As part of United’s award chart changes that are coming on Wednesday, they will only charge 8,000 miles to fly one-way on a nonstop flight within any single region outside of the US/Canada on a partner airline, as long as the flight is less than 800 miles in distance.
These new short-haul awards are now bookable on United.com!
Here are some sample routes that qualify for this new award type:
- Central America: Panama to Liberia, Costa Rica on COPA will drop from 12.5K to 8K miles.
- Northern South America: Quito to Bogota on Avianca will drop from 12.5K to 8K miles.
- Southern South America: Rio de Janeiro to Iguassu Falls/IGU on Avianca will drop from 12.5K to 8K miles.
- Europe: Zurich to Venice on Swiss will drop from 15K to 8K miles.
- Middle East: Cairo to Amman on EgyptAir will drop from 17.5K to 8K miles.
- North Asia: Seoul to Beijing on Asiana will drop from 15K to 8K miles.
- Central Asia: Bangalore, India to the Maldives on Air India will drop from 17.5K to 8K miles.
- South Asia: Ho Chi Minh City to Singapore on Singapore will drop from 17.5K to 8K miles.
- Southern Africa: Johannesburg to Cape Town on South African will drop from 17.5K to 8K miles.
- Australia/New Zealand: Auckland to Queenstown, New Zealand on Air New Zealand will drop from 17.5K to 8K miles.
Note that while coach prices have dropped, business/first prices are still the same:
You can check the distance between any 2 airports using GCMap.com. For example a flight from Singapore to Ho Chi Minh City is just 676 miles in distance, so it qualifies for an 8K award:
It’s worth that a flight such as Athens to Tel Aviv will not qualify for the 8K award despite being under 800 miles, as those cities are in different regions. You can view United’s regions here.
Japan is its own region and flights within Japan are available for just 5K miles each way.
Hawaii is also its own region and flights within Hawaii are currently available for 6K miles each way, but that will be going up to 7K miles each way starting on 11/1.
The 8K award is not available within the US or Canada.
A United flight within the United States or between the United States and Canada that are less than 700 miles in distance is available for 10K miles one-way. Flights are Air Canada are excluded. It’s worth noting that this can be a connecting or nonstop flight, but United will still only charge 10K miles even if the connecting flight would make the flight distance more than 700 miles. That’s because United only looks at the nonstop distance between the origin and destination airports for this award. In other words I can fly from Cleveland to Kansas City for 10K miles even if I fly via Chicago, which would put the actual flight distance at 719 miles. That’s due to the fact that the theoretical nonstop flight distance from Cleveland to Kansas City is under 700 miles.
Alas, that leaves domestic flights within Canada without any discounted short-haul flight option when using United miles.
Will you be booking any 8K awards? What 8K award bargains can you find? Hit the comments!
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12 Comments On "United’s New 8K Short-Haul Partner Mileage Awards Are Now Bookable!"
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Too bad that doesn’t cover AC awards from say Seattle to Vancouver.
Yup, Canada gets the short stick on this one due to the within Canada/Air Canada exclusion.
I already booked it last night, I booked a flight from Zürich to Brussels for 8000 miles
Thanks for sharing?
Do award bookings eu to eu get one free suitcase?
Depends on the airline.
Is TLV-IST-PEK-MEL affected by this devaluation?
Yes, https://www.dansdeals.com/points-travel/milespoints/2-days-uniteds-2017-award-chart-changes-good-bad-ugly-try-lock-access-current-award-chart/
This is a useful award, that I’m sure I’ll use sometime. It’s a good companion to the BA Avios option, especially for flights between 650 miles (where Avios 4500 mile awards are capped) and 800 miles. Of course, it all depends on where you’re travelling. In lots of places in the world, there are great deals on short haul flights, especially on low fare airlines. Like in South Africa, while South African Airlines internal flights are expensive, their low fare subsidiary (Mango) sometimes sells seats between CPT and JNB for as little as $50. In South America, flights from Rio to Iguassu are often well under $100. So it kind of depends on how many UA miles you have, and how willing you are to jump through some hoops to “manufacture” more.
vie-lon and vie-zrh are also 8k miles nice deal
What if there are non stop flights on partners of united (swiss) not showing up o the u tied website as non stop, but as one stop only flights…..yet they should be 8000 mile flights if United will show the Swiss flights available on the Swiss website.
Cairo to Amman! now there’s a relevant route for this site’s readers 🙂