How to Book United Flights Without United Miles

Booking United Without United Miles

Sometimes the most straightforward way to book a flight with points won't work for you. That might be because you don't have that specific kind of points, or it might be because there's a cheaper way to book that flight with another airline. Today we're talking specifically about how to book united flights even if you don't have united miles. And even if you do have united miles when it might make sense to book differently. Welcome back to Points for Normal People. I'm Katie and I'm here because I know that travel costs add up, especially for a family. But I believe travel isn't just for the rich. That's why on Points for Normal People I share the tips and tricks that our family has been using for over a decade to help you use your everyday expenses and credit card welcome offers to supercharge your travel points so that you can pay for entire vacations every year. Last episode I covered mileage plus in depth: how to earn United miles, how to search for awards, the cardholder pricing discount, miles pooling, all of that. This episode complements that episode. We're going to be talking about using partner airline miles to book onto United flights. This is the same framework I used in my episode on Delta, where I talked about using Flying Blue or Virgin Atlantic to book Delta flights for fewer miles than Delta itself would charge. I also have had similar episodes for American Airlines and Alaska. Today we're doing that for United. Now I'm gonna be honest up front that I really don't think there are any true sweet spots for this domestically anymore. If anything, pricing is about the same for most of these partners, but the advantage is that these partner miles are easier to earn. So first let's do a refresher on the foundation of why this works. So mileage plus uses dynamic pricing. That means there's no published award chart, and ultimately they can charge whatever number of miles they want on any given flight on any given day. But this also means that every flight is typically able to be booked if you have United miles. Just sometimes the price might be really high. When airlines have an award chart, they typically only release a certain number of seats to be bookable with points. Now, United does still have certain rates that it calls saver pricing. And when a United flight is priced as a saver award, United typically makes that seat available for booking also by partner airlines. The programs we're going to talk about for booking United flights are Avianca Life Miles, Air Canada Aeroplan, Singapore Airlines Chris Flyer, and JetBlue. I'm also going to talk briefly about Turkish Miles and Smiles, which used to be incredible for this and recently had a big devaluation that changed things a lot. The JetBlue and United Partnership is new, and that lets you book United Flights with true blue points, and vice versa. But first I want to be clear. Using partner programs instead of mileage plus does come with trade-offs. Almost across the board, cancellation policies are worse, and there's going to be more friction in the booking process. I'm going to walk through all of that as I go through the programs one by one so you can see the pros and cons of each one. The first we're going to discuss is Avianca Life Miles. Avianca is a Colombian airline and their loyalty program is called LifeMiles. Life Miles uses a fixed region-based award chart for United flights. They divide the continental United States into three zones, and pricing is supposed to be based on which zones you're flying between. The regions don't totally make sense, like Florida, Illinois, and Montana are officially in the same region. But also what I found when I was pricing itineraries, they don't always follow their own award chart regions anyway. So their award chart says awards within a US region should be 10,000 points each way. But I found them either to be 11,000 points to 16,700. So it was 11,000 from Chicago to Minneapolis, but from Chicago to Montana and Florida, which is supposed to be the same region, it was 16,700. As a point of comparison on United, those routes were all pricing at 15,000 points for me, or 13,500 if you hold a United card. So in some cases, this is more, in some cases it's less. Now, sometimes banks do run transfer bonuses to Avianca LifMiles. So if you can get a 20 to 30% bonus, so you're transferring 10,000 points to Avianca and getting 13,000 miles, that might make a difference as far as how you evaluate the pricing as well, especially if you're booking four or five tickets. The biggest pro of Avianca is that it has the widest credit card transfer partner access of any program in this episode. Whereas with mileage plus, you can only get those miles by transferring from Chase and Built. For LifeMiles, you can get them by transferring from American Express, Capital One, City Thank You Points, Built, and Wells Fargo. That being said, I still cannot wholeheartedly recommend this as a general option. First, because of cancellation fees. Life Miles charges$50 to$200 per ticket to cancel and redeposit your miles, depending on the routing. So this is not a program for speculative bookings. You'd only want to use Life Miles when you're pretty confident that you're taking that trip. Second, availability. Life Miles availability on United routes can be inconsistent. And third, their customer service isn't great. If you have to cancel or deal with a flight change, you'll do it by phone, and their agents don't always have the most knowledge on