Unfortunately, in the world of points and miles, the only sure thing is that our balances will lose value over time. However, sometimes these devaluations are worse than normal. This was the case recently as United guts first class partner awards.
If you can, it’s always recommended to burn your points and miles as quickly as you can. The rationale behind this is that program owners will always decrease the value of your balances, which is a well-known issue to everyone that’s been playing the game for at least the past few years. The one saving grace is that these changes usually happen gradually – provided your loyalty program has an award chart to begin with. However, there are times when these adjustments are much larger and/or come with little to no warning.
Unfortunately, this recently happened to United Mileage Plus members as United guts first class partner awards – particularly with two of their most popular Star Alliance partners.
United Guts First Class Partner Awards
As reported by Live and Let’s Fly, United guts first class partner awards with Lufthansa and All Nippon Airways seeing large increases in award costs without warning. In Lufthansa’s case, award prices are up 27% to 154,000 miles for a one-way flight between the U.S. and Europe. But as nasty as that is, ANA’s prices will give you a heart attack, jumping 100% to 242,000 miles for a one-way flight between U.S. and Japan. Of course, ANA is distanced-based, so those in Hawaii pay a little less, but the increase is still the same, going from 93,500 to 181,500 miles. Ouch!
ANA Mileage Club
Though United guts first class partner awards, it’s probably not entirely of its own doing. It’s worth noting that on April 18, 2024, ANA Mileage Club began splitting award prices between high, low, and regular seasons. Thankfully, the base rates aren’t changing, though they’re now the “low” season, which is priced at 120,000 miles for Hawaii – Japan and 150,000 for North America – Japan. For Hawaii – Japan, the regular season will now cost 140,000 miles, and high season comes in at 160,000 miles. For North America, those prices are now 170,000 and 200,000, respectively.
Those are pretty large jumps in of themself, but they’re still lower than what United is charging. And before you go on and tell me how you don’t have an ANA credit card (I wouldn’t recommend their’s), remember that ANA Mileage Club is an Amex Membership Rewards transfer partner. That means all your 4x points purchases on your Amex Gold card can be turned into Mileage Club miles at a ratio of 1:1 to redeem for your Flying Honu flight to Narita.
ANA Mileage Club also allows you to transfer hotel points into miles, though those ratios are significantly worse:
- Hilton Honors: 10,000 points = 1,000 miles
- IHG One Rewards: 10,000 points = 2,000 miles
- Marriott Bonvoy: 3 points = 1 miles – Marriott will give you 5,000 bonus miles for every 60,000 points you transfer at once, which means 60,000 Bonvoy points = 25,000 ANA miles
- Shangri-La Circle: 500 points = 500 miles
- World of Hyatt: 2.5 points = 1 mile – like Marriott, Hyatt gives you 5,000 bonus miles for every 50,000 points your transfer at once, which means 50,000 Hyatt points = 25,000 ANA miles
More Pain!
Before I could get around to publishing this post, Live and Let’s Fly reported that the Friendly Skies folks weren’t done. In fact, he hypothesizes that as United guts first class partner awards, they’re moving to make other cuts as well. Well, part one of that just happened a couple of days ago as United obliterated business class awards throughout Europe. How bad is it? On average, prices have DOUBLED.
Final Thoughts
It really sucks that United guts first class partner awards with no warning. But, United has no award chart, so they can make changes whenever they feel like it. Thankfully, we have other Star Alliance award options that aren’t too difficult to do. Unfortunately, Singapore Kris Flyer has worse pricing than ANA itself, though Turkish Miles & Smiles comes with quite low at 195,000 miles for a first class ticket between North America and Asia. However, Turkish Miles & Smiles is more of a paint to redeem with than most other programs, and only transfers from Bilt Rewards, Capital One, Citi ThankYou Rewards, and Marriott Bonvoy.