Many airlines seem to have something that no (or few) other airlines do or offer. KLM’s Delft houses are a good example of that. Or until recently, Southwest Airlines had no change fees, 2 free checked bags, and an open seating plan, where you could pick any seat you wanted instead of getting a seat assignment.
Other airlines have their own “things”:
- Delta Air Lines
- Hawaiian Airlines
- JetBlue
- Alaska Airlines (and this, too – but watch out for that loophole they have!)
- Air Canada
Of course, whether or not one takes advantage of these things is a Your Mileage May Vary situation. But it’s nice that they offer them.
United’s program
Since 2012, United Airlines had an offer that allowed MileagePlus members to convert the value of unused or partially used retail gift cards into award miles.
After logging into their MileagePlus accounts, customers select the retailer (they started with 60 retailers back in 2012 and had over 100 by early 2025) and enter their gift card information. Once MileagePlus verified the transaction, United converted the balance on the gift card to award miles and deposited the miles into the members’ accounts.
It was the only airline that had such an offer.
The program had its advantages – if you got a gift card for Target, say for your birthday or during the holidays, but didn’t like to shop there because of reasons, you could exchange the card for United miles.
The exchange rate was, admittedly, not amazeballs. In fact, it wasn’t even very good. For every $25 in gift card value, participants would receive 670 United MileagePlus miles. So, a $50 card would give you 1,330 miles, while a $100 card would equal 2,660 miles.
United miles are worth about 1.21 cents per mile. So that $50 gift card would be netting you about $16.09 in United miles. That $100 gift card? It’d be worth a whopping $32.19 in miles, give or take.
So yeah not exactly a good investment of your gift card value – less than 1/3 of their monetary value. But if you weren’t going to use the card otherwise, at least you’d be getting “something” for it.
Web page is gone
Anyway, social media would typically write about the program either in very late December, or very early January. That was true as recently as late 2024/early 2025.
But this year? Crickets.
The website that social media entities were pointing to last year, https://giftcardexchange.mileageplus.com/, is now dead as a doornail:
What to do with your unwanted gift cards now
Although United’s gift card exchange program appears to be discontinued, there is no shortage of websites that will give you money for your unused gift cards. Just use the search engine of your choice for the keywords SELL GIFT CARDS. We can’t vouch for any of them, but they’re out there.
And maybe they’ll give you better than 1/3 the value of the cards, to boot!
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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
