Huge Improvements to United Award Search

Continuing on the theme of United customer experience enhancements...United overhauled their website last year and the changes were mostly negative.  While the UI has been improved, functionality seemed to go backwards.  Expert mode was removed, (now back) logging in was made more difficult, and searching for awards was made more challenging for a variety of reasons.  Notably, the ability to search for nonstop flights was removed.

Well good news...United has now added back the ability to search for a nonstop award and applied the feature to their "calendar" page where you can search for nonstop awards two months at a time. This is a great enhancement.

Here's how to take advantage.  Go to United.com and login if you have status to see even more award space (United makes additional award inventory available for elite members).

On the "book travel" screen, you'll want to click the "Search for award travel" and "Nonstop" checkboxes.  

Searching for nonstop awards on United's new website

Click search and you'll see the 2 month calendar.

2 months of award availability between LAX and NRT

You can see all of the days across a 2 months window where United has nonstop award availability between two cities.  In this case, LAX and Tokyo's Narita airport.  A white box means no saver (low level) availability, yellow means there is economy saver availability, blue means premium availability, and green means both economy and premium availability at the saver level.

It's now SO much easier to piece together a complicated award.  By searching nonstop availability between two cities and then piecing multiple segments together, you can much more effectively find award space to make that dream itinerary a reality.

Thanks United for making our lives easier!