United Airlines are revamping their loyalty programme, MileagePlus, to favour members who own United-branded credit cards.
From April 2, United MileagePlus members without a co-branded card will now earn three miles for every dollar spent, when they currently earn five. On the other hand, credit card holders will earn six miles per dollar, with customers on higher membership tiers receiving miles at an even higher rate. Additionally, entry-level United members who don’t have a card will no longer earn miles when booking a basic economy ticket.
United Chief Commercial Officer Andrew Nocella told CNBC that the changes were designed to make MileagePlus more competitive with other travel cards and reward the programme’s top spenders:
What I’m thinking about as we make these changes for United is to make sure that if you hold the credit card, you put it top of wallet, and then if you don’t hold the credit card, there’s a reason to get the credit card that seems incredibly compelling if you’d like to fly United Airlines and if you’d like to have that … trip to Tahiti or to Rome or wherever we may be able to take you.
To accompany this changed, the carrier have launched a new co-branded debit card for UK customers in partnership with Currensea. United previously offered Visa and American Express co-branded cards, but withdrew them from the UK market in 2018 due to the EU cap on interchange fees.
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