United devalues business class travel outside of the US! HUGE CHANGE

[travelling_man]

Here is the published article ... lots more information that I can post here.

https://liveandletsfly.com/united-mileageplus-devaluation-outside-usa/

 

my intra-Asia flights in business class increased from 27,500 to 49,500 each way.  A HUGE DEVALUATION.

 

I also tried to book a flight in November, and found that NO availability of NON STOPS on the BKK-MNL route!  I've never seen that before so I hope it is a fluke.  If non-stops get removed AND rates go up 100%, that is really going to suck.

Edited May 2 by travelling_man

[Roadglide]

Ouch!

[forcebwithu]

Just happy I was able to enjoy the FF programs when they were worth something. Looks like my retirement from my road warrior days was well timed.

[Luv2Phuket]

As I understand it, the devaluation was focused intra-Asia and intra-Europe.  I read that it should not (at least for now) impact flights to Asia from the USA.

In any event, I generally find United's award availability and pricing structure pretty shitty.  I found a great OW business class award flight available from Las Vegas all the way into BKK - total itinerary was less than 24 hours....problem?  200,000 United miles to book it!

To put that into perspective, you can generally get OW biz class from SFO and LAX for 110,000 miles (assuming you can find availability, but I've noticed it tends to open up late).

Alaska recently had a big devaluation, as well. I haven't found shit for availability with them for a long time, though.  I used to find options on Singapore quite a bit, but they seem to have dried up, as well.

My "go to" these days is EVA.  75,000 miles OW for an excellent biz class product, with great departures times (late night) from SFO and LAX.  The only problem is they are transfer partners only with Citi and Capital One.

[travelling_man]

47 minutes ago, Luv2Phuket said:

As I understand it, the devaluation was focused intra-Asia and intra-Europe. 

In any event, I generally find United's award availability and pricing structure pretty shitty. 

UNLESS you were flying intra-asia which was the point of my post. No one had better availability or reward levels than United (for me, using Thai 95% of the time).

Seeing rates double is shocking.

With that said, it doesn't change anything as I will continue to book the same routes and pay the increased price.  

But it is a bad indicator ....