United happily sells award accelerators for all itineraries that are booked on United ticket stock and associated with a Mileage Plus account. The price and amount of miles and PQM’s (Premier Qualifying Miles) is dependent of your Mileage Plus status and the ticket, although on the following three examples the award and premier accelerators were identical for a Premier 1K account.
You can access the accelerator when you are managing the reservation at United.com. There is a banner for “Get Extra Miles” and a dollar figure associated with it.
Note that you cannot only buy Premier Miles but you have to buy the award accelerator as well.
Singapore Airlines Sao Paulo to Sydney via Singapore
Here’s what is displayed before you associate the reservation with any frequent flier number.
For Premier 1K, United is offering to sell 30K RDM’s for $630 or 45K for $945. You can ad PQM’s miles for both at 15 cents per PQM – 45K PQM’s for $6750 or 30K PQM’s for $4500.
For non-status member, United is displaying the first offer. You can buy award miles at 2.1 cents each and PQM’s at the same level of 15 cents per PQM as for Premier 1K.
Seattle to Miami entirely on United metal
Again, you need to include United Mileage Plus number to get accelerator rates.
For this 1K, the offer was exactly the same as on the previous example.
For non-elite member, the offer was different, however. United was selling award miles at 2.6 cents each and PQM’s at 15 cents each.
Seattle to Istanbul on Lufthansa, Turkish and United
The display before United FF number is associated with the PNR.
The Premier 1K offer is exactly the same.
For the non-elite member, the offer is 15 cents per PQM and 2.1 cents per award mile.
Conclusion
The purchase price of an award mile under this award accelerator offer is rather reasonable at 2.1 cents each. What you can do is to make a reservation at United.com and purchase the number of award miles you need and then cancel the reservation. You have 24 hours to cancel a reservation without fees that is done on United.com. Alternatively, you can always buy a fully refundable fare that you refund at some point in time. Just make sure that you read the fare rules carefully.
The PQM offer seems to vary depending on your Mileage Plus status. For this 1K that is not even close to qualifying, the offer was always the same regardless of the itinerary in question. For non-status member, the offer varied.
Here are the terms and conditions of the accelerators:
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All award miles purchased are non-refundable. A federal excise tax of 7.5% is included in the displayed price.
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These miles credit to your MileagePlus account within 24 hours of purchase.
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The miles you purchase with Award Accelerator are redeemable miles and do not count toward premier qualification, unless Premier Accelerator is added to your purchase.
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Purchased miles are subject to all MileagePlus terms and conditions.
