New CP's still gain nothing
 

One group that does not benefit from this promotion are those that have already qualified as CP or will qualify this year anyway.
I am currently PP and will be CP by end of October. This promo does nothing for me.

This is great on two levels: (1) I'll be CP again for sure and (2) US quickly righted a wrong.^^

Agree generally, but the result of the promo is to impact one's 2012 status--and yours will already be set as high as it can be. OTOH, if you get four bumps between now and early October, then you'll be a CP all the earlier...

Well, I'll be spending a grand total of 28 minutes in BTR in mid-august getting my 4 hops/skips/jumps in order to qualify for Gold Status this/next year! :)

I just booked it online for $306.50 all-in...good promo for us lower tier guys...not so good for Chairmen/plat.

BOS-CLT-BTR-CLT-DCA-BOS Same Day...about 12 hours total travel time.

Regards,
Matt Gulino

Actually it can be good or bad for anyone. For me it is great as a PHX based CP who does a lot of work in FL. With ~60k this year I can easily pick up a MLB-CLT-PHX flight home, or a PHX-CLT-NAS flight out with a cheap flight back to FL on JetBlue or such. May even do PHX-MBJ and then MBJ-MIA, FLL, or MIA. Figure for around $150-200 out of pocket I can make CP for 2011 and get a night or two in the Caribbean. With that out of the way I can easily make Gold on Delta this year.

My business partner on the other hand is a Silver with 48k miles so far this year. Promo sucks for him :D

Ooh, this would be great. I'm based in PIT and in one day could do PIT-PHL-LGA-BOS-PGB-BOS-DCA-PIT, get 7 segments and 3 H/S/J credits, then pick up H/S/J credit #4 next time I fly to see my girlfriend in LA.

My only concern is this: is it worth becoming Silver Preferred? A lot of people here are taking advantage of this program, but FT'ers are exactly the kind of people who would bother... is there realistically going to be a lot of status inflation as a result? Not having to pay for flying standby would be a nice perk, and 'no luggage fees' might occasionally be nice, but the upgrades were what had me contemplating paying to get Silver status.

Do Silver Preferreds have any realistic chance of upgrading on a discount ticket on a cross-country run? When I went PIT-PHX-SEA a few weeks ago, the US rep in PHX said that if I were silver, I would have been able to upgrade at least PHX-SEA based on the info she had an hour before the flight... does this jibe with anyone's experience?

Use both Buy up and Promo
 

Lets say you do this promotion and earn around 25,001+ miles, putting you at Gold. Can you purchase the "buy up preferred" to move to Platnum and then be moved to Chairman's based on the (four credits earned) through this promo?

Two more questions...
 

Great news on the addition of CPs to the program. Thanks to everyone who called and wrote the Chairman's folks for getting this resolved...

I have two more questions though:

1) Has anyone seen anything definitive that purchases be made on usairways.com, or are all booking venues acceptable?

2) My girlfriend has silver status through my nomination as a CP. Will she be eligible to upgrade to Gold for next year based on this program, or does her silver status have to be "earned".

Thanks!!

EL Jefe

The buy-up fees are based on the difference between the qualifying mileage and the actual Butt in Seat (BIS) miles. So you will get a little break on the price of the buy-up from the actual miles you've flown in this crazy little promo, but you won't be getting as much of a break as someone who'd flown the actual mileage. Also it sounds like the pre-promo status is Silver (based on the promo mileage of 25k) so your 4 credits would get you the Gold, not the Plat, as it is based on the pre-promo status. In other words, no double dipping.

Thats a question I shot over to them. If its combinable, I'd go for it...otherwise it seems like a waste. I've got a flight at the end of July that will take me to >25k miles and if that would make me gold with doing 4 h/s/j segments, I'd definitely go for it...In fact, might even go for it before my trip.

Anyone ever transited MBJ? Think I'd make it through the customs dance and a check-in / security reclearance arriving at 9:55am and departing 11:30am same day?

For me, the time saved at the airport alone (by going through the faster security line) is worth having silver. As far as upgrades with silver - when I was silver, I almost always got them on routes such as PHX-MSP and PHX-GEG and even both directions on a CLT-MBJ leg with a companion, but never got them on a true cross country. I'm platinum this year, and I did get upgraded PHX-PHL, but not PHL-PHX. I think it really just depends on the route and time of year.

I was there in November. MBJ for us was fairly painless, but we may have just been lucky. Check-in and security lines were both short. I'm not sure that's always the case though.

BTW, what routing are you thinking of doing? I couldn't find one from PHX that allowed for a same day turnaround, but maybe I didn't look hard enough. :-)

I've been searching for weekend flights out of DCA and I have no luck finding anything under $400. The cheapest DCA to PBG via BOS is $550, BTR from DC goes for $335.
The only cheap flights are on the Shuttle to LGA.

What I meant was at 51k miles, could I use the buy up and then the 1 level status upgrade?

