Ouch: United Killing Off Excursionist Perk Stopovers

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It’s devaluation season at United once again.

Effective 8/21, you won’t be able to book a free stopover on round-trip award tickets, which United calls an Excursionist Perk. You also won’t be able to make changes to existing bookings with an Excursionist Perk.

I’ve written about United’s Excursionist Perk many times. Along with free changes or cancellations until the time of departure, the perk adds a ton of value to United miles, despite United often charging more miles than other Star Alliance carriers.

It allows a free one-way flight when booking select round-trip awards. To book it, the trip must start and end in the same region and the free flight must be within one region, though not necessarily within the start or ending region of the rest of the trip. The trip must start in a different region than the free flight.

The official intention would be to book something like this, with a free flight from London to Zurich on a round-trip business class award for 160K United miles.

You can do that by using the multi-city search function, though I always search for the individual legs on a one-way basis first to find award space.

The segment would cost 0 miles in coach if you book in coach for the preceding segment, or in business if you booked business for the preceding segment:

In reality, a lot more is possible.

For example, a flight within Africa costs 35K miles in coach or 90K miles in business class:

But it’s not hard to get it for 0 miles. Just sandwich it in between any 2 other flights, such as 2 domestic flights in coach to get it for 0 miles in coach:

Or make the preceding leg in first class to get it for 0 miles in business class:

I have posted many other examples of cool free legs in the past…

Lately, the functionality has gotten buggier, and I wrote how to work around that as well.

With the demise of the Perk, which required round-trip travel, you should now always book one-way award travel. That allows for the most flexibility in repricing tickets with price drops and changing travel plans.

Did you use the Excursionist Perk in the past? Will you take advantage of it before it’s gone?