Through May 14, United is offering roundtrip coach awards to Europe for 40,000 miles. They just upped the price from 50,000 to 55,000 January 1. But times are tough, seats are empty, and United is betting they’ll stay that way at least until the “usually-busy-in-back” transatlantic summer season.
The offer is valid between the U.S. (excluding Hawaii) and Canada and the following cities in Europe:
Amsterdam (AMS), Brussels (BRU), Frankfurt (FRA), Geneva (GVA), London (LHR), Moscow (DME), Munich (MUC), Paris (CDG), Rome (FCO), and Zurich (ZRH).The award must be booked online and only United flights are eligible.
Too bad the fly-by date is so soon – I’d prefer a book-by date.
I’m in Europe until around the time this expires, so I can’t use it. Hopefully they’ll redo this promotion sometime (or others will match it with more flexible terms).
Okay, think I have finally gotten a definitive answer on this retroactive-spend thing counting towards the $20,000 Gold-either-HH-card/$40,000-Diamond-Surpass for 2009 charges to the card.
This was a potential dealbreaker for me, because much of my annual spending tends to be frontloaded, I was almost at the $20,000 level mid-2009, didn’t want to pay $75 to upgrade to “Surpass” but then hit $20,000 on neither card for the year, and drop back to HHonors Silver in April 2010.
So, I wrote the Hilton Senior VP whose signature is on the Surpass promo letters. He forwarded my inquiry to an Erin N. Martin, a business analyst for American Express Co. in North Carolina. Her words seem pretty clear: “I just wanted to touch base with you and let you know that any spend that you have done so far this year would carry over to the Surpass Credit Card should you decide to upgrade.”