Originally Posted by
mikemcft
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.
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.