I get a question on this topic several times a week in one form or another, so instead of answering by email every time, I’ll make a post I can hopefully refer to in the future. The question I get is usually from United flyers that want to maximize the number of United miles they earn through credit card spend, and are wondering which credit card they’re best off using. The two most practical options are the Chase Sapphire Preferred card and United Explorer card.

While I covered the benefits of the Chase Sapphire Preferred card in great detail in this post, here are the highlights:

• Two points per dollar spent on travel and dining and one point per dollar spent on everything else
• 7% annual points dividend
• Ability to transfer points instantly to virtually any Chase co-branded loyalty program
• No foreign transaction fees
• Access to the Ultimate Rewards Mall (don’t underestimate this benefit, as I learned last month)
• Sign up bonus: 50,000 points after spending $3,000 within three months

The current United credit card on the market is the United Explorer card, which comes with the following benefits:

• Two miles per dollar spent on United purchases and one mile per dollar spent on everything else
• First checked bag free and priority boarding for non-elites
• Last seat award availability on standard awards for non-elites and upgrades on award tickets for elites (see this post from July)
• 25,000 miles after first purchase, 5,000 miles for adding an authorized user, 10,000 miles for spending $25,000 per calendar year

So as you can see, in terms of the ability to earn miles, the Chase Sapphire Preferred card is better than the Mileage Plus Explorer card in almost every way. With the Chase Sapphire Preferred card you earn the equivalent of 1.07 points per mile, while on ALL travel and dining purchases (as opposed to just United purchases with the Explorer card) you earn 2.14 points per dollar. Beyond that, Ultimate Rewards points with the Chase Sapphire Preferred card are much more flexible and the card has no foreign transaction fees. The flexibility with the points isn’t just that you can transfer them to several loyalty programs, but also that you can transfer them to a frequent flyer account in someone else’s name.

That being said, the United Explorer card might be worth having in your drawer and not necessarily using, if you’re a non-elite that flies United enough to benefit from priority boarding, a free checked bag, or last seat award availability on standard awards, or if you’re a United elite that values upgrades on domestic segments. But those last two benefits don’t kick in until early next year.

But there’s a bit more to this question, since United once did offer a more rewarding credit card, the United Select Visa. The only problem is, they’re not accepting new members anymore as they’ve introduced the Explorer card, though for now claim they’ll continue to offer it for existing card members.

That card was actually very rewarding, and offered three points per dollar on United purchases, two points per dollar on gas, groceries, dining, and home improvement, and one point per dollar on everything else. Furthermore, if you spent $35,000 on the card annually you could get 5,000 bonus elite qualifying miles, plus one elite qualifying mile per dollar spent on United purchases, up to 5,000 elite qualifying miles annually.

There’s no doubt that’s a fantastic card, and it’s too bad they no longer offer it. The main benefit of that card was really triple points on airfare and double points on gas and groceries (much like the American Express Premier Rewards Gold card), and double points on dining (much like the Chase Sapphire Preferred card). So you can still replicate the earnings ratio elsewhere, aside from the elite qualifying miles that could be earned through the card, which are valuable.

The advantages of the Chase Sapphire Preferred card over the United Select Visa remain the ability to earn double miles on ALL travel purchases (as opposed to triple only on United purchases with the United Select Visa), no foreign transaction fees, and the 7% points dividend (meaning you’re really earning more points for dining purchases and for purchases not in a special spend category).

It really is a shame that United got rid of the United Select Visa in favor of the United Explorer card, though at least they’re introducing some useful benefits with the ability to upgrade award tickets and get last seat availability on standard awards (which United always allowed, previously).

Nonetheless, if you’re trying to earn United miles with your credit card spend, there’s absolutely no reason you should use the United Explorer Card over the Chase Sapphire Preferred card. But that’s not to say you shouldn’t have the Explorer card for the added benefits, even if it’s just collecting dust in your drawer.

Applications to cards mentioned above:
Chase Sapphire Preferred card
United Explorer card
American Express Premier Rewards Gold card

Full disclosure: I receive a referral bonus for anyone that signs up through the above links. As always I will only provide a referral link if it offers the best publicly available sign-up bonus.

Continental OnePass and United Mileage Plus are both offering 50 miles per Top Guest check-in at participating airports. You simply have to register your “smart” phone with Top Guest and then use either Facebook or Four Square to make those check-ins.

The page says you need to be “at or near” select United/Continental airports, so as long as it’s within range and you’re checking in, you should be fine (no need to actually be flying that day). You should be able to check-in once per 24 hours.

Priority Club has a similar program whereby you can earn 50 points per “check-in,” so that’s an easy way to rack up 18,000+ Priority Club points per year, and the same seems to also be the case with United now. Now, Top Guest has been known to close the accounts of those that check-in every day at multiple reward-earning businesses (Hilton, Priority Club, Virgin America, etc.), so proceed with caution.

(Tip of the hat to Gary)

I track all of the mileage accounts I manage for people through Award Wallet, and I just got a notice saying that my dad’s United Mileage Plus miles will expire in a few weeks. He only has about 25,000 miles which I’m sure he’ll get around to using now that I had him sign up for the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, but he probably won’t be credited those points before they expire. I could have just transferred 1,000 points from my Ultimate Rewards account to his Mileage Plus account, but instead something rather obvious occurred to me.

