Last night I noticed that a United award flight from Cleveland to LaGuardia was pricing at just 9.5K miles, when it should be 10K miles as a short-haul award.
I searched other airports and sure enough, United has launched dynamically priced awards on many routes. In the long-run that’s probably a bad thing, but there are some bargains to be had. For now, there’s still the same price caps on saver and standard awards like before, there are just cheaper options on select dates and routes. That’s much better than Delta which eliminated award charts and now sells basic economy award tickets, but we’ll see where this all winds up.
American also has “Web specials” with award pricing that is all over the board and tickets that don’t allow date changes and aren’t available to partner airlines:
AA Web Special Pricing:
United’s dynamic saver award pricing takes saver awards and drops the price below the previous cap with no other restrictions:
I went about compiling a list of all award rates on all of United’s flights to/from NYC and here’s where I found one-way saver awards for less than the normal rate:
- Atlanta, Chicago, Fort Lauderdale, Montreal, Myrtle Beach, Orlando, Toronto: 5K
- Asheville, Norfolk, Richmond, Washington DC: 5.5K
- Burlington, Portland/PWM: 6K
- Knoxville, Savannah, Syracuse: 9K
- Buffalo, Charleston, Charlotte, Cleveland, Grand Rapids, Rochester: 9.5K
- Houston: 10.5K
- Denver, Minneapolis, New Orleans: 11K
- Miami, West Palm Beach: 11.5K
- Dallas, Madison, Nashville, Seattle: 12K
Short haul routes to/from NYC where I only found the regular 10K saver rate: Akron, Albany, Bangor, Boston, Detroit, Greensboro, Greenville, Halifax, Hilton Head, Indianapolis, Louisville, Nantucket, Pittsburgh, Presque Isle, Providence, Quebec City, Raleigh, South Bend, Traverse City
Long haul routes to/from NYC where I only found the regular 12.5K saver rate: Austin, Bentonville, Bozeman, Fort Myers, Jacksonville, Jackson Hole, Kansas City, Key West, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Memphis, Milwaukee, Montrose, Orange County, Palm Springs, Pensacola, Phoenix, Portland/PDX, Rapid City, S. Louis, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, Sarasota, Steamboat Springs, Tampa, Vail, Vancouver
Other routes, including Anchorage, Honolulu, San Juan, and all international destinations had regular saver award pricing.
Will you book any of these new discounted awards? Would you like to see this pricing roundup for other United hubs? Hit the comments!
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23 Comments On "United Launches Dynamically Priced Awards Starting At Just 5K Miles; Roundup Of Award Pricing On All Domestic Routes From NYC!"
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Is it possible they got to many partner award bookings on their own metal and decided to get stuff going even?
They always had XN availability.
Just want to say wow, thanks for putting this together! Must’ve been a lot of work!
Thanks 🙂
+1
Why is it bad in the long run? You think that theyll price higher than 10k/12.5k eventually?
I worry that more airlines will match Delta in deleting award charts and charging whatever they feel like charging.
Dates? Haven’t seen any 5k show up. Thanks.
For the most part I searched May 1st and then opened the 30 day award pricing calendar for each destination.
Just wanna ask if u tried doing a guest search without a milageplus card and the same results will show up
Question: How do you check award pricing flight as you showed above for AA?
I want to check award pricing flights from JFK to LAX for AA.
Use the desktop site, click redeem miles, and then click on open calendar.
If they don’t eventually raise other award prices to compensate, I can’t see what’s in it for united to lower rates.
Matching the competition.
Dan,
Have you found any deals in your search? From the limited searches I did (ex ewr-fll 6/4 was 5k or $53) these ” discounts” would not be a good use of points. I am seeing more and more of 23k and 32k rewards replacing the 12.5k standard rewards.
I didn’t check the cash pricing.
You worry that they’ll eventually get rid of the award charts, but why are the discounts what’s triggering your worry.
Because that was the Delta model.
And AA and United love copying Delta.
Booked SFO-LAX for 5k miles + $5.60 Was surprised to see it. Didn’t realize the extent of this new pricing…
Cheapest i found from/to YUL is 6k
Seems that most of these award flights work out to about a penny a mile when compared to paid flights. Certainly a better deal than some of the earlier comparisons (on short hauls) but no real bargains here where I’d use miles instead of $.
CVG for as low as 7k on a brief glance.
United is no longer offering kosher on some long haul flights. I just booked Ft.Laudedale to Anchorage First Class. This is an almost twelve hour trip. Everyone else gets fed. I get to bring my food.