Best Use of United Miles to South America

Despite my calling South America a “black sheep” in the United Routing Rules post, I think I’ve got a goodie or two that may be new for you.

Black sheep? Yea, well, before you could take flights to South Africa via South America and in many cases save time. Heck, you could route to Europe via South America, which didn’t save time at all. But that’s probably why this got pulled.

Now South America can be combined with nothing outside of the Americas and Caribbean. Period. No South America on the way Africa, Europe, Oceania, or anywhere else.

Maybe this will change with larger hubs in South America that will take flights to Australia, New Zealand, Oceania, and Africa. But as it is, you would basically be routing all over earth to stopover in South America.

What is allowed?

Basically, if you are going to South America, you can book a stopover anywhere, and I mean anywhere, in North, South or Central America and the Caribbean. The big exception is Hawaii. But we’ll talk about big options in a minute.

I’ll quick go through a few examples:

When going to South America (like Lima, Peru) you can stop anywhere in South America.

So you could stop in Bogota on your way to Lima.

You could also stop in Central America on your way to South America. Like Cancun on your way to Lima.

You could stop in the Caribbean on your way to South America. Like San Juan on the way to Lima.

You could stop in the US or Canada on the way to South America. Like Vancouver on the way to Lima.

What’s a destination?

This isn’t to wax philosophical, it’s to determine a price.

One note I want to make is that there appears to be a new rule limiting the amount of connections on the way to your destination to 3. 3 connections each way, or 4 segments. Remember my post on the Most Powerful Zones and know that this is how “destination” is determined. And it’s to and from the destination that you are basing your 3 connections each way off of.

Know the maps I’m giving aren’t the actual routings but just visual demonstrations stopovers and destinations.

You need to make sure you stick within this rule.

Thus, pay attention to possible routings and hubs. Hubs that may help you within Latin America are mostly Panama City, Bogota, and Sao Paulo.

And while we’re on the subject, note that if you stopover in Santiago on the way to Lima… well technically that makes Lima your stopover on the way to Santiago. As flights to Southern South America (like Chile and Argentina) are 30,000 each way instead of 20,000.

Basically, if you combine two of the South American zones, the more expensive zone is chosen. This is pretty much true across all of the Americas.

Alaska’s totally on the way!

Here’s one that may or may not surprise you. While you can’t add Hawaii on the way to South America, Alaska is totally in.

Now come on, if that’s not on the way… I don’t know what is. And to prove it:

Although United is already pretty generous with their pricing to Alaska, this is still an interesting tid bit.

Pricing Tricks

While there’s no sense in reiterating why I think routes like this make “Free One-Ways” look like a waste of miles (as you need to buy a ticket back from Alaska), I do believe in throw-away segments that save miles.

So I’m not going to do a free oneway to the Caribbean (as it would increase the price of the ticket greatly), but I will route through my home city. Why? Because it is actually cheaper to go from Peru to the Caribbean than it is Peru to New York. So why not just get off the plane in New York and save some miles?

Sometimes you can do this easily and sometimes you can’t. Basically, I’m routing through New York, to go to the Caribbean after my stopover and destination. Instead of paying 40,000 miles, I’m paying 37,500 miles.

Again, this last segment isn’t meant to be flown. Obviously you could fly it, but you would end up paying more for the flight back. But hey, one more place at the price of an extra segment.

And again, f you did a free one-way you would have paid more, but gotten the same number of stops.

This isn’t a killer saving but the concept can be used to save miles other places. (For examples SE Asia to Oceania via Australia is half the price of SE Asia to Australia).

Another way to do this is to simply use an open-jaw to return to Central America/Caribbean/Mexico. Returning from South America here is generally 10,000 miles cheaper. They actually have two prices, one price for routing through the US and a lesser price for not routing through the US.

So if you did DC to Lima (with a stopover wherever you want) and return to Puerto Rico without routing through the US, it’s 10,000 miles less than returning home.

Then it would be 17,500 miles to return home. Thus you are really paying 7,500 miles to add another destination. You could basically do Bogota, Lima, and San Juan for 47,500 miles.

Or better yet, you could use Avios or Southwest points to get back. You may come out ahead this way. I paid about 8,000 points to do San Juan to Baltimore on Southwest. I would still consider this coming out ahead as I value Southwest miles half as much as United Miles.

Then you have 4,500 Avios flights to Miami. This is saving miles either way you look at it… assuming you are returning to Miami. These are examples, but there are many more of course.

Back to the regular programming

Same Same with Caribbean and Central America

The same concepts work for the Caribbean and Central America as well. You can stop anywhere else in those regions or above… even Alaska. So you can stop in the US/Canada, Alaska, Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean when heading to Central America/Caribbean.

This provides a lot of options. Again, you can mix with South America… but then it’s basically a South America ticket and the price will be higher.

If any one is interested in the Caribbean Hopper with United Miles, this is a ticket I did giving myself a 24 hour layover in Aruba. I’m normally not so fast paced, but it worked out so well. The Renaissance is so close to the airport and in the lobby there’s a boat to their private island. My non-relaxing time there didn’t exceed an hour.

Although the layover wasn’t really at all on the way to Puerto Rico. Nor my second layover in Panama City. But this is the beauty of United.

The interesting concept is that you can layover on an island just like you can layover in Chicago. It’s a bit more complicated than that because of availability but it is an option.

Conclusion

Stopovers pretty much anywhere in the Americas is pretty lenient. Two stops, possibly three (for an extra 7,500 miles) and the possibility of Alaska being one of them, this is why I love United. Plus, the layovers in exotic places like Aruba.

So despite South America being massively restricted in it’s ability to combine with other zones, I hope there is still value provided in this post! Any tips and questions go below. Thanks folks!