Despite my calling South America a “black sheep” in the United Routing Rules post, I think I’ve got a goodie or two that may be new for you.
Black sheep? Yea, well, before you could take flights to South Africa via South America and in many cases save time. Heck, you could route to Europe via South America, which didn’t save time at all. But that’s probably why this got pulled.
Now South America can be combined with nothing outside of the Americas and Caribbean. Period. No South America on the way Africa, Europe, Oceania, or anywhere else.
Maybe this will change with larger hubs in South America that will take flights to Australia, New Zealand, Oceania, and Africa. But as it is, you would basically be routing all over earth to stopover in South America.
What is allowed?
Basically, if you are going to South America, you can book a stopover anywhere, and I mean anywhere, in North, South or Central America and the Caribbean. The big exception is Hawaii. But we’ll talk about big options in a minute.
I’ll quick go through a few examples:
When going to South America (like Lima, Peru) you can stop anywhere in South America.
So you could stop in Bogota on your way to Lima.
You could also stop in Central America on your way to South America. Like Cancun on your way to Lima.
You could stop in the Caribbean on your way to South America. Like San Juan on the way to Lima.
You could stop in the US or Canada on the way to South America. Like Vancouver on the way to Lima.
What’s a destination?
This isn’t to wax philosophical, it’s to determine a price.
One note I want to make is that there appears to be a new rule limiting the amount of connections on the way to your destination to 3. 3 connections each way, or 4 segments. Remember my post on the Most Powerful Zones and know that this is how “destination” is determined. And it’s to and from the destination that you are basing your 3 connections each way off of.
Know the maps I’m giving aren’t the actual routings but just visual demonstrations stopovers and destinations.
You need to make sure you stick within this rule.
Thus, pay attention to possible routings and hubs. Hubs that may help you within Latin America are mostly Panama City, Bogota, and Sao Paulo.
And while we’re on the subject, note that if you stopover in Santiago on the way to Lima… well technically that makes Lima your stopover on the way to Santiago. As flights to Southern South America (like Chile and Argentina) are 30,000 each way instead of 20,000.
Basically, if you combine two of the South American zones, the more expensive zone is chosen. This is pretty much true across all of the Americas.
Alaska’s totally on the way!
Here’s one that may or may not surprise you. While you can’t add Hawaii on the way to South America, Alaska is totally in.
Now come on, if that’s not on the way… I don’t know what is. And to prove it:
Although United is already pretty generous with their pricing to Alaska, this is still an interesting tid bit.
Pricing Tricks
While there’s no sense in reiterating why I think routes like this make “Free One-Ways” look like a waste of miles (as you need to buy a ticket back from Alaska), I do believe in throw-away segments that save miles.
So I’m not going to do a free oneway to the Caribbean (as it would increase the price of the ticket greatly), but I will route through my home city. Why? Because it is actually cheaper to go from Peru to the Caribbean than it is Peru to New York. So why not just get off the plane in New York and save some miles?
Sometimes you can do this easily and sometimes you can’t. Basically, I’m routing through New York, to go to the Caribbean after my stopover and destination. Instead of paying 40,000 miles, I’m paying 37,500 miles.
Again, this last segment isn’t meant to be flown. Obviously you could fly it, but you would end up paying more for the flight back. But hey, one more place at the price of an extra segment.
And again, f you did a free one-way you would have paid more, but gotten the same number of stops.
This isn’t a killer saving but the concept can be used to save miles other places. (For examples SE Asia to Oceania via Australia is half the price of SE Asia to Australia).
Another way to do this is to simply use an open-jaw to return to Central America/Caribbean/Mexico. Returning from South America here is generally 10,000 miles cheaper. They actually have two prices, one price for routing through the US and a lesser price for not routing through the US.
So if you did DC to Lima (with a stopover wherever you want) and return to Puerto Rico without routing through the US, it’s 10,000 miles less than returning home.
Then it would be 17,500 miles to return home. Thus you are really paying 7,500 miles to add another destination. You could basically do Bogota, Lima, and San Juan for 47,500 miles.
Or better yet, you could use Avios or Southwest points to get back. You may come out ahead this way. I paid about 8,000 points to do San Juan to Baltimore on Southwest. I would still consider this coming out ahead as I value Southwest miles half as much as United Miles.
Then you have 4,500 Avios flights to Miami. This is saving miles either way you look at it… assuming you are returning to Miami. These are examples, but there are many more of course.
Back to the regular programming
Same Same with Caribbean and Central America
The same concepts work for the Caribbean and Central America as well. You can stop anywhere else in those regions or above… even Alaska. So you can stop in the US/Canada, Alaska, Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean when heading to Central America/Caribbean.
This provides a lot of options. Again, you can mix with South America… but then it’s basically a South America ticket and the price will be higher.
If any one is interested in the Caribbean Hopper with United Miles, this is a ticket I did giving myself a 24 hour layover in Aruba. I’m normally not so fast paced, but it worked out so well. The Renaissance is so close to the airport and in the lobby there’s a boat to their private island. My non-relaxing time there didn’t exceed an hour.
Although the layover wasn’t really at all on the way to Puerto Rico. Nor my second layover in Panama City. But this is the beauty of United.
The interesting concept is that you can layover on an island just like you can layover in Chicago. It’s a bit more complicated than that because of availability but it is an option.
