US Airways Dividend Miles (Pre-FlightFund Merger) - Redeeming miles

As I don't fly US too often, I got a rude surprise when I tried to use miles recently. The ENTIRE months of July and August are sold out SAV SFO and HHH SFO. So I then tried to use the miles for a business trip up to DC. Availability not a problem there, but whoops, a Saturday night stay is required!

So now I'm buying a ticket to DC and US is $60 more than Air Tran. I'd pay the $60 more if I knew I could redeem the miles for something I can get on the other carriers (i.e. business travel or coast to coast in the summer). But as they will only let me redeem for flights that I don't want, I'll go with AirTran and save the $60.

Does US realize what ramifications the Sat. night stay rule has? Does anyone else do this? I fly primarily DL and UA where this is not an isse.

Have you tried redeeming your miles on UA? You can't do it online, but your chances might be better. The problem isn't the SAV-CLT segment, where this availability, the problem is (not surprisingly) the CLT-SFO segment, since US has so few flights out west. I'd think that UA would be much more likely to have availability, possibly by SAV-ORD-SFO. I haven't checked, since that would require a call to UA, but I'd think it would be worth looking into. If you try that, let us know whether it works.

Can you you redeem for any UA flight? I thought it was just for codeshare flights, and currently none of the UAX flights into SAV are US codeshare.

I would rather fly on a widebody to SFO so if I can use my US miles on UA equipment, that's great. I also prefer the non stop flights SAV to DC on UAX versus the change in CLT.