how to help you. To be thorough, I will say there is an option to get a Life Miles Plus paid monthly subscription, and that will waive change and cancellation fees with 72 hours notice. And so this could make sense if you're going to be a heavy user of this program. So again, Life Miles, it's an option with some caveats. Aeroplan, our next one, is Air Canada's loyalty program. And for a long time it was one of the better options for booking United flights on a fixed chart. But about a year ago in March 2025, Aeroplan moved to dynamic pricing for United Partner Awards. Though their dynamic pricing still seems to fall more or less within a defined range, so you can still find value. For the continental US routes I searched, Aeroplan was about the same as mileage plus on pricing. I found a lot of routes that were pricing at 15,000 Aeroplan miles, which again is about the same as the United Saber pricing that I was seeing. Some shorter routes were pricing for less, like Chicago to Minneapolis priced at 10,000 miles for me. So that is cheaper than what I saw in United for that same flight. And like Avianca, Aeroplan has a broad set of transfer partners. Chase, Amex, Capital One, and Built all can transfer to Aeroplan. Now, if you have Chase or Built Points, you probably should just transfer to United directly and book. But this does add Amex and Capital One as options. Like Avianca, Aeroplan also sees periodic transfer bonuses, which means maybe your miles will stretch further. But also like Avianca, the cancellation policy isn't great. If you need to cancel an Aeroplan Award, it's about$110 to get your points back. So it's a pretty steep cancellation fee. And then another disadvantage is that Aeroplan also levies a partner booking fee of about$30 on United Awards booked through Aeroplan. Now, this partner booking fee is only charged once if you book a round trip. So it is cheaper to book as a round trip rather than two one ways. Overall, Aeroplan is going to be best for short flights when you only have Capital One or Amex and you want to fly a United route, and you're pretty sure you won't cancel. It also is a better value when you can book round trip. The next one I want to discuss is Chris Flyer, which is Singapore Airlines Loyalty Program. Chris Flyer uses a flat rate for booking United domestic flights, 15,000 miles each way in economy for any continental U.S. route, regardless of distance. So a 40-minute hop from Chicago to St. Louis costs the same as a transcontinental from Newark to LA. So this makes it not a great deal for those short flights, but competitive with United on longer flights. Where it shines though is the pricing beats United on flights to Hawaii. So from flights from the mainland US to Hawaii on United, Chris Flyer charges 20,500 miles each way in economy. Whereas Mileage Plus typically prices the same flight at around 25,000 miles or 22,500 if you hold the United card. That's a 2,500 to 4,500 point savings per person per direction. It's not that much for one person, but for a family of four flying round trip to Hawaii, that could be a difference of 36,000 miles. And Chris Flyer is also a transfer partner of all four major US credit card currencies: Amex Membership Rewards, Chase Ultimate Rewards, City Thank You Points, and Capital One Miles. So no matter what cards you have, you can probably get to Chris Flyer. But there are some caveats as there always are. So first, transfers can take 12 to 24 hours from some programs. Amex is typically faster. Capital One and Chase might take closer to 24 hours in some cases. Second, it also has those high change and cancellation fees. For changes, it's$50 a person. Cancellation is$75 per person. Of all these programs, this is definitely the best one for Hawaii if you're pretty certain you're gonna take that trip. It's also decent if you have Capital One, Amex, or City Points and you want to fly a united route that again, you're pretty sure that you want to take. I have to talk a little bit about Turkish Airlines because it used to be the cheapest program for booking united domestic flights, especially to Hawaii. And a lot of content out there still references those old rates, which no longer exist, sadly. Turkish Airlines loyalty program is called Miles and Smiles, but in December of 2025, with zero advanced warning, they raised their domestic united rates. So all continental US routes went from 10,000 miles to 15,000 miles each way in economy. That's a 50% increase overnight. And Hawaii got hit even harder. So those routes went from 10,000 miles to 25,000 miles each way, which was a hundred and fifty percent increase. Here's the thing: Turkish was always a huge pain to deal with, but it was worth it for people going to Hawaii to look at it because it was essentially half price versus booking with United. Now that it's the same price, and now that Singapore Airlines would be cheaper or the same for all of those routes, there's really no reason to look at Turkish for domestic United flights anymore. Which in some ways to me feels like a relief because I always felt like when I was recommending Turkish that I had to give a whole bunch of caveats because it was such a pain to deal with them. Like to give you a little snippet into it, people would be searching for flights, they would try calling in, people couldn't find the flights if they call in, they'd have to email their itineraries and wait up to a week. It was kind of like that. So it was very difficult to book. Sometimes it was easy to book, but most of the time it was very difficult to book. The