Weekly tickets on United
I need to fly weekly between Myrtle beach and Newark on United. Is there a way to purchase a block and get a lower rate (or even just simplify purchasing)?
Best Answer
United PassPlus is definitely an option for this type of thing. Unfortunately United is pretty vague about the numbers (2% - 20% savings) but chances are the savings on the lower fare classes are more in the 2% range.
A non-stop roundtrip runs you about $300 in Economy. Given that it's only a 2 hours flight, there isn't a lot of benefit for flying business.
The biggest benefit here may be getting status right away and don't have to work your way up through the year. If you start from scratch, you would need about 20 round trips to make "Gold", which IMO is the first "sweet spot", primarily because of free access to Economy plus seating and Star Alliance Gold Status.
As with all of these things, it really depends on your specific situation and what matters to you most: cost, easy of access, reliability & convenience of booking, comfort, etc.
At this level of flying you can also consider a United Club membership. While the Club isn't exactly a luxury lounge, it offers drinks, snacks, good WIFI and (mostly) clean bathrooms. Given the extortionary prices for food & drink in the airport (EWR seems particularly bad), this may be worth it.
Update (based on Michael Seifert's helpful comment).
The 20% discount is apparently restricted to full fares which makes it basically useless: no one in their right mind would EVER book a full fare ticket (unless you are desperate and that's the only option left).
For example, a Y-ticket roundtrip starts at a whopping $2100 and you are still sitting in the same crappy economy seat as with a $300 normal round trip ticket. Yes, it would be discounted down to $1700 or so, but that's still almost 3 times as much as a regular business ticket.
So all in all it's a 2% discount and once every blue moon you may forced into a high enough fare class to get a 5% discount.
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Answer 2
There is the United PassPlus program, which is based on a prepaid investment, from which the flight ticket prices are then deducted when you book them during the year. I guess the discounts are based on the size of the initial prepayment. Details at https://united.business/individual
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