I’ve written many times in the past, such as in this post all about Singapore Airlines, about crediting United flights to Singapore to earn 100% of the flown miles, just like in the good old days.
For example, when United has $616 round-trip tickets from Newark to Tel Aviv earlier this year, I wrote that you would earn 11,384 miles if you credited the trip to Singapore Airlines instead of just 2,650 miles if you credited the trip to United as Singapore awarded the full amount of miles flown, while United only awarded 5 miles per pre-tax dollar spent.
It was a bit surprising that the workaround lasted so long. After all, United and Singapore don’t get along. If you want to redeem United miles for a Singapore flight you need to call United to book it as United removed Singapore Airlines from their website years ago after a dispute with them.
Unfortunately with Singapore’s new mileage accrual chart, that workaround is now dead. United G and K class tickets now earn just 25% of the flown miles with Singapore. That’s even less than the 50% of flown miles that most other Star Alliance carriers offer for United flights. Better options for those fares include crediting the flight to Air Canada Aeroplan, Aegean, Avianca, COPA, EgyptAir, Turkish, etc for 50% of the flown miles.
United L, S, and T class fares will earn 50% of the flown miles with Singapore, Q, V, and W fares will earn 75% of the flown miles, and only high price B, E, H, M, U, and Y class fares will earn 100% of the flown miles.
Is it worth crediting a flight to another airline for 50% of the flown miles? It depends on many factors, including how much the ticket costs, how many miles will be flown, the value in the other airline’s award chart, the ease of redemptions from the other airline, the expiration policy of the other airline’s miles, etc. It also depends on whether you’re trying to earn elite status with United, as then you would want to credit the flight to United. And finally it depends on whether you have a United credit card, as being a cardholder allows you to use miles on significantly more flights than partner airlines or non-cardholders have access to.
Some airlines, like Alaska Airlines, still award 100% of their flown miles. But the era of earning a lot of miles while flying on cheap fares is coming to an end.
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10 Comments On "Goodbye To The United-Singapore Workaround"
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I really don’t understand it. Why is it worthwhile to credit cards to give 50K miles or more (for which they pay hard cash) after using a card for a mere $3000 or so in purchases, but it’s not worthwhile for an airline to give 10K miles (which cost them next to nothing) when you buy a ticket and fly with them to Israel?
The airlines sell the miles to the credit card bank, so they make a nice profit on the sale of those miles.
The airlines are not making anything by giving you miles for that flight, other than getting you to book that flight. With the major US airlines all copying each other, they won’t lose the sale, so they are all limiting how many miles they will give out for cheap tickets.
It was a question of comparison. Why is it worthwhile for the banks to pay so much to get your business (the small fee which they charge on the transactions), as opposed to the airlines.
mendel, don’t be a prick
Hi dan
We have 6 ricket for our famly by united. It is any airlne combined points for family members to credit the united 616 flight
Thank you for all
Sam mizrachi
Where is the best to credit the cheap Air Canada tickets ?
I credited the United flights to each of my brothers accounts before Pesach when we flew to Arizona on united would it be risky if I transferred from my chase cc to their krisflyer accounts to use their points in their account 4K each? Being that I no longer want to credit united flights in the future to their accounts being that your saying you’ll only get 25% of the miles? Or is it risky that I’ll get shut down even though we have the same last name? Also using Singapore other then ua flights direct when going to Israel or back is not worth it the fuel surcharges are a fortune. I am currently in Israel and air Berlin canceled my flight for after succos October 16 in either waiting for them to rebook me or use my krisflyer miles problem is that the only availability after the chag Monday or Tuesday is through Vienna and the surcharges are a fortune like 400 usd if you can help me in any way thank you dan
I have 21k Kris elite miles. Do they give 25 percent elite miles now too? Or only flying miles?
i credit my united u class by miles and more wher i get 11,332 miles for a round trip and they have a lot of times very good offers flying to europe
This means you get the amount of miles you have flown?