United Airlines (MileagePlus)

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Current Frequent Flyer Miles and Hotel Points Expiry Extensions

See also: COVID-19 Updates for our most up-to-date tracking. 

Things have evolved quite a bit since March 2020 when the coronavirus lockdowns hit the travel industry. As time went on, airline and hotel program made adjustments to stay afloat. They also tried to make things more generous for customers, while trying to juggle their balance sheet.

Many people would argue that airlines would get government bailouts anyway, so all they really need to do is sit back and relax. Whether true or not, today’s post focuses on extensions given to member account balances. Several of those extensions have now expired, while some programs made some more permanent changes to their expiry policies.

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Recap of Miles and Points Temporary Extensions

Due to the current coronavirus pandemic, airline and hotel loyalty programs have paused/extended expiry policies to their miles and points. Today’s post is a current snapshot of the state of these programs. 

Please note that we ongoingly update our COVID-19 updates page as well for most up-to-date information. 

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Positive Videos from Airlines and Hotels!

Keep in mind that we a frequently updated COVID-19 page. 

With so much negativity surrounding the news, I would like to share some positive airline and hotel company YouTube videos. We posted a list a few weeks ago, so you can see the previous videos on that list. Today’s list are more recent videos since then.

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Positive Messages from Airlines, Hotels and Train!

Airlines and hotels have been putting together some positive videos together on YouTube, so I wanted to give them a shout out for putting these videos together. The videos range from: Thank you message Giving passengers assurance message (e.g. being…

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Loyalty Program COVID-19 Updates

Loyalty programs across the board have implemented temporary solutions to deal with any COVID-19 related matters. Below is a list of hyperlinks to useful information. I also included a small blurb for each company that may be more commonly relevant.

I tried to include companies more relevant to Canadians, but please let us know in the comment section below if you see any other links that we can add to the list (in alphabetical order).

Rundown of United Airlines’ MileagePlus for Canadians (updated December 30, 2019)

I was waiting for a few more updates before working on this post. But it has been long enough, especially with their change in expiry policy. With the uncertainty surrounding Air Canada’s Aeroplan program, I’m sure that I am not the only Canadian considering switching to another Star Alliance program to bank my miles to.

That being said, if you are a Canadian considering MileagePlus, I would consider the highlights below to help you optimize the program.

Rundown of United Airlines’ MileagePlus for Canadians (updated February 8, 2019)

It has been over 2 years since I last updated this post, so I think that it is a good time for a review. I was strongly considering switching my Star Alliance earnings to United Airlines’ MileagePlus program, instead of continuing to bank with Aeroplan (when I thought Air Canada was dropping Aeroplan). But with Air Canada buying out Aeroplan, looks like I will continue to use Aeroplan as my primary Star Alliance program. The main reason is because Aeroplan has many partners in Canada to earn miles with, which makes them valuable at the moment.

2 Airport Employees Dismissed, 1 Suspended Due to David Dao Incident

The David Dao incident on a United Airlines flight occurred back in April 2017. It took over 6 months before we find out the consequences to the employees. The Chicago Department of Aviation to decide to fire two security officers and suspending another one for 5 days, who later resigned anyway.

You can read more about the story in this news report.

United Airline’s Turn to Offer $10,000 to Bumped Passengers

In response to the the incident of forcibly removing a passenger off one of their flights, United Airlines has also (started with Delta Air Lines) adopted a higher offer to bumped passengers. Passengers can now receive up to $10,000 of compensation (travel credit to be used on United Airlines flights).

Once again, I do question the profitability of this move. An interesting stat in the article states: