United Airlines Eases Argentina Mileage Rules

United Airlines this week relaxed its frequent flyer mileage requirements for travel between Argentina and the U.S.

United typically requires frequent flyers to use 110,000 miles to fly to Argentina from the U.S. In theory, United also allows customers to make the trip by using only 55,000 “saver” miles.

But until recently, I was never, ever able to actually find an open seat with the so-called “saver” miles.

That has changed, apparently. Given lower demand for travel to Latin America, United lowered the number of saver miles needed for the trip to 40,000:

“For a limited time, escape to South America for only 40,000 Mileage Plus miles when you book your travel at united.com by May 24, 2009. That’s a 15,000-mile savings! Redeem 40,000 miles for round-trip travel between the U.S. and Buenos Aires (EZE), Sao Paulo (GRU) or Rio de Janeiro (GIG). This offer is valid for United Economy® on United® operated flights. Travel now through August 31, 2009. For more information, visit united.com/sasaver.”

I just booked a R/T flight from BA to Denver for testing purposes and it worked fine with only 40,000 miles. So if you or a frequent flyer you know has been thinking about coming to BA, perhaps now is a good time to book a flight.

Hopefully other airlines will follow suit.

BTW, a great online forum for travel info is: Flyer Talk. Meanwhile, Seat Guru allows you to see all kinds of info about your seat (if you’ve got a TV and video game console, if you’ve got a laptop plug, how much leg room you’ve have, etc.) It’s got great data that can help you get good seats and avoid bad ones.

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