thechicagoans

Not to mention that United absolutely does give seat assignments from the moment you book...at least when you book directly with the airline.

Exactly. So do American and Delta although American has started getting very stingy on which seats it makes available to non-status members. I had to make a booking for family members recently using their miles and felt bad that there were such few seats available for assignment.

Also, you can keep checking and often at 72 hours, 48 hours, and 24 hours before departure, you can improve your seat assignments so keep watching.

United's expiration policy is 18 months from the time of last activity: http://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/mileageplus/rules/default.aspx

1. There is no "generally" when it comes to mileage expiration. The policies are across the board. For example, Delta miles never expire. Everyone should refer directly to the airline or rewards program in question.

2. For most programs, it's very easy to keep your miles / points alive. You don't have to fly United to keep your miles active. You can:

- Use a Chase United credit card (there are 2 business and 2 personal ones currently on offer)

- Use MileagePlus Dining Rewards and dine at a restaurant in the program to earn miles

- Redeem miles

- Use the MileagePlus shopping mall powered by Cartera (warning, clear your cookies and make the purchase quickly, print PDF copies of everything as Cartera is notorious for cheating people if they aren't vigilant)

- Credit miles to United via a hotel stay

- Credit miles to United via a car rental

- And so on

3. Check to make sure the credit card offer you are looking at is the best one out there. I cringe when I see people taking the 30K United or American offers at the airport. There are better offers online.

For future reference, go to Flyertalk: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/credit-debit-prepaid-card-programs-390/ and look up what the best offer is for the credit card you are looking at. The Chase United Mileage Plus Explorer can easily be obtained for a 50K signup bonus through a variety of techniques.

OP - have a wonderful trip!

Sorry, but many two-cabin flights in America have the front cabin designated as "Business". This is usually because a) it is a flight number continuation of an international flight. Change of gauge to a smaller aircraft, but same flight number, or b) the flight connects to international traffic, so to cater to corporate accounting types, they make the front cabin "business". An example are DL flights into JFK which time to connect to TATL wide-bodies.

 

So you will find "Business" offered within the US, even on two cabin acft.

(Not) to quibble but ”many” does not mean most. 1,000 flights out of 100,000 operated may be ”many” but is still infrequent. In the same vein, perhaps I should have used ”a small percentage” instead of ”very few”.

Furthermore, DFW - TUS is not full of HVFs. AA does not operate 3-class A321s, 762s, 772s, or 77W's on that route and likely never will. Yes, cabins may be coded as ”Business” for sale purposes but rarely do you board a domestic US flight and not have the FAs working the cabin on a 2-class flight call it ”First”. DL and US call their domestic 2-class front cabins ”First” despite not offering First internationally.

PennyAgain - you are right for international travel but most domestic routes do not have.business class for sale. That being said, a majority of US companies will only pay for Economy for domestic travel anyway so the branding of the front-cabin doesn't matter.

Fun times with all of us FFs and FTs :)

No kidding, there is no first class from Dallas to Tucson, only business class and economy. They had to put passengers from three flights into one due to weather cancellations and I was lucky to get an economy seat on the last flight out that night five hours after my original flight.

Just for clarification, there are very few domestic US flights with "business class seating" - that's generally the terminology used for the middle cabin on a 3-class (first, business, economy) flight and those are generally only flown between BOS/NYC and LAX/SFO/SEA.

A flight between Dallas and Tuscon would likely only have a First and Economy cabin.

This strange terminology choice by US carriers causes a lot of confusion for folks as "Domestic First" is often basically the same as "Premium Economy" (not AA/DL/UA's Main Cabin Extra/Economy Comfort/Economy Plus but rather like BA's World Traveler Plus) in terms of seat comfort and quality. Domestic First seats are generally not lie-flats (although 3-Class First between BOS/NYC and LAX/SFO/SEA may be).