mikemcft

Hi,

My wife and I have put much of our Alaska and American miles to good use, but I am having difficulty finding a good way to use our US Airways miles for international travel. Perhaps someone who enjoys this game and is vastly better at it than I am can offer a suggestion.

I have 77,XXX US Airways miles and my wife has 62,XXX. We have 58,XXX SPG points than we can convert, as needed.

I can find very little on the US Airways site and perhaps it was just bum luck, but it felt near impossible to find anything when talking to a US Airways agent on the phone. The agent I got had no idea how their site worked. She did not know that I could only use it for US Airways or American flights. The lady told me that they had flights to Tokyo next April on the dates I specifiedvand that it was 60K miles. I asked how long the travel time was and she said that the flights averaged around 18 hours each out and back. I was happy with that and was nearly ready to book. Then she said that she needed to check availability and found none. What?? She was giving me details about flights that did not exist? What is the point in wasting my time with that?

We'd like to hit one (or preferably two with a stopover) foreign vacation destinations flying out of SEA. We can go in high or shoulder season, but not in rainy season. We can accept travel times up to low twenty hours going or returning, but not the 30, 40, or crazy 50 hours travel time options I've seen. We can travel in October, November, or April 2015.

What would you do if you had these miles burning a hole in you pocket?

Thanks,
Mike

aztimm

I'll move this thread over to the US Airways forum, where it will get more visibility.

We also have some dedicated threads for using US miles, redeeming for oneworld or other partner bookings:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/us-ai...lp-thread.html

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/us-ai...lp-thread.html


If you have questions about either of those, please post directly to those threads.


/aztimm

mikemcft

Thanks, aztimm. I'll check out those other threads. I appreciate you putting this in the right forum. I'm still also open to advice or suggestion from anyone else.

Mike

BoeingBoy

The US site isn't very good for finding award seats. Going to Asia requires another carrier since US doesn't serve Asia and that's where the availability problem came in. Once you picked that trip to Tokyo the agent had to check with the other carrier to make sure there were award seats available and apparently there weren't. It's not that the flight wasn't going to operate but just a lack of award seats.

I'm not sure what's a good site to check OW award availability, expecially to anywhere except Europe/S America. Not knowing any better I'd probably start with the AA site. If you find something you like just call US to book it with your US miles.

You may need to move some miles between your and your wife's account. I think there's a Share Miles promo available now that can get you some extra miles.

Jim

Wrend1

sorry to hijak thread, but Jim if I have found US flights to Europe then BA flights to LHR on aa website as milesaaver awards, i can call us airways and use my USDM to book them?

BoeingBoy

I'll let someone else answer that since, as my signature suggests, I don't deal with revenue or award seats. Ask about picking non-rev space available seats and I could help you.

Jim

fordan

Anytime you're using US miles to book on a partner carrier you'll need to call in; the US website doesn't deal well with awards on anything but US. I can't answer if having them show up as milesaavers means that US will be able to book it, but I'd tend to suspect yes.

sdsearch

One suggestion is to simply wait. US miles can't be used on one-way flights (or, more precisly, it costs just as many US miles to book a one-way flight as a round-trip flight). Once, perhaps a year from now, maybe sooner, US miles can be transferred to AA, they'll be the same thing as AA miles which you're familiar with using (and you will be able to use AA miles on one-way trips, say one direction paid out of person A's account and the other direction paid out of person B's account).

When DL and NW merged, before the accounts became combined, they had a way to transfer betwen DL and NW accounts. When UA and CO merged, before the accounts became combined, they had a way to transfer between UA and CO accounts. Even though Southwest and AirTran are not fully merged and their accounts are not yet combined, they have a way to transfer between Southwest and AirTran accounts.

So there's every reason to expect that at some point well before the actual merger of accounts that US and AA will develop a way to link the two accounts and transfer between them. Unfortunately, since it's not yet been announced, no one yet knows when that will happen.

mikemcft

Thanks. Yes, I'd love to just use the miles as American miles, but they are burning a hole in my pocket. I'd really love to use them sooner as my wife and I just love to travel. When I get time after work I'll try looking at the American site to see if I can get the same availability on US.

UA Fan

There is a special going on, if you want to convert:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/starw...us-30k-aa.html

AwardBee

Ok. You have enough miles, basically, to do an economy ticket to pretty much anywhere in the world. If you transfer all your SPG equally, and buy some more miles, you can do it in business class. As a rough guide, economy tickets are about 60K roundtrip, business class about 110K.

1. Never, ever, ever call US Airways to make general inquiries about awards. Only call them when you know specifically what *segments* you want. They're not good at finding creative routings or ways to get you places, they pretty much do what you tell you them you want, at a very basic level.

2. You generally won't find the flights you need on USAirways. Their award availability internationally on their own flights is iffy, they only fly to Europe and South America, and most international itineraries are best booked on their OneWorld partners, which you'll need to check on Qantas, BA sites for availability, segment-by-segment.

3. You may want to look into using an award booking service. Will cost a few $$ but unless you're willing to invest a lot of time learning the award booking game, you'll do much better paying someone else to do the gruntwork. PM me if you want more details.

4. No matter what you do, figure out where you want to go. Then orient your search around getting you there. This will make things much easier. Do you want to visit just 1 continent (ie Europe) or 2? (Europe+Asia, Europe+Africa, Asia+Australia/NZ/Oceania) Have a destination in mind, that will make it much easier. You basically have the miles to go almost anywhere, in economy or even business class if you transfer and maybe top up a bit.

5. USAirways is having a sale right now on purchased miles. May be worth it for top-ups to get you into Business Class. You can also use the Dividend Mile Multiplier to buy at good prices (2c/mile) in small quantities (5k, 10k, etc.), but it takes a bit of work.

sdsearch

Ok, but if you can't find good value with them, and you want to travel sooner (than the US miles become AA miles), consider looking for a desination where a paid trip doesn't cost so much. It isn't always a good value to use miles, as opposed to cash, for many domestic iteneraries. Yet have you explored all of the US (that's worth exploring to you) already?

And meanwhile, (each?) apply for another Citi business AA card or two. (You can do that several times a year, if you cancel both the card account and its associated "master" account after the bonus miles have posted but before you apply again. Citi-wide rules of no more than 1 app in any 8 day period and no more than 2 apps in any 65 day period apply, but on top of that no more than 1 business card app every 95 days or so. But of course, all of these restrictions are for each of you independently.)