United Airlines MileagePlus: The Ultimate Guide

In 1929, William Boeing (the aviation pioneer who founded the Boeing Company), Frederick B. Rentschler and their associates brought together several smaller airlines and formed the United Aircraft and Transport Corporation. The airline became officially known as United Airlines, Inc., in 1931, and established its headquarters in Chicago, Illinois, where it remains today.

United grew over time, in part thanks to various mergers. United’s first major merger was in 1961 with Capital Airlines. At the time, this merger propelled United to the second-largest airline worldwide. In the late 1980s, United acquired many of Pan Am’s routes and by the next decade, had taken over the rest of the bankrupt airlines’ routes. In 2012, United merged into a single airline with Continental.

In 1997, United helped form what is now the world’s largest airline alliance, along with Lufthansa, Air Canada, SAS and Thai International: the Star Alliance. Between the various carriers, the Star Alliance group serves around 1,200 airports in 186 countries and operates more than 10,000 departures each day.

United remains one of the largest airlines in the world. The company serves more than 330 destinations and has a fleet of over 800 aircraft. United’s hubs include:

• Chicago–O’Hare (ORD)
• Denver (DEN)
• Guam (GUM)
• Houston–George Bush Intercontinental (IAH)
• Los Angeles (LAX)
• Newark (EWR)
• San Francisco (SFO)
• Washington–Dulles (IAD)

The first thing to do in order to start earning United MileagePlus miles is to sign up for a free MileagePlus account. You’ll need to enter some basic information such as your legal name, gender, email address, phone, etc. Make sure your information is identical to your government issued ID, to avoid future problems.

After your enrollment is complete, you’ll immediately be eligible to earn MileagePlus miles.

Flying United

MileagePlus miles are awarded when flying on eligible tickets with any of United’s Star Alliance or MileagePlus partner airlines. How many miles you earn depends on a few variables including how much you spend on the base price of your ticket, whether you are flying with United or a partner, and your elite status level, at the time of flight. Note, the base price excludes government imposed taxes and fees.

Status Miles

Elite status is how airlines reward their most loyal customers. The more you spend and fly with the airline, the more they reciprocate with benefits.

United Airlines offers four levels of elite status (called Premier status), plus a basic member status, which is the default when you sign up for a MileagePlus account.

Each premier status level earns a set number of base miles when spending money on a ticket. Premier bonus award miles are issued in addition to the base earnings and are available for flights on United, United Express, Air Canada, ANA, Austrian, Azul, Brussels, Lufthansa and SWISS.

Here are the number of miles earned at each level of Premier status:

• Basic Member: 5 MileagePlus miles per dollar spent
• Premier Silver: 7 MileagePlus miles per dollar spent
• Premier Gold: 8 MileagePlus miles per dollar spent
• Premier Platinum: 9 MileagePlus miles per dollar spent
• Premier 1K: 11 MileagePlus miles per dollar spent

Earning Status

Earning Premier status with United requires lots of flying and lots of spending. There are a few ways to earn Premier status:

• Premier Qualifying Points: This is the money-spending part. United issues PQP based on the base fare and carrier-imposed surcharge of flight purchases. Additionally, seating purchases and paid upgrades also count toward PQPs.
• Premier Qualifying Flights: Premier Qualifying Flights (PQF) is the flying requirement of United stats. PQF are essentially just flight segments. Each flight segment equals 1 PQF. Basic economy tickets are ineligible to earn PQF.

Each Premier status level has specific requirements of how many PQP and PQF you need to qualify. To earn status, you’ll need to take four flight segments with United or United Express in addition to the following:

Award flights also count as qualifying activity toward Premier status. For every 100 miles redeemed, you will earn 1 PQP. For every flight completed, you’ll earn 1 PQF.

United offers one more bonus option for earning status through credit card spending. The lowest-tier Chase United card, the United Quest℠ Card, can earn a maximum of 1,000 PQP each year. Cardholders of the United Quest℠ Card can earn up to 6,000 PQP and for cardholders of the United Club℠ Infinite Card, up to 10,000 PQP. All MileagePlus members holding an eligible Chase United card can earn 25 PQP for every $500 spent; the difference is where each card maxes out earnings.