Miles can now be freely transferred between Continental and United. While United has an 18-month mileage expiration policy, Continental miles don’t expire as of now. So I transferred the miles from his United Mileage Plus account to his Continental OnePass account at no cost, and in the process extended their life by two years without paying a cent. Per the merger page, Continental writes the following:

Miles currently have no expiry date; however, Continental Airlines reserves the right to impose expiry limits or terminate the OnePass program, thus terminating your ability to claim rewards. The OnePass program will formally end on December 31, 2011, followed by a wind-down period during the first quarter of 2012. Following the wind-down period, your OnePass award miles will be replaced with an equivalent grant of Mileage Plus reward miles. At that point, the Mileage Plus 18-month expiration policy will apply.

In other words it will likely be April of next year before the 18-month expiration policy applies, meaning Continental miles won’t expire until at least late 2013.

Nothing brilliant here, but maybe it’ll help a few of you with expiring United miles (or your relatives with expiring United miles).

ROFL!

(Tip of the hat to David)

Per UA Insider on FlyerTalk, United is actually making some positive changes, and there doesn’t seem to be a catch!

Improved long-haul comfort with more flat-bed seats. In September, we’ll begin installing all-new flat-bed seats in the premium cabins on 26 Boeing 767s – 12 Continental 767-400 aircraft and 14 United 767-300 aircraft (the ones currently in a domestic configuration). These aircraft will also have audio-video on demand and in-seat power from nose to tail. As for our three-cabin 777s, these retrofits are continuing with 17 of 46 aircraft complete and another dozen added to that by year-end. All of these aircraft will have advanced in-flight entertainment in First and Business and on-demand entertainment in Economy. To date, we have more flat-bed seats than any other U.S. airline, with 124 aircraft reconfigured to date and 185 once the 767 and 777 fleets are completed.

Wow, so United is actually reconfiguring some of their domestic 767s for international flying. It sounds like they’ll be two cabin planes, as opposed to United’s international 767s, which are currently configured with first class. Regardless, that’s great news, since United’s domestic 767s are among the most uncomfortable in the fleet.

More Economy Plus, and soon. This fall we’ll also begin installing Economy Plus seating on our Continental mainline aircraft. We aim to have it on 38 Continental aircraft by year end (including some of the 767-400s mentioned above) and plus another 100 by next spring. Once we’re done, we will have Economy Plus on over 850 aircraft – more than any other airline. Worth noting: when installing Economy Plus on the Continental aircraft, we’ll be taking Economy Class seats out and leaving First and Business Class cabins intact.

Now this is actually huge news. When United announced that Economy Plus was going to stay, I said to myself “right, but at the expense of how many first class seats?” I figured they’d be taking a row of first class out of Continental’s 737 fleet and adding Economy Plus. But that’s not the case. Instead the Economy Plus seats will come at the expense of “regular” coach seats. Fantastic.

First Class and Economy Plus is coming to all 29 of our United Express Q400s. Enjoy!

First class on United props? Props to United!

Channel 9? Roger that. Our Channel 9 air traffic control audio channel will be added to all Continental aircraft equipped with in-flight entertainment (said another way: everything but the 737-500s). The first aircraft to get it will be our renovated Continental 767-400s, which will begin re-entering the fleet this fall.

More awesome news. I hope they discussed this with their pilots union!

Bigger bins coming to over 150 aircraft. Beginning in March 2012, we’ll nearly double the size of the overhead bins on our 152 Airbus A319 and A320 aircraft. The larger bins will accommodate a standard 22-inch rolling bag with wheels facing out resulting in increased space of 66 percent. At the same time, we’ll also refresh the interiors of this fleet.

I suppose this is good news, though I’m quite puzzled. The A320s already have the biggest overhead bins in United’s domestic fleet. Doubling the size of the overhead bins? Now people will carry on even more crap. At least there will be less of an issue with gate checking bags.

Streaming in-flight entertainment and Wi-Fi are in the works. We’re currently selecting a vendor to provide streaming video in-flight entertainment option on our 747-400 aircraft, enabling customers to access video options via their Wi-Fi-enabled handheld devices, tablets and laptop computers. This would be in addition to the audio-video on-demand currently offered in First and Business Class. We’re also continuing with our plan to install Wi-Fi on our aircraft. Last March, Continental Airlines signed a letter of intent with LiveTV to install advanced broadband Wi-Fi using Ka-band satellite technology on more than 200 737 and 757 aircraft equipped with DIRECTV. Stay tuned on this front, there’s more to come.

United’s gotta do better than this. They’re simply so uncompetitive in this respect. American and Delta are so far ahead on the wifi front that it’s downright embarrassing for United. You can’t be the airline of business travelers without having wifi on most of your planes. How about investing in this instead of bigger overhead bins?

Major facelift for p.s. We’ll be doing a complete nose-to-tail renovation of our popular p.s. fleet, which serve the New York Kennedy to San Francisco and Los Angeles markets. When completed in 2013, these aircraft will be in a two-cabin configuration with 26 flat-bed Business Class seats and 114 in Economy. These aircraft will also offer Economy Plus, power ports at every row, on-demand audio and video and Wi-Fi service.

This is probably a wash. On one hand PS planes are going from 38 premium seats to 26 premium seats. That means upgrades are getting much, much tougher, not only because of the reduction of premium seats, but because of the increased competition for those seats, since there will be about 50% more coach seats.

On the other hand, Economy Plus and audio and video on-demand are a huge step up from the current PS coach product.

So on the whole these are positive changes, and answer a lot of questions that were left about the merger. Now let’s just see what Mileage Plus looks like in 2012 (hopefully not like this).