Update: DEAD!
Earn 60,000 Bonus Miles For Spending $3,000 On The Chase United Explorer Consumer Card
Table of Contents
Limited time signup bonus
For a limited time, you can earn 60,000 bonus miles for opening a Chase United Explorer card and spending $3,000 within 3 months.
Note you can also earn 100,000 miles on the United Business Card. You can read more about that card here.
Comparison to previous signup bonus:
The standard offer for this card is 40K miles.
The previous limited time offer for this card was 40K miles for spending $2,000 and an additional 25K miles for spending $10,000. That offer had 5K more bonus miles, but also required $7,000 in more spending than this offer requires.
Annual fee
The $95 annual fee is waived for the first year with this offer.
Welcome bonus terms
You can receive the bonus on this card if you haven’t received a bonus on a United Explorer Consumer card in the past 24 months and don’t currently have a United Explorer Consumer card.
You can receive the bonus on this card even if you got a United business card in the past 24 months or currently have a United business card.
5/24
All Chase cards are now subject to 5/24 restrictions. That means it will be hard to get approved if you have been approved for 5 or more consumer credit cards in the past 24 months. Read more about that here.
Card benefits
United has added new features to the United Explorer card recently:
- It now earns 2 miles per dollar on hotels and dining as well as on United purchases.
- Cardholders get Global Entry/Pre-Check for free.
- Cardholders get a 25% rebate on inflight WiFi, food, and drink purchases.
The card continues to offer benefits like:
- A free checked bag for the cardholder and a companion, even on basic economy fares.
- A free carry-on bag for the cardholder and companions, even on basic economy fares.
- Priority boarding for the cardholder and companions, even on basic economy fares.
- The ability to use online checkin and get a boarding pass in advance on basic economy fares. United does not allow online checkin on basic economy fares unless you have elite status or a United card with free bags.
- 2 free United Club passes every year for being a cardmember.
- Primary rental car CDW insurance in every country.
- No foreign exchange fees.
- Exclusive cardmember access to auctions that allow you to use your miles for once-in-a-lifetime experiences. A few years ago I used 25K miles for 4 field box seats to an Indians game along with the right to run onto the field before the top of the 7th inning and swipe 2nd base right off the field. Nobody could believe it as I walked around the ballpark with 2nd base. I even got it signed after the game by the Indians wining pitcher that night, who was equally shocked that I actually had 2nd base.
- Cardholders with United elite status get free upgrades on coach award tickets on upgrade eligible routes.
- If you spend $12K/year on the card it will give you 500 PQPs and if you spend $24K/year you’ll get 1,000 PQPs. PQPs from multiple cards can stack together.
- United miles never expire, even if you close your card.
You can downgrade this card to a no-annual fee card. Having any United Consumer card as well as the new United Business Card allows you to earn 5,000 bonus miles every anniversary. Read more here.
Expanded award ticket availability
The reason this card is the best airline card you can get isn’t for the spending benefits, it’s for the perks. And they are awesome.
The reason this is my favorite airline card is that the United card is the only airline card that offers expanded award ticket availability.
This increases the value of your miles significantly and in turn makes the Chase Quadfecta/Quinfecta spending strategy even more valuable.
Cardholders have access to expanded saver coach award availability (XN class), last seat standard coach award availability (YN class), and last seat standard business/first class award availability (JN class).
It’s not just slightly expanded. There is a world of difference between the availability that cardholders can access and the availability for non-cardholders.
Availability calendar for non-cardholders:
Availability calendar for cardholders:
Read more about this in the United Expert Mode post.
This availability differential applies to all domestic and international routes and makes it crucial to be a United cardholders.
Expanded Plan B availability
As you have better access to saver coach awards you’ll also have better ability to do Plan B awards.
Plan B allows you to redeem for saver business class awards when there’s only saver coach available! Read more about Plan B in this post.
No airline besides United offers a Plan B style award redemption.
Discounted awards for cardholders
United runs promotions offering discounts on award flights for cardholders.
They have offered these discounts for travel to Tahiti, Ski destinations, Hawaii, Mexico, The Caribbean, and more.
