We’re continuing our series on how to get the most out of United award tickets by looking at the airline’s free open jaw. With an open jaw, you can fly to one destination and return from another, or you can depart from one city and return to a different one. Either way, you can visit more places for the same price as a round-trip award ticket.
Using United’s free stopover, you can see more places for the same amount of miles. But did you know that you can save miles by adding a stopover to your itinerary?
Istanbul, founded in 657 B.C. as Byzantium, is an ancient transcontinental city. The historic city center lies in Europe, while a third of the city’s population of 14.4 million lives in Asia. Because of its unique location, it’s the largest city in both the Middle East and Europe. Located between the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea, Istanbul straddles the Bosphorus Strait in Northwestern Turkey.
It’s a running joke with a kernel of truth that while all the other domestic carriers were going bankrupt and restructuring, United Airlines had to continue because its credit card was so profitable.
Bolivia was once largely cut off to travelers due to endless transportation strikes and general dysfunction. But that’s changed, and thanks in part to recent investments in tourist-friendly infrastructure it’s number eight on the New York Times’ 52 Places to Go in 2015.
Program devaluations are the bane of every frequent flyer. You go into this pastime with your eyes open. You study the program rules and award charts and make a plan to earn the miles that will net you award flights to your dream destination.
Some airlines like American Airlines have predictable off-peak mileage discounts to various destinations, but there are also several programs that offer reduced mileage bargains throughout the year.
The Philippines is comprised of over 7,000 islands, some of which are among the most magnificent in the world. Almost 90 percent of the islands are uninhabited, making the Philippines a hotbed of Asia’s ecotourism in its most pure and unadulterated form.
As one of the three major domestic carriers, United can take you nearly anywhere you want to go in the U.S., and its partner network, including the powerful 27-member Star Alliance, can get you most places in the world.
As far as airline co-branded credit cards go, the United MileagePlus Club Card is something that people talk about surprisingly infrequently. Is that because it is a poorly constructed product? No, it’s just a premium product that is not a good fit for many United travelers because of its cost.
Similar to Starwood and Deltas Crossover partnership, United and Marriott teamed up last year for RewardsPlus, a joint venture aimed at offering elite members of both programs reciprocal benefits.
After sending my son off to college last fall, I wondered if he’d be able to make it home for the holidays and whether there would be award availability during one of the busiest travel seasons. But I was happy to find a round-trip ticket for just 25,000 miles from Las Vegas to Newark on Thanksgiving weekend.
United Airlines has good domestic coverage, with several hubs in the middle of the U.S. for varied domestic and international routing options, and a very wide network of international air and hotel partners through Star Alliance and individual partnerships.
As far as award bookings with domestic carriers go, United is one of the most straightforward. You have all the options you’d expect one ways, multicity tickets, unlimited less-than-24-hour stopovers and you’re able to make almost all bookings online without any inexplicable system glitches keeping you from seeing the seats you’re entitled to cough, cough, Delta.
