Finally got a great travel redemption on United

[IWOL]

Ive always struggled to use my airline miles on United but today I finally was able to get a very high value redemption for my miles.

I booked 2 First Class roundrtrip tickets form LA to London on a direct flight for $4200 plus 80K miles for both tickets. This seems like a very good redemption value for 80K points since the purchase price for the 2 tickets was $14K. Basically got 10K value for 80,000 points.

The best deal I could find outside of this was $6K per ticket through a broker.

I used United 7 day fare lock to reserve the fair/seat.

Now to decide which card would be best to pay with. I could use up all my Arrival miles and get $3K off the ticket or I could use CSP and earn an extra 8K URs or 8k United with UA Explorer.

 Does anyone know if you earn miles on upgarded tickets?

[Anonymous]

Great use of miles! Congrats!

[dilettante]

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@IWOL wrote:

Ive always struggled to use my airline miles on United but today I finally was able to get a very high value redemption for my miles.

I booked 2 First Class roundrtrip tickets form LA to London on a direct flight for $4200 plus 80K miles for both tickets. This seems like a very good redemption value for 80K points since the purchase price for the 2 tickets was $14K. Basically got 10K value for 80,000 points.

The best deal I could find outside of this was $6K per ticket through a broker.

I used United 7 day fare lock to reserve the fair/seat.

Now to decide which card would be best to pay with. I could use up all my Arrival miles and get $3K off the ticket or I could use CSP and earn an extra 8K URs or 8k United with UA Explorer.

 Does anyone know if you earn miles on upgarded tickets?

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Though I've never upgraded tickets with points or am current with UA's miles earning structure, usually you will earn miles and at the rate based on class of service of tickets purchased as well as status with the airline, even if on award upgrade.  You don't earn miles if you're using a ticket completely paid with miles.  You do however, get all the other perks of the class you're flying, such as First Class lounge access, special security entry lanes, etc., even with an award ticket.

IMO, you should use your Arrival to pay (unless you need to top off points with United or UR partners).  With Arrival, you'll get most of your ticket paid off with points and earn 10% back to use on other future travel charges (which if you're going to London, I'm sure you'll incur quite a bit if you're using your chip & pin Arrival).

I can commiserate with you on the difficulty of using UA miles when you don't have much flexibility with schedules and destinations.  We've had close to 200k miles sitting in our UA account for a few years because we haven't used United much lately.  I miss the old days, when you could easily book first class tickets with miles earned from a few overseas trips.  The best I could do lately was to finally be able to find 2 one way UA Global First for 160K miles that worked with our schedules.  But it took quite a few searches over the span of a few weeks through DH's elite status account.

Enjoy your trip and miles!

[hot4u]

Congrats on your Future trip.

United redemption can be tricky and I have sign up bonus miles to burn since usually fly AA.

Last week as able to book my sister in law Round trip to Hawaii from STL next month using a supersavor 36,000 Miles plus $11.20

Best $12.00 present to wife for Xmas....