Q&A on the Devaluation
Q: Will either changes affect tickets I have already booked?
A: No, not at all.
Q: Can I book a ticket in January for later travel?
A: Of course. Book before Feb 1 for travel as far out as you can book and you get prices according to the current chart.
Q: What if I book under current prices and change the ticket later, will the price go up?
A: No. In my experience, when you make changes to the ticket post-devaluation they follow the old rules. However, if you make significant changes that would obviously change the pricing (like making a ticket to Africa instead of Europe) I can’t be certain.
Q: Will the routing rules (like stopover rules) change on Feb 1?
A: No. Apparently United doesn’t see the need to let people know about upcoming changes to routing rules, but they do let people know about upcoming award chart prices. Anyways, there’s no correlation between the two.
Although, United can change the routing rules whenever they want. Like tomorrow. So perhaps my answer should instead be, “I doubt it”.
These are my opinions.
Q: Should I book now or later?
A: That is up to you, but here is the old award chart, and here is the new award chart.
Q: Do you cry yourself to sleep at night because of this devaluation?
A: If I flew premium cabin more… maybe I would. But I don’t care too much about the award chart changing. Another day in this game.
Even the routing rule changes are only so bad to me. I don’t want 1,000 connections, it just means that there are less awards available. Think about it, if before there wasn’t an award seat, I could route all over to get to where I needed to go. Now, you need a reasonable routing… for the most part.
Short isn’t normally my style but if you add some questions below, I can add them to the post.
Drew
![The [Only] United MileagePlus Award Chart](https://travelisfree.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/United-MileagePlus-United-Airlines-Award-Chart-120x86.jpg)
Drew, I love your blog; your posts are so creative and insightful!
Any idea how it would work if I changed an award ticket partway through after 2/1 (eg leave on 2/6 and then change routing within Asia after having taken the first flight)?
Thanks!
I can’t speak in certainty but I imagine it’s possible. This was my experience with British Airways post devaluation. They allowed me to change the ticket but didn’t change prices even though it would have under new rules.
The problem and the reason I can’t say for certain is that United completely depends on the computer to price things and never agents.
And they try to reprice more often, but somehow are very bad at deducting miles on changes. YMMV.
“No. In my experience, when you make changes to the ticket post-devaluation they follow the old rules” I wonder if we book the skeleton of the itinerary we want and then try to change flights later, whether that would result in a re-price? Others seem to think that the only changes that can be made w/o repricing are date changes, but flights must stay the same.
Quite often, the system prices awards quite strangely, and often requires manual intervention in my experience. At the very least, I expect to spend a long time on hold listening to Gershwin roll in his grave, as a UA call center supervisor tries to prevent the computer from re-pricing an award change.
Yea, UA is a bit of a lottery when it comes to changing awards. So I can’t say with certainty but as I said on EggSS4’s comment, my experience with other airlines is that they allow OLD rules and prices. Which is great if United does the same. And if I had to guess, I’d say that they’ll do the same. And it’s logical, but it could end up in some long phone calls. YMMV.
I am traveling outbound 2/10 and return 2/20. On the return I’m flying LH J and UA F, so I’m paying the F price. I am hoping to get on LH F for the leg currently in J. If space opens up before 2/1, I should be able to make that change for the relatively modest miles premium. But if I change class of service on, say, 2/6 for the return, will I pay the outlandish devalued price? Or since I’ve booked an “F” ticket pre-devaluation, will I be able to keep that same price?
That seems to be the theme question, and again, I can’t say for sure how they’ll handle it…
My guess is that there will be no extra miles deducted. In your case I’m pretty sure of that as you’re already paying for it… and I hope I’m write but, guess we won’t find out for a while.
Hi,
I stumbled upon your blog only recently -truly, it is a treasure trove of useful information. While we love to travel, with two small kids, we don’t have time to “study” rules, regulations and “sweet spots” of using miles. Planning a trip to SE Asia Dec 2014- BOS-FRA-SIN booked (I was paranoid about not getting award tkts). Would love to get back BKK-SIN-(TPE)-LAX-BOS (8 year old can brag about flying around the world!). I guess this is one segment too many? Aeroplan shows availability for flights we want in early Jan2015 already (not on UA website), will MileagePlus do ticketing if I call now?
Any suggestions greatly appreciated. Thanks!!