How To Book A Free Side Quest With The United Airlines Excursionist Perk?

Every loyalty program is different in some ways. While the basics of earning points or miles to use for free flights or upgrades is similar to most programs, there are some big differences in the details. Many programs have some unusual or stand-out features that set them apart from other programs.

United MileagePlus is United Airlines’ loyalty program. It has one standout and unique feature, known as the Excursionist Perk. This little-understood award booking feature allows members to book an additional flight sector in another region for no extra cost. Used well, this can be an extremely valuable benefit.

The Excursionist Perk

All loyalty programs have differences, and many offer ways to get extra value when booking awards. This is especially the case with fixed-value award tickets, where the value can vary widely depending on the equivalent price. Other good value options include free stopovers or the ability to add multiple flights into one ticket (rather than pricing per flight sector).

MileagePlus

As the loyalty program of one of the world’s biggest airlines, United MileagePlus is also one of the world’s biggest frequent flyer schemes. Today, there are more than 100 million members of the program.

United MileagePlus offers the Excursionist Perk as one of the features of its award booking options. This is an idea unique to Mileage Plus – not offered by any other loyalty program. The basic idea is that you can book an additional flight as part of a return award booking at no extra cost. This has to be a flight outside of your origin region, and the overall itinerary must return to the origin region.

In general, United Mileage Plus is a good mileage program, with good value on offer and access to all Star Alliance partner airlines. It has its problems, though. In particular, unpublished rates make it hard to plan in advance what value you can get when earning. There have also been major devaluations in recent years – such as in April and May 2023 by increasing the minimum miles needed by 33% to 75% on all its international routes. Benefits like Excursionist Perk go some way to mitigating this – while they still last!

The rules of the Excursionist Perk benefit

In general, Excursionist Perk is a little-known benefit. MileagePlus does not publicize it well and is often not fully understood by agents when booking. However, it is fully integrated into the online award booking system, so if you search for an itinerary that meets the rules, it will price correctly using the Excursionist Perk benefit. Booking can be made this way using the multi-city search in the award booking system.

Photo: United Airlines

To fully understand it, we will go through the main rules as given by United Airlines.

• The additional flight must be used in a different region than where the travel originated.
• The flight itinerary must begin and end in the same region (so it must be a return booking).
• The additional flight must be within a single region (but it can be an international flight between two countries in the same region).
• The additional flight will be booked in the same travel class as the main flights.

Clearly, it is important to understand the region definitions used by MileagePlus. These roughly correspond to standard geographic regions but there are differences. Particularly in the Americas, these regions are closely defined. They include:

• Mainland US, Alaska, and Canada
• Hawaii
• Mexico
• Caribbean / Central America
• Northern South America / Southern South America
• Europe
• Middle East
• North Africa
• North Asia / Central Asia / South Asia / Japan
• Oceania / Australia and New Zealand

Using the Excursionist Perk to book onward flights

The intended – and very valuable – use of the Excursionist Perk benefit is to add onward flights to booking and to create more flexible itineraries. This has several benefits:

• It allows you to visit more places as part of (the same priced) return flights.
• It offers more choice in routing – an important consideration in finding award ticket availability as you are no longer restricted in flying directly to your preferred destination.
• It allows the use of different partner airlines, flying instead with their hubs.

Photo: Gondronx Studio | Shutterstock

A couple of examples to clarify this:

• Consider a simple return flight booking from New York to Paris. This could be booked directly on both legs with United. Alternatively (using the Excursionist Perk benefit), you could fly from New York to London, stop over in London, continue on another flight to Paris, and then return directly to the US. There would be no extra mileage charge for the London to Paris flight – this is shown in the booking screenshot below.

Photo: United Airlines

• It could be used more extensively within the region as well. You could, for example, book a flight from the US to London, and an onward flight from Paris or Amsterdam to Istanbul, and a return flight from Europe or Istanbul to the US. By maximizing the value of the additional flight based on your plans, there could be excellent value here.

Creative use of the Excursionist Perk benefit

The Excursionist Perk benefit gets even more interesting when the rules are applied more creatively. While the obvious use is to extend or improve a single international trip, it can be treated differently.

The main rule is that the additional flight has to be outside the originating region. It does not, however, have to be the same as the arrival region. This makes for some very interesting, and unlimited, possible uses and some incredible value.

Read more about Star Alliance and its members – essential to fully use the Excursionist Perk benefit

A few examples will help to show the possibilities here:

• A return domestic US flight would qualify for a free Excursionist Perk flight in any other region. If you have future travel plans to Asia, for example, you could add a flight on Thai Airways between any Asian country. This could look something like:
  • Flight 1: New York to Los Angeles (charged normal mileage)
  • Flight 2: Bangkok to Hong Kong (free)
  • Flight 3: San Francisco to New York (charged normal mileage)
• Similarly, a US flight could be added for free when traveling in other regions. If you live in Europe but are later visiting the US, you could nest a ‘free’ one-way United flight within the US between a return award booking in Europe.

Photo: KITTIKUN YOKSAP | Shutterstock

Using the benefit it this way takes some careful planning and understanding. In particular, note the following:

• Valid itineraries can be booked online with MileagePlus – using the multi-city option. This is often simpler than calling, as multiple routes can easily be checked.
• With multiple flights and different airlines involved, it may require some flexibility and extended searching to find valid flights and availability. It can help here to search for award ticket availability on separate sectors before combining them.
• As with any airline ticket, flights must be flown and flown in the order booked. Failure to do this will result in the ticket being canceled (and possible further action).
• Later flights can be booked far ahead (up to normal ticketing rules of close to a year in advance).
• Changes can be made to dates (with no fees for most award tickets).
• If you book multiple flights within the same itinerary, only the first qualifying flights will count as free (the others will charge mileage as normal).
• It is possible, of course, to plan and book several tickets together. As long as each ticket is flown in order, they can be used together to create some very valuable routings! The options really are unlimited. Get the latest aviation news straight to your inbox: Sign up for our newsletters today.