Flights on Partners

As a member of the Star Alliance airline partnership, United partners with over two dozen airlines. United also partners with a large list of nonalliance partners. For consumers, this means you can earn and use your MileagePlus miles to book on almost all of these airlines, giving you options to fly pretty much anywhere in the world.

• Aegean Airlines (A3)
• Air Canada (AC)
• Air China (CA)
• Air India (AI)
• Air New Zealand (NZ)
• ANA (NH)
• Asiana Airlines (OZ)
• Austrian Airlines (OS)
• Avianca (AV)
• Brussels Airlines (SN)
• Copa Airlines (CM)
• Croatia Airlines (OU)
• EGYPTAIR (MS)
• Ethiopian Airlines (ET)
• EVA Air (BR)
• LOT Polish Airlines LO)
• Lufthansa (LH)
• SAS (SK)
• Shenzhen Airlines (ZH)
• Singapore Airlines (SQ)
• South African Airways (SA)
• Swiss Air Lines (LX)
• TAP Air Portugal (TP)
• Thai Airways (TG)
• Turkish Airlines (TK)

United nonalliance airline partners:

• Aer Lingus (EI)
• Air Dolomiti (EN)
• Airlink (4Z)
• Azul (AD)
• Boutique Air (4B)
• Cape Air (9K)
• Discover Airlines (4Y)
• Edelweiss (WK)
• Emirates (EK)
• Eurowings (EW)
• Flydubai (FZ)
• Hawaiian Airlines (HA)
• JSX (XE)
• Olympic Air (OA)
• Silver Airways (3M)
• Virgin Australia (VA)
• Vistara (UK)

Star Alliance Connecting Partner:

• Juneyao Air (HO)

Earning miles with partner airlines is not exactly straightforward. Depending on the airline, your mileage accrual will be based on either the fare or the flight distance plus the fare class purchased.

Flights operated by	Tickets issued by	Miles based on
United or United Express	Any airline	Fare
Star Alliance or other partner airlines	UA ticket beginning with “016”	Fare
Star Alliance or other partner airlines	Airlines other than United	Flight distance and purchased fare class

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Credit Card Spending

With the exception of one card issued through First Hawaiian Bank, all U.S.-based co-branded credit cards for United are issued by Chase Bank:

• United Gateway℠ Card
• United℠ Explorer Card
• United Club℠ Infinite Card
• United Quest℠ Card
• United℠ Business Card
• United Club℠ Business card*
• United® Credit Card from First Hawaiian Bank* (Limited to residents of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands)

United also offers more than a dozen international credit cards based in different countries.

Transfer Partners

United Airlines is a transfer partner of several programs, including credit cards and hotel loyalty programs. The ability to transfer your MileagePlus miles may offer a greater chance to maximize your rewards.

Credit Cards

• Chase Ultimate Rewards®: transfer to United at a rate of 1:1, meaning for every point you transfer to United, you end up with 1 MileagePlus mile. There are several credit cards that earn Ultimate Rewards, including the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card and the Chase Sapphire Reserve®.

Hotel Transfer Partners

Based on our findings, only Marriott Bonvoy offers a partnership with United that is compelling enough to provide value. The others allow transfers, but the rate is not attractive for most situations.

• Accor: ALL–Accor Live Limitless Rewards points transfer at a rate of 2,000 Rewards Points to 1,000 MileagePlus miles.
• Choice Privileges Rewards: Choice Privileges Rewards points convert to MileagePlus miles at a ratio of 5,000 points to 1,000 miles.
• Hilton: Hilton Honors points transfer at a rate of 10,000 Hilton points to 1,000 MileagePlus Miles.
• Hyatt: World of Hyatt points transfer at a rate of 2.5 World of Hyatt points to 1 MileagePlus mile. Additionally, members can receive a 5,000-mile bonus when converting 50,000 World of Hyatt points into 20,000 MileagePlus miles.
• IHG: Members of IHG One Rewards can convert their points to United MileagePlus at a rate of 10,000 points to 2,000 miles.
• Marriott: Marriott Bonvoy points transfer at a rate of 3 Bonvoy points to 1 MileagePlus mile, plus get an extra 10,000 miles when you transfer 60,000 Bonvoy points. MileagePlus Premier members can convert their miles to Marriott Bonvoy points at a rate of 1:1, up to 100,000 a year.
• Shangri-La: Shangri-La Circle points can be transferred at rate of 1 point to 1 MileagePlus mile.
• Wyndham: Wyndham Rewards points transfer at a rate of 6,000 Wyndham Rewards to 1,200 MileagePlus miles, 16,000 Wyndham Rewards to 3,200 MileagePlus miles and 30,000 Wyndham Rewards to 6,000 MileagePlus miles.