Conclusion
Stopovers pretty much anywhere in the Americas is pretty lenient. Two stops, possibly three (for an extra 7,500 miles) and the possibility of Alaska being one of them, this is why I love United. Plus, the layovers in exotic places like Aruba.
So despite South America being massively restricted in it’s ability to combine with other zones, I hope there is still value provided in this post! Any tips and questions go below. Thanks folks!
Great post – I’m a new reader to your site. Just joined today actually! I’m trying to plan a honeymoon near the end of spring in 2014 to South America and was wondering if you could offer some advice?
I currently have about 32k United Miles, but also have about 180k miles in Chase Ultimate Rewards that I can transfer using Sapphire Preferred. Should I stick with United or do you think it would be better to transfer to BA and use LAN instead? I’m based in Los Angeles and would prefer to fly first class/business if possible.
Honestly, I would recommend first checking availability on OneWorld vs Star Alliance before transferring.
From there I would say it depends on the route. You can use the avios calculator – http://wandr.me/avios-calculator/
So you can compare the mileage costs. But you can really only stop in the oneworld connection spots with BA. If you’re not worried about stopovers… I’d say 1) availability. If both have options 2) price.
Congrats. 😉
Drew
Another great post! Keep em coming!
Thank Kurt! Plan on it, tis the season to burn em after all.
You write: “So why not just get off the plane in New York and save some miles?” Well for one thing you’re potentially taking someone else’s award ticket! And to save 2500 miles? Come on man this kinda thing (on a wide enough scale) ruins it for everyone.
Other than that I enjoyed reading your post
You make a really good point. I agree 2,500 miles is barely worth the trouble in the first place.
I’m with you on this, Toaster. It’s just not worth potentially blocking out someone else entirely, just to save 2,500 miles, unless you’re really confident availability on the route is always wide open. I loved the rest of the post too, but let’s be courteous to fellow travelers.
I agree it is kind of unfair to take someones trip from NYC to UVF to save a measly 2500 miles. Other than that stellar post!!!
Thanks for commenting. I really wasn’t thinking of that… but I should.
Drew
Thanks for sharing great tips to thinking outside the box (or zones). Unfair..perhaps…but….I love it. Please tell us more…
I think you should add that from ANYWHERE in the Caribbean or Mexico to Peru, for instance is 10k miles one way…get a cheap ticket to San Juan and you can have a nice little tour of Peru, Panama and two islands in the Carribbean for 20k miles. Would be interested to hear your thoughts!
Also, what do you know about awards to Cube using UA miles?
That’s funny because I’m totally planning a trip like this. Well I’m considering it. I have 20k in two accounts and a mistake fare booked in Peru.
I’ve actually played around and priced things out for a trip within the Caribbean/Central America area for 20k. It’s pretty incredible simply for the places you can see. Just like a Caribbean hopper but with Peru.
I’ll end up posting it if I book it.
Hmm… know nothing about it so I can hardly make an educated comment. Sorry.
Drew
Where are you starting? From Houston, you can also book IAH-LIM and CUN-IAH for 22K ANA miles, or IAH-UIO/BOG and return from any number of places such as RTB, MBJ, LIR, SJD, etc.
Then fill the OJ with 10K UA miles.
And on the point of throwaway hidden cities, as long as UA is going to charge $200 to cancel a ticket, I say go for it if it saves any significant number of miles. I booked 4 tix to Alaska for absolutely peak time next summer as soon as they became available back in August, but now we are planning for an additional family member to arrive within a week of that trip. Cost to get back the 50K AA miles: $225 (I might do it, hoping for a schedule change). Cost to get back the 50K UA miles: $800 (no chance). So I can’t afford to let another family have the seats we won’t use. Just for reference, changing the other family trip on Southwest: $0.
Changing a ticket does cost money without status (unless it’s southwest). Missing a ticket doesn’t cost anything.
The option of adding a segment to Alaska just because you can reminds me of the saying “just because the knife is gold doesn’t mean you should kill yourself with it…”
Have you looked at any of the “more traditional” routes to SA with United miles. For example, in Northern SA, I’ll bet 50% of the traffic goes to the Galapagos via mainland, or it goes to Cusco via Lima. I would love to see how you would route those babies.
Bonus points if you can get Galapagos in with Cusco somehow.
Considering the fact that no Star Alliance members fly to the Gallapagos, I think you will be outta luck…
Avios to the rescue?
I’ve yet to find availability. Then again I haven’t looked at tickets to GPS in a while, but when I was in South America a year ago, I was hoping to get over there.
I dunno, I kinda liked the Alaska suggestion. It’s expensive to get there in peak season, but I can see it being the sort of place for a long weekend just as well as it being a week or two trip. And it’s still not TOO warm there in summer…making the Caribbean a nice “warm up” place after 😛
Galapagos: time for mistake or cheapo sale fare? Every once in a while I see an insane deal on travelzoo.
PS- miss you guys in Jo’burg by a week! Have fun at the IC 😉
There was a great deal on AA… which got pulled quick. I didn’t jump on it though. It was a short option and it’s not a cheap place I was told.
Bummer! That always happens I guess. Did you get in on the IC before PB ended?
We’ll meet up next time, eh?
Newbie question – My husband and I are planning a trip to Montevideo Christmas 2014. We would also like to plan a trip to the Caribbean in March 2015. Is it possible with United to book a flight from STL to MVD with a stopover in STL and final return to somewhere in the Caribbean which would ultimately leave us with just finding a flight back from our destination in the Caribbean?
Any help would be appreciated.