United Airlines Restricting Award Space To Partners

In what appears to be a change to longstanding policy, United Airlines is no longer making all of its “saver level” award space available to members of partner frequent flyer programs. If this is indeed a new trend, it will certainly impact the usefulness of partner programs like Air Canada Aeroplan or Avianca LifeMiles for many US-based travelers.

Is United Airlines Restricting Some Award Space To Partners?

First, a point of clarity. United offers award space on virtually every one of its flights to MileagePlus members. Since United eliminated its award charts, prices vary and are often loosely tied to revenue prices.

When you search for award space on united.com or on the United mobile app, you will see a little code after the flight:

• Business Class
  • JN: “Everyday” award for all members (dynamic pricing)
  • IN: Saver award for Premier Platinum and 1K members
  • I: Saver award for all other customers and partner redemptions (at least until now)
• Economy Class
  • YN: Everyday award for all members (dynamic pricing)
  • XN: Saver award for elite members and select credit cardholders
  • X: Saver award for all other customers and partner redemptions (at least until now)

To be clear, I am not talking about JN and YN space here…that’s always been exclusively for United MileagePlus members. I’m also not talking about the IN or XN inventory, which is additional saver space for certain elite members of the MileagePlus program.

Instead, I am talking about “X” and “I” space, which has always represented “saver” space (and is still labeled as such) and has been accessible not just to MileagePlus members, but to all Star Alliance partners. Put another way, if your flight has “X” or “I” space it should be bookable via any Star Alliance program, not just United.

Only it appears something has changed and United is restricting this space.

I played around and found this on a number of routes, but let’s just take Houston – San Francisco. Note that on April 16, 2024, United has made saver “X” space available on a number of nonstop flights:

But these are not bookable via Air Canada Aeroplan:

Or via Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer:

Or via Avianca LifeMiles:

Instead, only the last flight of the day is bookable using partner miles…

A Reasonable But Disappointing Change

If this is indeed a policy change (and Live And Let’s Fly has asked United to confirm), this would mark a devaluation of partner miles for North American flyers who use the points for travel on United. Last-minute award space on united.com booked on partner carriers like Air Canada Aeroplan can be a huge money-saver.

But if this is the new policy, United is hardly alone in implementing it. British Airways was the most recent to do this, but we see this with many carriers including Lufthansa, Austrian, Etihad, SWISS, Air France, and KLM.

And it does make sense in that it encourages loyalty to MileagePlus and theoretically makes more award seats available to United members, even if it undermines the idea of an alliance.

To be clear, I’m not in favor of the policy, but I do understand the phenomenon of limiting award space to your own members.

CONCLUSION

It appears that United is limiting a subset saver award space to its own MileagePlus members, which would be a first for the program. While theoretically, this could be a glitch, United would be hardly alone in doing this…we’ve seen a lot more of it lately.