Shopping Portals

United’s shopping portal is an easy way to earn more miles at no extra cost. You can log in with your MileagePlus credentials.

The MileagePlus shopping portal runs mileage promotions around several holidays, so if you time it right, you can earn a MileagePlus bonus.

Buying Miles

Buying frequent flyer miles will generally result in poor value and is usually only recommended if you need to top off your account for a planned trip.

Sometimes United will offer bonus MileagePlus miles when purchasing MileagePlus miles. It may look enticing, but speculatively buying is still not recommended.

How To Maximize Miles During Booking

United offers award redemptions based on a dynamic pricing system as opposed to a fixed regional award chart. This means that United no longer has an award chart with set prices. Miles required to book a flight are based on variables like supply and demand, competitor pricing and fuel costs.

Finding great redemptions with a dynamic system can be a little more time consuming, but there is still value buried within—you just need to know a few tips and tricks to locate better redemptions.

One of the easiest ways to save on mileage costs when booking through United is to have a Chase co-branded United credit card. Having a Chase United card gives you access to United’s XN fare bucket—expanded award availability for economy class only available to cardholders.

This flight from Chicago (ORD) to Paris (CDG) shows XN availability, indicated by the “Exclusively available to you as a MileagePlus Chase Cardmember” wording.

On United Flights

With all this in mind, it’s time to book a flight. To book an award flight with United MileagePlus miles, head over to United.com and log in to your MileagePlus account. Fill in the search criteria and make sure to select the box “book with miles”.

Select the option to find flights and United will take you to the results. One of the nice things about the United search engine is the ability to search by a 30-day calendar view.

On Flights With Partners

Redeeming MileagePlus miles to fly on partners is the exact same process for booking flights on United’s own planes. The search will let you know if a partner flight is available. This flight for just 6,000 MileagePlus miles is operated by Star Alliance partner Croatia Airlines.

Fees

United does not charge carrier-imposed fees on its own flights and does not transfer over carrier-imposed fees from its partners. When traveling within the U.S., you only need to pay $5.60 for government-imposed security taxes.

United permanently eliminated change fees for most economy cabin and premium-cabin tickets when traveling within the U.S. or between the U.S. and Mexico or the Caribbean, so there won’t be any hidden fees there regardless of last-minute circumstances. International travel originating in the U.S. will also not incur any change fees.

Sweet Spots

United’s dynamic pricing model makes finding sweet spots more about sheer luck than skill, but fortunately, United does have one trick up its sleeve that can turn an okay redemption great—it’s called the Excursionist Perk.

The Excursionist Perk is defined by United as “a free one-way award within select multi-city itineraries.” Using the perk can seem complicated initially, but it’s worthwhile to spend a bit of time learning about.

Aside from the Excursionist Perk, United offers a few other consistent values that can be considered sweet spots. Short-haul economy flights within the U.S. are a frequent example.

A flight from Denver (DEN) to Las Vegas (LAS) rings in at 6,400 MileagePlus miles.

Or this flight from Las Angeles (LAX) to San Francisco (SFO) can be had for just 6,000 MileagePlus miles.

Expiration

United MileagePlus miles will never expire. As long as your account is in good standing and remains open, your miles are safe from expiration.

Infant Fees

United considers children under 2 years old to be eligible for lap infant status. When flying with a lap infant, there are no fees when flying within the U.S., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. An infant ticket is required for infants without a seat traveling to international destinations, and a partial fare will be charged.

United makes it easy to book flights with a lap infant. Just make sure to select “infants on lap” during the flight search process.

After you get to the booking page, you can see how much the fee will cost for your lap infant. For a flight from Los Angeles (LAX) to Paris (CDG), the lap infant fee is $45.00 and the government imposed taxes comes out to $24.70, so you’ll pay $69.70 for your lap infant on this specific flight. Note the screenshot includes $5.60 for the adult award ticket.

