Transferring SPG to USAIR, worthwhile?
 

Is it worthwhile for me to transfer SPG to USAIR currently, or save them for use at hotels during an upcoming vacation? I know under normal circumstances you guys would recommend leaving them for hotel stays at a 1:1 transfer, but with this 50% bonus, is it worth topping up my usair miles instead?

Only you can really decide the value of hotels vs. air miles. I will say that star often provides availability when other miles have nothing available. That was the case with our greece trip this summer. DL and AA miles got me no where so it was good that I had star.

I will also say that I can not believe how bad US is at booking tickets. I just booked the simplest award and it was so much hassle. I just wanted to fly a simple roundtrip between newark and houston on continental. I had everything possible go wrong. Agents insisting that CO flight was not available even though it was. Dropped calls after 20 minutes. After 30 minutes agent tells me that computer is down and I need to ticket it. Then agent goes to ticket on next call then tells me my CC is not going through. 20 minutes on hold later they come back and tell me that it was a problem on there end and they have fixed it.

In all it took me 5 calls and over 2 hours to book a RT from EWR-IAH. So much hassle I am not sure its worth it.

I think it is worthwhile. I transferred half my SPG points (40K) to US Air, and kept the rest in my account to retain some flexibility.

You should check this thread in the SPG forum. But yes, I did last summer and again this summer. 100k SPG is nearly enough for 2 tickets in business (NA to Europe.)

And yes, dealing with US is a PITA. Every time I book award tickets they put me on hold for 30 minutes to figure out how much the taxes will be. It's never more than $30 or so...but it takes forever and is maddening.

1- First to the OP's question. I found it worth it. I did 60K and will do some of my Choice points.

Also it's amazing how similar everyone's experience is!

Every time I book award tickets they put me on hold for 30 minutes to figure out how much the taxes will be. It's never more than $30 or so...but it takes forever and is maddening.

Ditto!

Also what the earlier poster said.
It's a 2-4 hour process over various calls.

I think it is worthwile too, specially for those who do not care about hotel stays.

I have about 900K SPG points and only 47K US Air miles so I thought it was worth it to give me more flexibility on flights. I transferred 60K so far. Haven't decided yet if it is worth transferring another 40K.

how did you get so many spg points

Combination of a lot of business stays in fairly high rate properties plus I use my Starwood Amex for virtually everything I buy that takes Amex.

As long as you have a use for the miles, a ratio of 1.875:1 is probably as good as you'll get. And for sure if I had like over 500k SPG I wouldn't hesitate to shoot over 100k. But I would not shoot over my entire account unless I had specific purpose.

Long term there has to be strong chance US Air will fold or at least leave Star Alliance. Without *A I wouldn't transfer at a 10:1 rate

If you have enough points, why not do both? Book a Nights & Flights award to convert 40K points into 75K US miles while booking a 5-night hotel stay for just 20K (Cat3) or 30K points (Cat4) -- a savings of 10K points. The hotel portion can be rescheduled or canceled/redeposited if you don't use it.

I have only booked one set of tickets with US and that was about 10 days ago...2 biz tickets to europe on Lufthansa for next year...a total of 12.5 minutes on the phone......a totally different experience to what others have.
Next day made a change or two and ticketed.

I called one hour before closing, prepared for a long phone call and was very pleasantly surprised.

Transferred 140,000 Starpoints last time this offer ran and used it for two First Class tickets to Europe this summer. We are traveling on Swiss and the entire transaction could not have been easier.

Just used their 100% bonus for transferring US Air miles to my spouse and am using the 50% bonus to top off so we each have 100,000 miles in the bank.

BTW, I asked these questions when I did it last year and the only issue at the time was, "will US Air still be in business?" Guess it worked out!

Is it ironic that transfer bonuses have been offered by both Delta and US Airways recently, and those are the two airlines that also recently ranked worst in award booking availability?

I'd like to move my SPG miles over to AA, but I'm waiting for a good promo. Does AA ever have these, or do they just have good award availability?

I just love these rhetorical questions.... :D