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United Airlines is currently displaying fewer MileagePlus award options to users accessing its website from the United States than it does to users from any other region. Whether this is a bug or something borderline sinister, U.S.-based award travelers are currently at a disadvantage.
Here’s a look at what's going on with MileagePlus — and how to change your location settings to unearth awards that United seemingly doesn’t want you to book.
United Award Availability is Varying by Region
MileagePlus members may already know that holding elite status or a co-branded United credit card can unlock additional award availability. But there now seems to be a third factor at play: your selected website region. This “quirk” was first flagged by Roame.travel and later covered by Upgraded Points. We’ve independently confirmed it.
Put simply, if you're searching for United awards — especially premium cabin awards on partner airlines — you'll see less (or even no) availability compared to if you change your search country to anything other than the United States. Weird, right? Let's dive into an example.
Let’s say you want to check out Singapore Airlines’ fifth freedom route between New York (JFK) and Frankfurt (FRA) on June 30, 2025. Seats.aero flags that there’s award space on this flight that you can book through Air Canada Aeroplan. Sure enough, you can book the seat via Aeroplan:
Historically, if award availability is open to one mileage partner, it's generally open to other mileage partners — such as United MileagePlus in this case. However, if you search for this award flight on United… no dice. This Singapore Airlines award doesn't show on United's site.
… at least the U.S. version of United's site. However, if you change your location — to Finland or France — that award suddenly appears. Huh.
It’s the same story with lots of partner awards we checked. If you change your location, you’ll see a handful of partner awards that weren’t available when searching from the United States and trying to pay in U.S. dollars. So what’s going on here?
Why Is United Changing Award Availability Based on Your Location?
There are two possible reasons why United MileagePlus might show fewer awards when you're located in the U.S. compared to elsewhere. The first is that this is simply a bug. The second is something we hope isn’t true — that United is deliberately snubbing the bulk of its MileagePlus members who live in the United States.
Of the two, the second is obviously more concerning. Unless you manually change your location at the top of United’s website, you’ll see fewer award options. That’s the case even if you’re logged in, have elite status, or carry a United credit card.
U.S.-based MileagePlus members have far more opportunities to earn miles than members in other countries, so it’s possible United is doing this to give non-U.S. members a better shot at coveted award seats — or to encourage U.S. members to burn more miles on subpar redemptions, like those operated by United itself.
But if you’ve committed time, effort, and money to signing up for a United credit card or staying loyal to the airline, it’s pretty frustrating to see the number of ways you can use your miles limited — unless you pretend to live in another country.
We’ve reached out to United for a comment on whether this is a bug or… intentional, but we haven’t received a response yet.
Final Thoughts
There’s clearly something going on with United MileagePlus award availability. You’ll see more award space if you’re “located” in a country other than the United States. And it’s either a bug or it’s intentional. If it’s the latter, that’s a seriously concerning development
We’ll update this post with new details as we learn more.
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This makes me wonder if United is also showing different cash prices based on location, like certain travel rewards bloggers have suggested LATAM and others are doing . . . Another reason to just use VPN for any flight searches, perhaps try servers in different continents, see where best deal emerges. But I also wonder if using Google Flights will affect this, even if access set to another continent..
IF this is deliberat, maybe we should access United via VPN, since once everyone catches on United will likely use digital means to establish our location instead of setting by country. That said, this could be a good trick to expose award availability on other airlines too.