Excursionist Perk
While American and Delta have eliminated free stopovers, United continues to offer a free excursionist perk as described in this post. Just use the multi-city award search on United.com to piece it together.
A round-trip to 2 Hawaiian Islands is just 45,000 miles round-trip thanks to the free excursionist perk:
A round-trip ticket to 2 European or South American cities is just 60,000 miles round-trip thanks to the free excursionist perk:
A flight to 2 of my favorite cities in Asia, Hong Kong and Chiang Mai, Thailand is 80K miles thanks to the perk:
You’re even allowed a free open jaw in addition to the perk to really maximize your travel. For example this itinerary includes travel to London, Paris, and Zurich. You can take a train or use 4.5K BA Avios to get from London to Paris to fill the hole in the open jaw:
Of course the free stopover isn’t just useful from the US.
You can stopover in NYC and LA when flying from Tel Aviv to the US:
If you find yourself in Japan you can fly on the island hopper to 2 cities in Micronesia (I’ve been hankering to get back to Palau since the moment I left) for 30K miles:
Partner airlines
United has dozens of partner airlines which means lots of great award opportunities. It can be worth checking for award space on partner sites like ANA or Aeroplan.com to search for award availability and then call United to book if you don’t see availability on United.
Partners airlines include:
- ANA
- Aegean Airlines
- Aer Lingus
- Air Canada
- Air China
- Air Dolomiti
- Air India
- Air New Zealand
- Aeromar
- Asiana Airlines
- Austrian Airlines
- Avianca Airlines
- Azul Brazilian Airlines
- Brussels Airlines
- Cape Air
- Copa Airlines
- Croatia Airlines
- EVA Air
- Edelweiss
- Egyptair
- Ethiopian Airlines
- Eurowings
- Germanwings
- Hawaiian Airlines
- Island Air
- Juneyao Airlines
- LOT Polish
- Lufthansa
- Scandinavian Airlines
- Shenzhen Airlines
- Silver Airways
- Singapore
- South African Airways
- Swiss International Airlines
- TAP Portugal
- THAI
- Turkish Airlines
Will you signup for a United card?
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26 Comments On "Earn 60,000 Bonus Miles For Spending $3,000 On The Chase United Explorer Consumer Card"
All opinions expressed below are user generated and the opinions aren’t provided, reviewed or endorsed by any advertiser or DansDeals.
Are these offers thanks to dynamic/devaluation ?
Can you get both this and the new business card?
Yes.
Can you downgrade both the personal and business to TravelBank or only 1?
I don’t believe there is a business travelbank card.
Will Chase pull twice if applying for the consumer and the business united CC on same day?
YMMV
What does that stand for
I just signed up in December for the standard award of 40K + 25K for $10,000 spent.
Will they match this offer, 60K for $3,000, if i contact them and request it?
Send an SM and let us know.
No luck on my end
SM to chase to match the offer, they didn’t agree to.
Does it pay to HUCA?
I already have this card, I was planning on signing up for the NEW ” Chase United Business Card!” for the 100k sign up, any reason I should hold on to this explorer? I was thinking to cancel or downgrade to a card with no annual fee.
How long is the ”limited time” ?
Yeah, Dan, how long do you think will last?
This is a much better deal than 100,000 miles for 10k spend.
Does the travel bank card also have expanded award availability?
No
What makes this a better deal than the 100k for the 10k spend
If you need to spend a extra 10k to get the bonus
Is this the best offer chase offered on United personal cc?
Dan do I get the free baggage for just having this card or I must book tickets using this card?
Do I need to pay for the flight with this card in order to get free baggage or by just having this card is get free baggage?
@dan you should write that in order to get free baggage on a United flight with this credit card is by purchasing the ticket with this CC. I signed up for this CC in part because I had a United flight coming up and I wanted free baggage and I only realized afterward that I needed to purchase the tickets with this card. It’s a little misleading to say Free baggage with this card and not say that you must purchase the ticket with this card.
I opened this card back in January and only got a 40k bonus when I reached $3000 in spending within 3 months. Any idea why I didn’t get the 60k bonus?
I’m sort of getting started here. Should I begin with this or with Chase UR cards?
I’m a bochur so I don’t do very much spending, it’s mainly signup bonuses for me.
Any advice welcome!