Miles cost the airlines in outstanding liabilities. This is why they'll send you offers for magazines, etc... to try to use these things up.

What if USAirways offered last minute mileage discount tickets? Something like 10,000 miles from place X to Y. Perhaps offer to provide mileage credit for these flights. Fill up the planes, reduce the liability, etc.. Maybe offer an auction type thing - with things like first class seat from X to Y in a dutch auction format.

Just a thought.

You mean like a discount in exchange for miles, rather than a free ticket?

AS already offers an award like this. The AS50, as it's called, offers a 50% discount off of a ticket. I would like US to have something like this, too.

A bunch of airlines do this. A discount ticket plus 7k or 10k miles. I see thia alot in the Netsaver fares.

Miles cost the airlines in outstanding liabilities. This is why they'll send you offers for magazines, etc... to try to use these things up.

They send you those offers because the magazine companies et al are paying them about $0.02/mile for the privilege.

Keeping them on the books doesn't cost squat (see the other thread -- it's $15 per award) -- and they have no incentive at all to worry about low balance accounts. Those miles aren't even counted as liabilities because they aren't sufficient for an award. They don't care if you never use them up -- in fact they're pretty much counting on a lot of them never being used.

10,000 miles would be worth a $7.50 discount using the airlines "liability" numbers. Or $200 if they sell you magazines. If I'm TripleB I know which option I'm pursuing...

Miles cost the airlines in outstanding liabilities. This is why they'll send you offers for magazines, etc... to try to use these things up.

What if USAirways offered last minute mileage discount tickets? Something like 10,000 miles from place X to Y. Perhaps offer to provide mileage credit for these flights. Fill up the planes, reduce the liability, etc.. Maybe offer an auction type thing - with things like first class seat from X to Y in a dutch auction format.

Just a thought.

Continental does this with esavers too. I think something like 99 roundtrip MHT-EWR is also offered for 29 +7,500 Onepass miles.

At one point AA and TWA did this too. I think AA still does. I think esavers are less used these days though due to full planes on US. Maybe in the future this would be a good idea.