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Since I became obsessed with points and miles nearly 15 years ago, I can remember the ubiquitous “sweet spot” in many airline programs that seemed too good to be true. 4,500 Avios for short-haul American Airlines flights? Long gone. “Cheap” Emirates First Class awards through Alaska Airlines? No longer. However, a few award redemption options remain that can still provide outsized value. The United Excursionist Perk is definitely one of them.
In short, the United Excursionist Perk is designed to let you visit two different destinations on the same award ticket with no additional mileage cost to get between them. There are a lot of rules and nuances to the perk, so let's dig into the details and see if it makes sense for your travels.
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What Is the United Excursionist Perk?
The United Excursionist Perk is available to United fliers booking round-trip (including open-jaw) award tickets. When booked at the same time, you can book another one-way flight (the “excursion”) in a region that isn't where your trip originated.
For example, you could book a Newark to London round-trip, add a flight from London to Munich, and then return from Munich to Newark. If booked together, the flight from London to Munich will price at zero miles!
Here are the published rules for the United Excursionist Perk:
- Your trip must start and end in the same region.
- The free Excursionist Perk flight must start and end in the same region.
- Your trip must start in a different region than the free Excursionist Perk flight.
- The free Excursionist Perk flight must be in the same or lower award tier or cabin than the flight before it.
In short, these rules are incredibly generous and allow for the award maximizer to have some fun. But you need to get creative.
For example, you can't get a free one-way flight within the United States on a round-trip award wholly within the United States — such as a round-trip from Newark to Los Angeles. However, you could book an excursion in another region. Read on for more!
Related: United MileagePlus: A Complete Guide
United Excursionist Perk example itinerary
Let's look at a simple example. For this search, I'll fly from Los Angeles (LAX) to London (LHR) and add a flight from London to Munich (MUC) in economy. To accomplish this, I performed a multi-city search on the United site.
When I got to my LHR-MUC leg, it clearly showed the price of zero miles for this segment of my award. However, there is a small additional taxes and fees component:
When I reached the booking screen, I saw a round-trip award that reflected the pricing for my dates: 40,000 miles for the outbound flight to London, zero miles for the LHR-MUC flight, and 29,200 miles for my return flight to Los Angeles.
This makes sense given the rules of the Excursionist Perk, as I'm traveling in the same class (economy) as the preceding flight, and the Excursionist flight is occurring in a region outside of where I began travel.
This award is incredibly easy to search on the United site, making it even more surprising to this points and miles veteran that this still exists!
How to Book United Excursionist Perk
To begin your search for an award using the Excursionist Perk, visit United.com.
You'll need to select “Advanced search” in the booking engine to be taken to another page, where you can perform a multi-city search.
Then, input your itinerary by following the rules outlined above, and your Excursionist leg should price at zero miles. You'll know you're doing it right because your leg will appear as zero miles plus taxes. There's no “congrats on using the Excursionist Perk!” language on the screen or anything. Anti-climatic, but still amazing!
If you like to book your award awards over the phone… I'd recommend against it. In my experience, United's phone agents are often unaware of this benefit, making for an awkward phone call.
Related: The Beginner’s Guide To Booking a Flight With Miles
The Unwritten Rules of the United Excursionist Perk
Like anything with vague or overly generous rules, the points and miles aficionados have figured out that there are additional, unwritten rules. Here are some rules we've figured out through trial and error:
- Your Excursionist leg must be between your outbound and return flights. So, you can't fly from Los Angeles to London round-trip and then have a one-way flight in Europe for your trip next summer. However, you can have an Excursionist Perk award with the first and last flights very far apart on the calendar from each other and the Excursionist flight somewhere in the middle. This is great for positioning for a one-way award you've already made.
- United's award regions can be generously drawn, making this perk even better. For example, Turkey is considered part of the Europe region. So, you could use your Excursionist Perk to fly from London to Turkey.
- The Excursionist segment can be a connecting one, so there is no need to focus on non-stops to your desired destination.
- Open-jaw itineraries totally work for the Excursionist Perk. This is great for European itineraries, where you're looking to explore several countries on the same trip.
- The Excursionist segment can be in a completely different region than your first and last legs.
How To Maximize the United Excursionist Perk
With all those rules in mind, let's look at one way United fliers can get creative in stretching the value of this unique perk.
The last bullet above is interesting, as you could price some wild itineraries for perhaps two distinct trips. Let's look at an itinerary for two travelers who want to fly from LAX to SFO twice during the year but also have a trip to Southeast Asia planned in the middle.
You could book a round-trip award between LAX-SFO and use the Excursionist Perk to book a zero-mile award from Bangkok (BKK) to Singapore (SIN) to use on your bigger trip:
It doesn't matter that this free leg is completely on the other side of the world from the other two legs of this award:
The total price for this itinerary is 25,400 miles total for two passengers!
The Excursionist Perk doesn't care if the “free” segment would've cost more than the two other segments. In this example, the “free” leg would otherwise cost 17,500 miles per person. That's more expensive than the 12,700-mile-per-person round trip from LAX-SFO!
One caveat: You must fly this itinerary as booked, or your other flights will be canceled. So, make sure you plan to take the flights you've booked so you won't be standing ticketless in the airport in Asia!
Related: Sweet Spots with United Airlines MileagePlus Awards
Final Thoughts
As you can see, the Excursionist Perk is easily a favorite of points and miles people, but it can also be utilized easily by award novices! Since it's not a well-advertised benefit, you may not have been aware that it existed before this post.
If you're sitting on a balance of United MileagePlus miles — or Chase Ultimate Rewards points since you can transfer Chase points to United — taking advantage of this perk is the best way to extract maximum value from your hard-earned rewards.
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