United's Giving Bonus Miles to Passengers Who 'Miss' Christmas
Each year, unfortunate passengers end up missing holiday celebrations due to weather, maintenance delays or other irregular operations. But there's another group of flyers who (at least somewhat intentionally) miss Christmas day entirely by booking a flight that departs on Dec. 24 and lands on Dec. 26 — a date-line-skipping California-to-Australia hop, for example.
This year, United's helping to ease the pain of missing Christmas Day by offering bonus miles to passengers traveling on a 12/25-skipping flight, including Dec. 24 flights from San Francisco (SFO) to Auckland (AKL), Chengdu (CTU), Singapore (SIN) and Sydney (SYD); Los Angeles (LAX) to Melbourne (MEL) and Sydney; and Houston (IAH) to Sydney.
The airline rounded up some other fun holiday-related facts as well, such as the two flights that travel closest to the North Pole (hint: both depart from Newark):
As for customers on those seven "bah humbug" flights above, United will issue an extra 2,500 award miles — worth $35 based on our valuations — deposited automatically into their MileagePlus accounts. That'll at least help to slightly ease the pain of missing one of the country's favorite holidays, if for some reason you have no choice but to depart on the 24th and land on the 26th.
