Between January and March of this year I flew United quite a bit. When Covid travel restrictions hit in mid-March the airlines started changing their requirements to qualify for their statuses for 2021. In most cases the airlines actually extended a frequent flyer’s status into 2021 carte blanche but with some caveats. In United’s case, to earn their upgrade certificates a flyer still needs to spend a certain amount and fly a specific number of flights in 2020. Due to all of my work travel I had no issues meeting the spend amount (Premier Qualifying Points) but I am one flight short of the needed number to earn the upgrade certificates.

With Covid still ravaging the United States I reached out to United Airlines’ frequent flyer support team to inquire about whether there would be exceptions made for people like myself who came very close but didn’t cross the line for next year’s upgrades. The quick response verbatim was:

You must meet the published criteria for awarding of the PlusPoints.

Besides it being a rather terse, somewhat unfriendly e-mail, United is saying all flights must be flown and no exceptions will be made. For me, this means I need to fly that one flight to earn the upgrade certificates for 2021. But is flying that one flight worth it from a safety perspective?

We’ve been pretty good about social distancing and isolation during Covid so it seems irrational to go fly just to earn the upgrades but at the same time, it’s like throwing the upgrades away. The way I would do this would likely be to fly United to San Francisco or Los Angeles (Los Angeles would require a connection) mid-week as the flights are super cheap and then I’d take Alaska Airlines back home since they are still blocking middle seats when possible. I’d wear an N95 mask the entire time and wouldn’t plan on eating or drinking on the flights.

Now I just have to decide if this is too much of a risk or if I am being paranoid. What would you do?