Family Pooling

Most frequent flyer programs do not allow family pooling of miles, but United is an exception. Beginning March 2024, United offers MileagePlus members the ability to group miles into a pool of up to five MileagePlus members. Pools can be made with anyone, not just family, as long as they’re also a MileagePlus member. The member who made the account will manage the miles and can authorize other members to redeem miles from the pool.

It’s a great option for families and friends, particularly since many other airlines don’t offer this feature. But before you create a pool with someone, know that those miles are no longer yours. Additionally, you can only be in one pool at a time and once you depart the pool, you will lose access to the pooled miles.

You can avoid the pool by transferring MileagePlus miles to another person’s account. This method comes with hefty fees, though, and is almost never worth the cost.

Another option is to directly book the flight from your own account for your family member if you have the miles.

Other Ways To Earn United Miles

Believe it or not, there are still more ways to load up on MileagePlus miles. MileagePlus members can earn even more miles when using the United dining program, shopping through the MileagePlus X app and booking hotel stays.

Earn When Dining

The MileagePlus dining program rewards members with miles when eating at specific restaurants. You’ll need a MileagePlus account before you can join the dining program. If you already have an account, you can just log in by using your MileagePlus credentials.

Once you have signed in, you’ll be asked to opt in for emails. Accepting will allow you to earn miles at an elevated level. You’ll also be asked to link your credit card to your account. Make sure you add the card you plan on using for dining out.

Following set-up, the email option you chose will determine your status and earning rate. VIP members are also required to dine 11 times. The tiers are as follows:

• Basic Member: Earn 1 MileagePlus mile per $2 spent if you elect to not receive email communication.
• Select Member: Earns 3 MileagePlus miles per $1 dollar spent if you elect to receive email communication.
• VIP Member: Earn 5 MileagePlus miles per $1 dollar spent if you elect to receive email communication from MileagePlus Dining and completed 11 qualified transactions in the calendar year.

Earn With the MileagePlus X App

United’s MileagePlus X App is one of the best ways to earn MileagePlus miles when making everyday purchases, and you can do it straight from your smartphone. Even better, those who hold a United co-branded credit card receive a 25% mileage boost when shopping with the MileagePlus X App. The app offers the ability to purchase eGift Cards from a variety of different retailers, as well as access to MileagePlus Shopping and MileagePlus Dining. Just keep in mind that if you buy a gift card, you will not be able to get a refund.

Earn With Hotel Stays

Some hotels allow you to transfer their points to United, while other hotels allow you to earn MileagePlus miles each time you stay at one of their participating properties. But this isn’t a loophole to let you double-dip on loyalty points—you’ll likely lose the ability to earn loyalty points from that hotel if you choose MileagePlus instead. Be sure to verify the terms before selecting United as your preferred reward currency on hotel stays.

These chains include:

• Choice Hotels: Earn 250 MileagePlus miles per stay, with the exception of Everhome Suites and Woodspring Suites.
• Hyatt: Earn 500 MileagePlus miles per stay at the Park Hyatt, Grand Hyatt, Hyatt Regency, Hyatt, Andaz, Hyatt Centric, The Unbound Collection by Hyatt, Hyatt Place, Hyatt House, Hyatt Ziva and Hyatt Zilara.
• IHG: Earn 2 MileagePlus miles per dollar spent when staying at most IHG hotels, excluding Staybridge Suites and Candlewood Suites, which earn 1 MileagePlus mile per dollar spent.
• Marriott: Earn 2 MileagePlus miles for every dollar spent at JW Marriott, The Ritz Carlton, St. Regis, The Luxury Collection, W Hotels, EDITION, Marriott Hotels, Sheraton, Marriott Vacation Club, Delta Hotels by Marriott, Le Meridien, Westin, Autograph Collection Hotels, Design Hotels, Renaissance Hotels, Tribute Portfolio and Gaylord Hotels. All other properties earn 1 MileagePlus mile per dollar spent.
• Shangri-La Circle: Earn 500 award miles per stay at Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts, Traders Hotel, JEN or Kerry Hotels.
• Wyndham: Earn up to 2 MileagePlus miles for every dollar spent on a qualifying stay.

As one of the world’s largest airlines, United can get you to just about anywhere in the world, whether on their own fleet or via one of their many partners. Being able to do so by using MileagePlus miles instead of cash just sweetens the deal.