last one I want to cover is JetBlue. So United and JetBlue launched a partnership called Blue Sky in October 2025. So one piece of it is that TrueBlue members can now book United Flights using JetBlue Points, and vice versa. Now, this is worth knowing about, but I wouldn't build a strategy around it. JetBlue's pricing for United Flights is dynamic, and the rates, generally speaking, are not competitive with what you'd get through Mileage Plus directly or these other partners like LifeMiles, Aeroplan, or Chris Flyer. A domestic transcontinental flight that we price, Newark to LAX, was 40,000 true blue points when I checked it. So if you remember all those other airlines, it was about 15,000. Now the one that did come up okay pricing was shorter routes. So the Chicago Minneapolis was 10,000 points, which is the same as some of those other airlines. Chicago to Denver matched the other programs at 15,000 points. Hawaii routes were terrible pricing at 40,000 points each way or more, almost double what it would be on Singapore Chris Flyer. But the biggest advantage that JetBlue has is that it doesn't charge a cancellation fee. So you can cancel your flight and get your true blue points back into your account for no extra cost. From what I can tell, they might keep your taxes and fees as a flight credit, but that's just$5.60 each way within the US. Keep in mind that changes are not permitted for United Flights you book with JetBlue. So you'd want to book everything as separate one ways in case you need to change just one of your legs. In that case, you cancel, get your miles back, and rebook. There's a lot of banks that transfer to JetBlue, but they're all not good. So Amex and Capital One transfer to JetBlue, but at lower than a one-to-one rate. So generally you're going to want to avoid them unless there was a transfer bonus. City still transfers one-to-one, as well as Chase and Wells Fargo. And JetBlue does have a number of credit cards with decent bonuses that you can get and even a business card that you can get as well to earn some JetBlue points. JetBlue cards are issued by Barclays, so it's nice that it's a different bank than the majority of cards people are getting. So that can be a good one to get when you're in between offers, or the business one is a really good one to get if you're just trying to get another card and stand or 524, even if you don't have a set plan for those points. Like all those programs, I think JetBlue also has a pretty limited usage of where it's strong. The main use is for those 10,000 point or 15,000 point routes if you find them. And especially those routes when you might need to cancel. But for so many of the longer routes, the prices are just not, they don't even compare to any of the other airlines and they wouldn't make sense to book. So that was rapid fire just going through those airlines. I will also have this in a blog post so that you can read it and refer back to it. What I really don't like about episodes like this is that I feel like the more I explain, the murkier the information gets. There's no clear winner when it comes to booking United Miles with a partner airline. But I will talk about a possible workflow you could use to help you figure out how to proceed and book. I'm gonna be honest, there is not a simple workflow for this. So first I check for transfer bonuses because that may influence the best option for you. When I search for a route, I either start at United.com or SeatsArow.com. United.com is free, so if you don't have a seats.arero account, you could use that. Search for your route, and if you're flexible, you can go to the 30-day calendar. If you see certain flights marked as saver pricing, that's going to be a really good indication you'll be able to find them bookable with other airlines. Seats.arrow doesn't really do a ton more than the United site because it really only pulls Air Canada Aeroplan Pricing, United, and also JetBlue Pricing. It doesn't pull Avianca Life Miles or Chris Flyer. But you could start your search there or go there next if you find some saver flights and you want to check the availability and pricing. If you're specifically going to Hawaii, you could go straight from the United site where you found saver pricing to SingaporeAir.com and just check that directly. If you find availability at the 20,500 mile rate for Hawaii, that's your confirmation that those exist. But don't transfer points to ChrisFlyer until you've verified the seat is there on Singapore's own website. This is the rule that I cannot say enough. Whether you're using LifeMiles, Aeroplan, or Chris Flyer, always confirm the seat is actually available on that program's own website before you transfer any points. LifeMiles in particular seems to be notorious for showing phantom availability that then disappears when you actually go to click through. Transfers for all of these are one-way and irreversible. So you confirm first, transfer second, and then book immediately. What the best option is from these will depend on your route, the likelihood of cancellation, and any current transfer bonuses. Beyond booking directly with United, again, here's how I'd rank these programs. For short flights, JetBlue is the best option if it's pricing at 10,000 points, though the one-to-one transfer partners are limited. Even for some medium-range flights, you might have competitive pricing at 15,000 points each way. The reason to prioritize JetBlue is for the free cancellations, but it has the most limited number of affordable routes. If you don't have access to JetBlue