Another day, another step back for United MileagePlus. United Airlines announced a trio of negative changes today that further erode the value of its MileagePlus loyalty program. Let’s take a look.

A Trio Of United MileagePlus Devaluations

United sent out an email to Premier members this morning outlining upcoming changes to the MileagePlus program. The news is mostly bad for savvy travelers.

Instant Upgrades For MileagePlus Elites On Y/B/M Fares Ends On August 21, 2025

United Airlines is eliminating a long-time perk whereby MileagePlus Premier members traveling on a Y or B fare (and 1K and Global Services members traveling on an M fares) could receive an instant space-available upgrade at the time of booking. Upgrade space required the “PN” fare bucket for 1K and Global Services members and the “PZ” fare bucket for lower-tier Premier members to be available in order to confirm.

Corporate travelers and government travelers will be particularly impacted, since those fares often book in Y or B class. Passengers who book Premium Plus (premium economy) tickets with domestic connections will also be hurt, since those segments book into B class.

No More Award Chart (Fixed Pricing) For MielagePlus Upgrade Awards

United will pull its award charts for upgrades using your miles on November 24, 2025.

Instead, upgrade pricing will depend on the date, time, and availability on your chosen flight.

It is not clear how pricing will change or whether a co-pay will still be required. I expect every flight will be upgradable, but at a cost closely correlated to the cash price, valuing miles at one cent or less each, making it a very poor deal…you’re better off using a cash-back card than any co-branded Chase-United card.

Elimination Of Excursionist Perk

The odd but often valuable “Excursionist Perk,” is going away for tickets issued on or after August 21, 2025.

United has a complicated quirk that replaced free stopovers in 2016 that it calls an “Excursionist Perk”

Here’s how United describes it:

The Excursionist Perk is a free one-way award within select multi-city itineraries. Members who book an itinerary with three or more one-way awards will be eligible to receive one of those one-way awards for free, if it meets all of these conditions:

• The Excursionist Perk cannot be in the MileagePlus defined region where your travel originates. (For example, if your journey begins in North America, you will only receive the Excursionist Perk if travel is within a region outside of North America.)
• Travel must end in the same MileagePlus defined region where travel originates.
• The origin and destination of the Excursionist Perk is within a single MileagePlus defined region.
• The cabin of service and award type of the free one-way award is the same or lower than the one-way award preceding it.
• If two or more one-way awards qualify for this benefit, only the first occurrence will be free.

Here’s an example United provides:

The trick is the free Excursionist Perk does not have to be in any particular region, just in one region…

So theoretically, you could book a ticket from New York to Lisbon in business class for 88K miles, then an “Excursionist Perk” for no extra miles from Dakar (DSS) to Johannesburg (JNB), a ticket that costs 35K in economy class or 90K in business class, then a return to the same region as origin, so if you could book an award from Africa to the USA on United…or if you were flying home via another carrier or program, you could just add on a domestic flight within the USA (the region you started in) to get the intra-Africa segment for free.

That means you could add a 10K domestic US segment to make the 90K segment within Africa free.

That goes away…and it does not appear anything will replace it.

CONCLUSION

As far as I can see, this is all bad news…yet another dismantling of what was once a great program by Richard Nunn, the ex-Comcast VP who now leads MileagePlus. I detest what has happened to MileagePlus under his tenure. Taking away upgrade award charts and the Excursionist Perk is arbitrary and punitive. Eliminating instant upgrades may not hurt me since I don’t buy full fare tickets, but it was a nice perk when connecting on a premium economy ticket (since the domestic economy segment book into B class, meaning an instant upgrade).

What do you make of these latest changes to MileagePlus?