US Airways Dividend Miles (Pre-FlightFund Merger) - Help Me Save My Trip To Europe - StarAlliance is the answer?

Okay - I'm not an overly pessimistic person, but the latest USAirways news has me jittering over my spouse and my combined 200k miles (100k a piece approx)..

Long story short - we have alway wanted to use these miles for a FC, or Business Class trip to Italy - a suprise baby came last year, and obviously we had to postpone. Realisticly we think Spring or Fall 2006 (yes, 2006) is the most realistic time to reschedule this trip.

Is there anyway to go about doing this? My straw-man strategey is as follows -

1) Book a trip on LUFT using the Star Alliance assocation for Aug 2005 (I can only go about 1 year out, right?)

2) Some point in 2005, before August, call LUFT and reschedule for Spring 2006 - is this possible, legal?

3) same step as #2, if we decide to move to Fall 2006

Boy, this is a pain, but I'm not going to have labor unions and airlines with screwed up business models, ruin this trip!

Please shoot holes in this or propose an alternative strategy

Thanks again - I love this forum

You can go out 330 days to schedule a trip.

Rebooking may be complicated, because the partner rules are that US would have to handle the ticket reissue on any US-issued ticket. I got into a major bind in October 2001 when US wouldn't reissue an award ticket on SwissAir to replace a route that SwissAir stopped flying after their brief shutdown that fall. SwissAir insisted that US handle the re-ticketing, and USAir stated that they had stopped issuing awards on SwissAir. I ended up having to cancel the trip over this issue.

I don't know about the period of vailidity of any re-issued ticket, but again you'd probably only be able to go out 330 days from that date.

Finally - no guarantee the LH would honor a US award ticket after any US demise. Since it's a US-issued ticket LH can't submit for payment until you travel.

Great post - your information, and experiences ,are exactly what I'm looking for

Thanks again

I agree that you wouldn't be able to reschedule or rebook without US Airways continuing to exist. You'd have to fly the tickets you had.

Randy has been quoted twice in print saying that award tickets on partner airlines would be honored even if the issuing airline went bankrupt. I am suprised by this answer, but he has given it twice and he's a whole lot smarter than I am about this.