for shorter flights, your next best option for those flights is Aeroplan, but keep in mind those steep$110 cancellation fees and the$30 booking fees. All the other partners charge at least$50 for cancellations. So for really for all of them, you want to be pretty certain that you're taking that trip. For traveled Hawaii, the best partner option is Singapore Chris Flyer. This is the cheapest option at 20,500 points from anywhere in the continental US to Hawaii. For all of the other flights within the continental US, pricing is pretty similar through Aeroplan, Cris Flyer, and Avianca LifMiles, typically right around 15,000 miles, which is usually about the same as what United is charging. So you may choose to go with one that has a transfer bonus as your deciding factor. Avianca has the lowest cancellation fee at$50, but I'd say their customer service is probably the worst. So factor that in as well, or be prepared mentally at least, if you have an issue. As you can see, there's no clear winner, but there are some options that are decent. They're okay for booking United Flights if you don't have United Miles. Before I wrap up, I want to make two more points. One is this transferring points to a partner to book United Flight might not be the best use of your points. You should also always be looking at the cash prices for those United Flights too. Sometimes you might find that if you book via Capital One Travel rather than transferring to a partner, you'll actually use fewer miles overall. But a lot of people get a lot of bad advice to never look at those portals because they say that transferring is always a better option, which just isn't true. Don't forget to check those cash prices as well as part of your research. The second thing I want to say is a note about this podcast. So this is going to be my last regular episode of season three. We've covered the major US airlines and how to book domestic flights in season three. And to be honest, these episodes are the most boring for me personally to script and film. And so it's a relief for me to be done with the major airlines. This was a very requested topic, but what I found as I record more of these is a few things. First, the information changes too rapidly to make it great as a podcast topic. A blog post I can easily update with new information. A podcast is much harder to do that with. One of our struggles in the past year has been navigating how to keep the podcast helpful for newcomers and people who also have listened to all of it. We actually went back and cut out a lot of segments of old episodes when information changed a year ago to try to keep them as accurate as possible. But it's just not as clean as a blog post that we can just edit and shows the new current information. I've also gotten some feedback that it's hard to find the new podcast episodes. So we tried putting updates specifically at the ends of season one and two that were specific to the content in those seasons so that a new listener who's listening straight through would find that information right after they listen to the relevant episodes. But then older listeners had a hard time finding those new episodes. So what I've learned is there's really no perfect way to organize a podcast. And unfortunately, different platforms organize them differently. So it's not always even in my control. My last episode of season three will be an update on everything that's already changed from the season three info that I've put out. And then I'm gonna move beyond that. And to be honest, I haven't decided if I will call the next group of episodes season four or what I'm gonna do beyond that. But ultimately, I'm not going to be organizing the episodes around a theme in the future. It worked really well for season one and it worked okay for season two. And then season three, I got bogged down and realized there was a lot of work to add updates on certain bank programs. And then it was bogged down and convoluted with all this airline information. As you can see from this episode, even so many of these united partners, so many changes happened in the past six months. So this information is current as I'm recording in April 2026, but who knows in three months. And I don't like to put out information, especially in a video, that someone might find in six months and then it might not be accurate anymore. I'm most proud of season one because I think it laid a really good step-by-step groundwork for people getting into points on how they could understand points and miles and build knowledge sequentially. If you've been with me through all of these episodes, I think you have a really good foundation. And so in the future, I'm hoping to focus both on bigger topics that interest me or the ones that I get requests for, like estate planning for points, but also on specific news or updates to points programs and how we can be adapting our strategies. We always do our best to update at the top of the show notes if anything major has changed, but my blog is always going to be more up to date than an old podcast episode. I don't have any true action steps for today except this. If you aren't already on my email list, I'd really encourage you to sign up. We send out emails every Saturday morning and include curated points news and links to any new articles and resources that we've put out. It really is what I think is the best way to stay up to date. Thanks so much for spending time with me today, and I look forward to seeing you next time where we will continue to unlock these secrets of travel points together.