United Excursionist Perk Booking Error? Try This Workaround To Up Your United Mileage Game!

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I’ve written about United’s Excursionist Perk many times. Along with free changes or cancellations until the time of departure, the perk adds a ton of value to United miles, despite United often charging more miles than other Star Alliance carriers.

It allows a free one-way flight when booking select round-trip awards. To book it, the trip must start and end in the same region and the free flight must be within one region, though not necessarily within the start or ending region of the rest of the trip. The trip must start in a different region than the free flight.

The official intention would be to book something like this, with a free flight from London to Zurich on a round-trip business class award for 160K United miles.

You can do that by using the multi-city search function, though I always search for the individual legs on a one-way basis first to find award space.

The segment would cost 0 miles in coach if you book in coach for the preceding segment, or in business if you booked business for the preceding segment

In reality, a lot more is possible.

For example, a flight within Africa costs 35K miles in coach or 90K miles in business class:

But it’s not hard to get it for 0 miles. Just sandwich it in between any 2 other flights, such as 2 domestic flights in coach to get it for 0 miles in coach:

Or make the preceding leg in first class to get it for 0 miles in business class:

Sometimes though, United.com will error out when trying to search for a multi-leg itinerary, like this search for Newark-Sydney, Sydney-Queenstown, and Auckland-Newark:

In that case, just book the Newark-Sydney as a one-way, and then change the itinerary to the multi-leg itinerary. Or book Newark-Sydney and Auckland-Newark and change the itinerary to the multi-leg itinerary.

By changing it after booking, you’ll get the 0 mile extra flight without hitting the booking error:

That’s a nice savings off the regular price:

There are endless opportunities for the Excursionist Perk. Which have you used?

Want to earn United miles?

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Do you take advantage of the United Excursionist Perks?