United’s Excursionist Perk Not Available In Some Zones

Posted on by

I was just reading a post from Drew at Travel is Free on some very interesting uses of the new United Excursionist Perk.  He has come up with some clever ways to get a free one way within the routing rules.  I was looking at some of my planned future trips trying to see if they worked on my itineraries.  What I found out is that if you transit a third zone, you do not get an excursionist perk even if the route starts and ends in the same zone.

Attempt #1 – Lima to either Guyana or Valencia, Venezuela  (Caracas being too dangerous to visit right now) all of which are in Northern South America zone.  The only way to reach either GEO or VLN is via PTY in Panama which is in Central America so I could not get this route included in an Excursionist Perk.  LIM-BOG works as this route is served by Avianca.

Attempt #2 – Rarotonga to Apia falls within the Oceania zone but you can’t travel between any of these South Pacific Islands without transiting Auckland in the Australia & New Zealand zone.

Here is a list of all the zones.   A green dot indicates that it is possible use the Excursionist Perk within the zone because one or more Star Alliance airlines serve the zone without transiting a third zone.  A yellow dot indicates options are very limited.  In Southern South America it is only possible on Avianca Brazil on some domestic routes.  In Oceania there are only flights in the northern Pacific such as Guam to Palau, etc.  A red dot indicates that there are no airlines that serve the airports in that zone without transiting a third zone.

excursionist5

EXAMPLES OF WHAT WORKS AND WHAT DOESN’T

In all examples, I used BNE-AKL & AKL-SYD as my round-trip and attempted to sandwich random routes located in another zone, wholly within the zone.

Example #1 – Excursionist Perk is KTM to CMB.  It works if you use Air India, even though it requires 3 segments but doesn’t work via BKK.

excursionist2 excursionist1

 

Example #2 – Using LIM to MDE as the Excursionist Perk.  Works on direct flight on Avianca subsidiary but not via PTY on Copa.excursionist3 excursionist4

This complication probably won’t affect 95% of customers as most people will be looking for intra-Europe or within South-east Asia or similar but it does mess up a birding trip in more remote areas of South America or a hop around the South Pacific.