Overview of United MileagePlus Redemptions

As United Airlines is a member of Star Alliance, you can redeem MileagePlus miles for award flights on United or any other Star Alliance airline:

You can also use United MileagePlus miles to book flights on any of United’s other partner airlines:

• Aer Lingus
• Air Dolomiti
• Azul
• Eurowings
• Eurowings Discover
• Edelweiss Air
• Hawaiian Airlines (inter-island flights only)
• Juneyao Airlines
• Vistara

United miles cannot be redeemed for First Class Suites on Singapore Airlines A380 flights. (Premium cabin availability on other Singapore Airlines long-haul services is also usually restricted.)

United MileagePlus award pricing

United removed award charts for itineraries including United-operated flights in November 2019. For United flights, dynamic award pricing now applies. This means every seat on any United Airlines flight is available to book using MileagePlus miles, but the number of miles required can be very high when there isn’t any Saver award availability.

United used to use region-based award charts for award travel exclusively on partner airlines. It has also now stopped publishing award charts for travel on partner airlines, but prices don’t seem to fluctuate on a daily basis for partner airline awards.

United offers an “Excursionist Perk” on round-trip bookings where the journey begins and ends in the same region, and the destination is in a second region. This allows for a free one-way flight within the destination region (and effectively a free stopover). For example, if you redeemed United miles for a round-trip award from Sydney to Houston, with a return flight from San Francisco to Sydney, you could add a Houston-San Francisco flight in the middle of the trip for no extra miles.

United MileagePlus does not impose fuel surcharges when redeeming miles on United Airlines and most partner airlines.

How to book

All award flights can be booked on the United website. If a flight doesn’t appear online, it probably can’t be booked using United miles.

Learn more or get assistance with redeeming United MileagePlus miles

Australian Frequent Flyer Platinum members have access to our comprehensive guide to buying and redeeming United MileagePlus miles in Course 6 of the AFF Training program. Learn more about the Australian Frequent Flyer Training Courses →

If you’d like expert, personalised assistance with redeeming United MileagePlus miles for flights, our Frequent Flyer Concierge team may be able to help!

Australian Frequent Flyer also has a United Airlines discussion forum.

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