I have AwardGuard that will protect my mileage balance on US if they disappear and the miles become otherwise worthless, up to $7500. I've got about 120K on US right now, and I'm thinking of cashing in for a business or first class award a few months off. My question is this--am I safer to leave the miles in my account and have them be swept into the AwardGuard policy if US disappears? Or, should I book the award ticket and take the risk that if US disappears and the ticket becomes worthless, then I have a ticket to nowhere and no AwardGuarded miles, since they were cashed out for the ticket??

NB: AwardGuard stopped accepting new enrollments a couple of years ago.

Tuff call, but I would rather use the award guard as that way when they buy your ticket you will get miles for the ticket, I presume. If they put you on an airline that you have no miles on, then you could get that airline credit card and receive a free ticket with those new miles. I bought this insurance roughly 8 years ago then cancelled it after the airlines turned around. I thought this was totally finished. Good for you to have it!

From a loooonnngggg time lurker and a long time award guard holder:

I called the Award Guard folks a couple of days ago and asked a lot of questions about how a possible liquidation of US Airways might affect miles/tickets/etc.

1. Enrollment is closed. If you don't have it already, you can't get it.

2. It's backed by a re-insurance type of policy so that if it's swamped by claims it should survive as it isn't being paid for out of pocket by Peterson's company.

3. It will only go in effect if the Dividend Miles program is terminated in its entirety. That means that no other program can pick up ANY of the miles--at any conversion ratio.

4. The limit of Award Guard tickets for a program is $7500.00. That's not per year, it's for how many years it takes to "spend" your protected miles from the particular program failure. If two programs were to go belly up in the same year, the $7500.00 is an aggregate limit for the multiple programs combined. Failures in different years are as follows: if Dividend Miles were to fail in 2005 it would have a $7500 limit and if another program were to fail in 2006, then because the 2nd failure was in a different year, it would then enjoy another $7500 limit. (Clear as mud?)

5. You must submit the documentation of your mileage balance and status within 30 days of the program failure or you get nothing.

6. Flights are paid for based on 21 day advance purchase, Saturday night stayover fares. As you book flights, they deduct the miles from your Award Guard balance (1 to 1 from your failed program balance) and keep a running total towards your $7500 limit.

7. CERTIFICATES you hold as of the program failure that haven't been used OR TICKETED can be returned to the Award Guard Balance--if they're in your name or another's as long as the miles came from your account.

8. Miles that have already been converted to TICKETS on US Airways awards, US Airways metal, Star Alliance Awards, Partner Awards, Star Alliance or Partner metal have no "value" towards your Award Guard bank. That is, you can't "refund" the miles back into your Award Guard account. These tickets will only have value for you if the partner carrier decides to honor them (the congressional law requires paid tickets to have options of travelling standby on other carriers--the informaiton is elsewhere on another thread. Award tickets during the last, elapsed law were covered by DOT interpretation. As far as I know, there isn't a current DOT interpretation and the law is mum on award ticket standby requirements. Of course, international carriers and your award travel are a completely different story.)

9. The tickets Award Guard buys for you from your Award Guard bank, have the same blackout restrictions, program requirements, and terms and conditions as your program did--with holiday/seasonal adjustments each year. For example, if you are CP, you wouldn't have any blackout dates if you were traveling on "former" US Airways destinations.

10. I've copied all the award charts, terms and conditions, timetables, program rules, and have periodic snapshots of my DM award balance in case of program failure.

11. You must keep your Award Guard membership current/paid up year by year as you continue to use it to take flights out of your bank up to the $7500 limit.

12. Segment promotions (like United's) aren't protected in case of program failure--just mileage balances.


Example:

I have a 500,000 DM balance.
I hold a 50,000 Transatlantic award ticket on US metal.
I hold a 80,000 Star Alliance award ticket on UA/AC metal.
I hold a domestic paid ticket for $1000 on US ticket stock.
I hold a unused 25,000 certificate for US domestic summer travel in a friend's name.

If US Airways were to liquidate and no other program took up my DM balance, I would send in documentation of my 500,000 DM balance within 30 days and send in my 25,000 domestic certificate. My Award Guard balance would then be 525,000. The two awards I have ticketed in the example would have no Award Guard value, but MIGHT be useable--especially the Star Alliance one? I would be able to use the at-failure award charts for US Airways destinations and Star Alliance and Partner routes to get future tickets.

Summary and my opinion in response to the original poster's question--if one has Award Guard:

1. US Award tickets on US metal are at the most risk of becoming useless.

2. I would think Star Alliance awards that have no US metal legs would be the most likely to be protected under good grace from the alliance members.

3. If you have any outstanding award tickets (Alliance or US) that you think/know you won't use--get them back into your DM account balance ASAP to protect them with Award Guard. In other words, don't book speculative Star Alliance award tickets to "protect" them if you have Award Guard. Conversely, if you don't have Award Guard then I would book Star Alliance award tickets and hope for the best.

4. If you must book DM award tickets while the program is in severe jeopardy, do it solely on Star Alliance or Partner tickets with no US metal legs.

5. I would take a look at what type of travel and/or tickets you might want to book out of a possible Award Guard bank scenario. For example, if I want to look at 3 Around the World Star Alliance coach tickets in the future, that would be 3 x 200,000 DM miles at a total of 600,000. Since the tickets are ROUGHLY $2,500 each (please no replies on the actual cost!) that would match my Award Guard limit of $7500.00. I would do nothing if my DM balance was under 600,001. If I had 800,000 in this example, I would book speculative Star Alliance awards that I could conceivable use in the next year to get my balance down to 600,000. As another example, if I only took business class trips to Europe to current US Airways destinations, let's assume they cost $3,500 each at an equivalent of 80,000 miles. In this case, I would need an Award Guard bank of 160,000 to be "protected" up to the $7500 limit. In this case if I have 160,000 or less DM miles I would do nothing and let Award Guard work for me, and if I had more, I would spend them on Star Alliance awards since they would be excess to what was "protectable" under the monetary Award Guard limit.

TravelScholar, IMHO with your 120,000 DM balance leave it alone and let Award Guard do its job as necessary. If you absolutely know when/where you are going to take a trip and want to book it with DM miles, then use a Star Alliance award on non-US metal and rely on UA/AC/LH's good graces to honor it.

The customer service number for PrivilegeFlyer (Award Guard) is 1-800-487-8893. The website is www.privilegeflyer.com (http://) . If I have any mistakes or omissions here, please let me know and I'll try to edit them.

Re-Lurking........

Great post on award guard. I had read about that program sometime after it had closed itself to new members.

With trillions of unused miles out there, I can see why they closed their doors before a rush of would be victims swamped them and ended up claiming tickets after only having paid premiums for the protection for a short period of time.

..

Award tickets during the last, elapsed law were covered by DOT interpretation.

This was a subject of intense debate here for a long time. Randy's only public statement was that there was no rule one way or the other. I'd be very interested in any documentation you have for this claim.