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UPDATE: According to some folks on the Reddit United Airlines forum, people whose home airport is Newark were targeted for this promotion due to the many operational problems United experienced there in 2025 (ATC moved to Pennsylvania, tarmac construction, etc.) UPDATE 2 (13 feb): You're never going to believe  this, but I got an email today telling me they were also doubling my starter PQPs from 900 to 1800!  22 Jan 2026 I just got back from our annual holiday trip to Australia and I'm sitting here at 7am jet lagged and slowly combing through 2 months of low-priority emails and notice there's a United Airlines survey to earn 500 miles.  Fine, I'll do it. "Did our recent email informing you that we've decided to extend your Platinum status through 2027 have any impact on yo---" WAIT, WHAT?!  Dig through my inbox and sure enough, on the 16th of January:  …and it's not just the status, I have 40 shiny new PlusPoints sitting in my account! (My flight home...

It's that time of year when people start thinking about next year's frequent flier status . While I tell myself that we're free agents (hey, I flew Qantas this year!), the reality is that we're United gals if for no other reason than they have so many flights to Australia versus their competitors.  I'm going to end up with Gold without really even trying, mostly due to all of the United Mileage Upgrade Awards that Seats.aero found for me this year. Kelly flew some great bargains on AirEuropa and Alaska this year, but he'd like to be Gold if for no other reason than getting Economy Plus at booking time (his work usually books him in Economy domestically). He's not sure he'll make it over the line, though. If you go to United.com, then to My United, then click View Premier Status Tracker, you can see your progress toward the various tiers.  It's all pretty clear and self-explanatory save for one thing. If you click Future Flights , you can see where ...

As previously discussed , we're doing 3-player mode for 2024 (one of us United 1k, one is Plat, one Gold), but as I'm currently booking travel for July, I'm already thinking about status for 2025.  Status match to Qantas? Tim's work visa for the US is delayed ( sigh ), so he likely won't be moving to New York until mid-2025 at the absolute earliest, so there's still going to be lots of trans-Pacific flying happening. Qantas is supposed to launch their new nonstop New York – Sydney service in 2025 , but that will likely be on an unpredictable time schedule much like Tim's work visa. I mention this because I thought that route might make it worth it for him to do the "secret" status match to Qantas (Oneworld) from United 1k.  But even if all of the economics of that worked out, will that flight even be pleasant? With our current situation, I really don't mind the 14 hours between Sydney and the US West Coast, but having to then immediately get o...

Update 27 Sept '23 (six weeks after initial post): my favorite email just arrived! The PlusPoints upgrade we requested for my early November flight from SFO to Sydney cleared! The current price difference between Polaris Business and what I paid for Premium Plus is $4470. So we have an upcoming heap of travel for my friends' wedding in Palm Springs, including legs to and from Australia (where the three of us will spend the end-of-year holidays again). I'm looking at our 2024 travel plans, our elite status, and the results of what that elite status got us in 2021-2023. Long story short, I think we're going to voluntarily pay $13,000 for a round-trip Business Class flight to Sydney to get one of us over the finish line for United 1k status .  It's hard for me to even type that . Yes, one of us has had 1k status since the pandemic, but spending $10k to get through Australia's harsh Covid restrictions was our only option back then. Now that it's voluntary, I wan...

As I mentioned earlier , JetBlue has a new-to-us perk for it's Mosaic elites with their co-branded Mastercard – VIP tickets to the Lion King on Broadway . As a properly jaded New Yorker I'll admit I was a bit dubious about what "VIP" meant, but we had Saturday afternoon open and figured we'd check it out. Given my age and the fact that I don't have children, I'd actually never seen the Lion King before. A friend who works on Broadway told me that the amazing puppetry and costumes  made it definitely worth checking out. We booked our date online and paid the $50 deposit (which is refunded to you as a Mastercard gift card at the show). When we arrived at the theater, there was a separate entrance for JetBlue ticket-holders which let us bypass all of the lines. The welcome envelope included a generous stack of drink tickets . Our seats were on the main floor, maybe a dozen rows from the stage. The VIP tickets included a Q&A with some of the cast membe...

Over the weekend I got an email from JetBlue that they're bringing back status matches and status challenges. The former allows people with status on another airline to try out JetBlue's Mosaic elite status, and the latter allows non-elites to earn status through the end of next year by flying $1250 worth of JetBlue flights in 90 days. My husband ended up earning Mosaic status largely by accident ,  and we've scrutinized the benefits we've gotten from it and found that we got around $1200 of value out of it . Since people use some benefits more than others, you might want to look carefully at what it's worth before you make any decisions. In our case, it's looking like my husband might miss making Mosaic status for next year due to fewer work trips this year, so he's planning on signing up for the challenge to still requalify for 2018. The one downer here is if you qualify via the challenge, you don't get the 15,000 bonus points (worth about $20...

Yes, I often rail about how airline loyalty is meaningless these days as airlines gut their elite benefits and keep raising the bar on all of the tiers. But for some people (e.g., people who fly a lot for work) it makes sense to try and make elite status if for no other reason than having a shot at a slightly less miserable year in the air next year. I'm often surprised how many of my friends who fly 50,000+ miles per year for work often have very little idea about how mileage plans work. Though to be fair, I think the airlines do their best to make sure that the rules are as difficult as possible to understand. With that said, I just wanted to point out that typically in December, airlines will let you directly buy Elite Qualifying Miles/Dollars to top off your account and ensure that you make the next tier up for next year. Delta United  (United requires you to buy the points in conjunction with a flight) American   There's more info over on The Points Guy , bu...

Now that the economy is booming again, air travel demand is up, but the capacity cuts made during the recession have not been restored. Prices are up, fees are up, benefits are being slashed, elite thresholds keep getting moved higher as airlines look for ways to extract more profit from their customers. Delta led the pack by doing two major things over the past year and a half:  changing how you earn elite status by basing it on dollars spent instead of miles flown , and  rewarding points for each flight based on how much the flight cost instead of the distance  To some extent this makes sense: if I paid $8000 for a seat, I'd want more points than the person who paid $1400 for an identical seat on a super-discount promo. Likewise, it's irked me that people make Gold who've spent half as many dollars with the airline as I did and I only made Silver. The part I find amusing about all of this is that United's management has essentially been copy-pasting Delt...

For people like me who fly entirely for vacations on their own dime, I'm convinced that chasing airline elite status is a lot like going to Vegas: "the house always wins". Yes, you get a couple of thrilling payouts along the way but ultimately you lose because you'll spend heaps more money to make sure you stay in the high rollers club. This last trip we took ( JFK > SFO > JFK > YUL > JFK > SJU > JFK ) was one of those times when "the house" got to rub my nose in my decision :) My husband has to fly ≈8 transcons a year for work (work pays), so he's usually United Platinum and I'm still a lowly Silver (though with their new Delta-style rules, he'll drop to Gold and I'll drop to nothing next year). We both bought economy tickets on United's PS service and then immediately submitted a request to upgrade our flights with miles to their Fancy Domestic First class (called BusinessFirst) for 20,000 miles per person, per segme...