah good for all those who were able to book… hope United doesn’t cancel them. I for one actually booked the outbound last night while waiting for transfer to occur to book inbound then realized that last segment was booked as economy. stupid me.
I booked one of my segments in economy too. oi vey. keeping it now, cuz the deal is dead, and the rest is in J. But United didn’t use the usual “mixed cabin” in red which was pretty deceiving…
It’s funny how everything is relative. I’d never book ATL-LAX in regular economy (comfort is fine) b/c 4 hours is too long. OTOH, I was perfectly willing to book US to SYD to NZ with the last 4 hour leg in economy without hesitation, given that all the rest was Polaris/F. I did question myself, but was going to do it. (I just couldn’t make the dates work, given I already have the BKK trip below booked and I do still have a full time job! I was getting greedy and I knew it.)
Wow, we just booked r/t from SFO/SJC to Delhi/Mumbai for 120k in biz! Thanks for sharing!
I just booked 6(!) business class tickets SFO-AKL-SYD at 60k each for June. We had 40K tickets in economy taking us to Sydney so this is incredible for our family to fly Polaris all together. We’ve got plans in SYD already- any monetary downside to skipping the last flight to AKL? Will they charge us if we don’t show? I know United went after some chronic skiplaggers a few years ago so I’m just wondering what the likelihood is that they’ll come after us if we do it *just this once*
You say SFO-AKL-SYD, but did you mean SFO-SYD-AKL? It sounds like the latter based on your question, plus I haven’t seen any DPs of people being able to book SYD as their destination with this deal.
I looked into this for my own travels. If AKL is your final destination, you will still need to obtain NZ visas and pay the appropriate taxes (they’re not included in your ticket, but added when you get your visas) to board the flight, and you will also not be able to check bags (there’s no picking up bags for international connections at SYD). If that still works for you, it’s unlikely that UA will go after you for the single dropped segment, but no one can tell you for sure.
Good catch and you were right- I meant SFO-SYD-AKL. We do carry on luggage only. I found a good deal using FHR and the AMX Plat credit for Park Hyatt Auckland, so I think we will take the flight. Thanks for the heads up about the visa- I forgot about that piece.
Did you book return on UA?
Even if it is a separate ticket for trip back to US.
That’s a long flight in Economy.
Thank you so much. This better be legit, since I spent (wasted) almost an entire workday trying to book this. There were some false starts which were very frustrating, but I just confirmed ATL-IAD-FRA-BKK and then BKK-MUC-EWR-ATL for next Feb. for 120k miles and $114.It will mean about 23 hrs each way, but most of it will be in pretty nice comfort if reviews are to be believed. I tried for NZ, but couldn’t find any deals that way. But, I love Thailand, so this will be a great place to spend 8 days in Feb.
I’ll work a few days (and make sure this works) before I start booking 6 nights in a lovely Thai beach resort! Many thanks (and no hard feelings if we all went down a rabbit hole for nothing– it happens in this game).
For sure this is “legit” as UA has done this on occasion every year. But there is no way to predict when, why or how long it lasts. But I’ve never had an award ticket rejected. Unlike “mistake fares” the 60k biz class award seats are the normal “saver” price – just difficult to find. The only way UA can cancel these tickets would be for the partner to reject any partner flights.But once you get a confirmation number you should be good to go. Definitely hold off booking non-refundable lodging etc. for a week or tow.
ORD-MUC-BKK-DPS r/t in J for 2 in Sept. 120k +$88 ea. Hope it’s legit!
I’m also seeing SEA – KTM next fall for 60K. I can’t commit now, but if you can – go for it!
UA and Turkish. The UA flight is in first.
Wow what a catch. I had two of us booked economy to Bangkok from LAX for 44,000 miles each. Cancelled the flight and rebooked for same date/flight for business class 60000 miles each. Jumped ahead and got return flights 30 days later but this time to San Diego via San Francisco. Still 60,000 each. As you mentioned as long as it starts or finishes with a United Flight it works. By the way the economy fare had dropped to 40,000 one way.
Great find. 2 weeks BKK in July, busiest time. 120k round trip business MSP to BKK. Leg to Munich alone one way is 150K. I like to vacation in Thailand at least once per year, but because of lockdowns have not been back for a couple of years. Booked and ready to go!!
Just made another for March 120K RT. Sure makes it nicer when you can lay flat. Polaris Business and Thai Airways
I keep getting “We are unable to process your requestWe are unable to process your request
Please try again later or contact united.com support in the U.S. and Canada at 1-800-396-1751; the U.K. at 0800 028 5003; elsewhere use the local phone number.”
i got that and when I went through it all again, it worked fine. So, it’s not you, it’s them. ; )
Thanks for posting. Couldn’t find anything that would work for me. Found decent flights to several places in Aus/NZ from June to August out of SFO, but I’m picky and willing to wait for the next deal that includes December availability, even if that’s years from now.
Not SFO, but SJC to WLG and then on the return from either WLG or CHC to SJC seems to have pretty good availability during winter.
Ah, thanks for pointing that out. Good reminder that I should have been searching SFO – All Airports rather than SFO only. That said, those particular itineraries and others I found (e.g. to Dunedin, NZ) have more connections and travel time than I’d like, so I’m still going to pass.
This time around, I searched SFO – All Airports and went down the top 10 busiest airports in AUS/NZ, according to Wikipedia.
Nothing really usable for me that month. Maybe next time. Thanks again!
Booked a couple of one-ways (to New Zealand and to South Korea) for March 2023. Could not find same pricing for return so will deal with that later.
The flight to NZ goes through Sydney on United metal but US->SYD was pricing out much higher on by itself (at least, it was Saver level).
is it worth transferring over points for or is the risk of getting refunded too high?
My suspicion is that United will honor the tickets, but there’s no guarantee on that.
These have been widely available for many days, so I don’t see how United can possibly cancel these. I suspect the pricing is intentional. United will sell lots of points to Chase and collect lots of redeposit fees from these tickets.
Didn’t they waive redeposit fees?
Any chance those would show up in *A partners (LifeMiles, ANa, etc). I’m MR rich/UR poor at the moment! Will look it up shortly and report back
No
Not 30 days prior ro departure, although you can leave the ticket open and use it before it expires.
Nada for December/January to NZ. Not interested in visiting NZ in their winter (and it’s not unusual to see saver awards for USA summer). 10 minutes after Darin.
It might not work for every origin and destination, but I still see 60k to WLG in December from airports like SJC and SNA. From NZ, the price generally shows up from WLG or CHC though again not to all airports in the US. This has been in the United forum on flyertalk since Friday, so more discussion can be found there.