Many frequent flyer programs allow free stopovers, usually on round-trip tickets. There’s a small number of programs that allow you to have a free stopover on a one-way award ticket. United Airlines MileagePlus allows you to have a free stopover on a round-trip award ticket, with some restrictions, of course – they call it Excursionist Perk.
What is the United MileagePlus Excursionist Perk?
Basically a free stopover. Don’t ask me why United decided to come up with such a strange name, but all it is, is a free stopover on a round-trip ticket.
There are some terms associated with using this perk in order for that segment of the journey to price out as “0 miles”:
- allowed on a round-trip/multi-city only
- stopover must be within same region as destination
- flight to get to stopover must be in the same cabin or a lower cabin
- additional taxes and fees will most likely apply
All of that sounds simple, however United’s website is far from perfect and therefore the stopover will not always price for free, even if you follow all of the rules.
Success Story: Maria’s European Excursion
Maria wanted to use her Chase points to fly to Europe in Business Class and visit 3 different cities, hoping to take advantage of a free stopover that mileage programs offer. She was keen on visiting London, Rome, and Athens – all in Business Class.
But wait? Isn’t only one stopover/Excursionist Perk allowed? Yes, however you can also have an open-jaw and arrange your own transportation between two cities and therefore you can even visit 3 cities on a single United ticket for the same price as a round-trip.
Maria had over 350k Chase points, which transfer to United at a 1:1 instant ratio. She lives in San Francisco and thankfully wanted to fly off-season, otherwise it was going to be hard to find decent flights from the West Coast to Europe.
Search Award Flight Segments Individually
When searching for award flight availability, you always want to search for flights individually. In this case, we’d search for each leg individually and then put the pieces together once we find space.
United doesn’t have an award chart, but they now charge an average price of around 88k miles for a one-way Business Class ticket to Europe.
We began searching for award space as follows:
- SFO to London
- SFO to Rome
- SFO to Athens
and also the same flights, but in reverse. We found the best availability and did a lot of searches before we were able to find the following flights:
- San Francisco to Zurich to London
- London to Frankfurt to Rome
- Athens to Vienna to Newark to San Francisco
We searched the long-haul flights first and noted down the best itineraries and where Maria should fly in to and out of. The best flights were for her to fly with SWISS to London via Zurich, followed by a Lufthansa connection in Frankfurt on the way from London to Rome, and finally on the way back, Austrian Airlines from Athens to Newark via Vienna connecting to a domestic United flight in Economy.
Booking Award Tickets with Excursionist Perk
After you find award availability, you can simply head over to United’s website and type in your desired flight itinerary into United’s multi-city search tool.
We typed in the following itinerary and the price in miles was as follows:
- SFO-LHR: 88k miles
- LHR-FCO: 0k miles
- ATH-SFO: 88k miles
In Maria’s case, her stopover was in London and then her open-jaw was between Rome and Athens. If she returned from Rome back home, the price would be the same – essentially that open-jaw part is also free since United isn’t booking you a flight and rather you have to buy a separate ticket yourself.
Since any layover of under 24 hours is considered a connection, Maria also had an 18h layover overnight in Vienna on the way back where she was able to enjoy the magical city.
United’s website can be tricky – sometimes it shows you different availability when searching one-way or round-trip and therefore some flights may not be available when searching as multi-city even if they are available as one-ways. Remember that United no longer has any change or cancel fees on awards, so you can book a one-way and try to use the Change Flights tool to then add on the other segments and you may have more luck finding the flights you wanted.
If you can’t price your itinerary correctly with the Excursionist Perk online and it follows all of the rules, try swapping your cities and making your itinerary a little less complicated. Don’t bother calling United as you’ll just waste your time since they have only a few good agents these days, it seems. If you try different city-pair combinations, you should have luck as long as you follow all of the rules.
All in All
While United doesn’t currently have a good price on mileage tickets to Europe, if you add on a stopover and an open-jaw, you can stretch your miles further and it could be worth it. Just remember that since United doesn’t have an award chart, prices will vary but the stopover flight should always be free. Another important thing to note is that if you try to change your flights in the future, the entire itinerary may reprice even if you aren’t changing every leg. Stopovers on award tickets are a great way to stretch your miles further and visit more places – after all, you worked hard to earn those miles!