PHX-CLT-MBJ-PHX. PHX-CLT is a red-eye. Leaving Saturday night and returning Sunday, a lot of weekends in July and August. Haven't even looked midweek to see if it's cheaper, but it's $514 all in on a weekend. Note that PHX-MBJ-PHX is only Thurs through Sun or Fri through Mon depending on which direction it is.

I was thinking of a PHX-CLT-MBJ-PHX dance over a day or two, I believe based on their FAQs that it would solve for 4 and skip me up to Gold, which for my purposes is a vast improvement over Silver. Anybody who can find this for an economical price and wants to go I'd be happy to provide some company, in fact, I might have a couple others for a flying meet-in if the dates work out.

When did they add the What's a specific example of how it works? to the FAQ section?

It's been there from the beginning -- at least it was yesterday PM.

Is that seasonal, because I'm looking for the MBJ-PHX flight on a Sunday in September and can't find it.

This should only be 3. East US, West US, and Caribbean. The new route Jump is only for PHX-MBJ direct...

EDIT: Woops. Didn't see the return was MBJ-PHX. It is 4 :)

Or MBJ-PHX...works both way per terms.

Escape Phoenix in July
 

My 18 year old is here for the month of July before going off to school and I was looking for something out of Phoenix over a couple of days just to get away. I would love to find four hits in July that we could both do together.

If I find anything, I'll post, but so far not much luck keeping it affordable. Let me know if you come up with anything!

I'm trying to break the $500 all in barrier on my PHX-CLT-MBJ-PHX "4 in less than a day" extravanganza. I know the fare is out there...

I just can't see any PHX-MBJ (with or without CLT) on any date for less than $204 one way. The international taxes drive this up too much. I'll jump at $400ish.

Just to add some more fuel to the fire, I just got off the phone with a cs rep at US and got some bad news.

I am about 9k away from Gold, which will be no problem to complete by August. However if you complete a h/s/j PRIOR to getting the new status it wont take the extra bump up.

Meaning, if I have 49,998 miles but complete a h/s/j on mile 49,999 then I will be GOLD. Yet, once I get to 50k miles nothing will change. As I've found US cs reps are not always correct, but if so, this will probably upset a lot of people.

Planning out trips the rest of this year, PP is easily insight but CP is a pretty slim chance as I would at most fly around 80k miles. I'll be doing some traveling overseas (hopefully) this Nov and next year a few times, CP would be great for those long flights and to get a better shot of an upgrade.

$400ish would be optimal, it's one of those fares I wouldn't think twice about either on the days or the times. I don't see anything less than that myself.

Me too!! :)

Mon Aug 2, PHX-MBJ (nonstop)
Wed Aug 4, MBJ-CLT-PHX (and many other options)

prices out at $194 each way, or $493.28 all-in


I could be interested, but it would have to be a weekend (if there's WiFi on aircraft I could probably work though), and I'm quite booked up with travel for much of Aug, early Sep, and right when this ends in Oct.

I may make Plat through miles; far from the, "old fashioned way," though. I took advantage of the double eqm earlier this year, and my credit card 10k just posted (was a surprise to me, I thought I'd need another 1-2 months).

I'm not sure I understand what you've been told. If you take a single flight that gives you a single hop and it puts you over 50K, you won't get GP because you haven't done 4 h/s/j's? I find that to be horse hockey and can't possibly be true.

How many people do we need before we can drive down to Rio Salado and name our own price for the "4 Bills for 4 Points" HSJ meetup?

Not worth it since you can do it in a weekend for $514, no hotel stay needed.

Already booked my ILM-CLT-MSY, BTR-CLT-ILM h/s/j run for tomorrow :-) $300 a/i + shuttle this month

I think the rep was likely just pointing out that Silver + H/S/J = Gold, and 50k also = Gold.

The bump is based on pre-promotion status, not whatever status you get to during the promotion and then the bump added on.

Actually, I just got the following email from USAir...seems to me that if you hit 50k EQM and 8 h/s/j segments, you should be CP, regardless of when you hit the 8 segments.

Thank you for visiting usairways.com.

Your pre-offer status is base membership. You would need to book your
travel and fly between July 7 and October 10, so any tickets purchased
prior to July 7 would not be eligible for this promotion. Hop, skip,
jump for Preferred status is a limited-time promotion designed to get
members to fly somewhere new - try one of our international
destinations, the US Airways Shuttle or one of our new routes. If you
reach a preferred level through this promotion, you will have that level
guaranteed for the 2011 Preferred year, through Feb. 29, 2012. At the
end of the year, Dividend Miles will review each account for total flown
miles or flights within that year, which will determine preferred
status.

You don't need to register. We'll keep track of each flight you take and
check off the appropriate hops, skips and jumps for you automatically.
For every four hops, skips or jumps you take, we'll upgrade your
Preferred status one level.





In addition, the T&Cs say:
# 4 to 7 hops, skips, and jumps will move your pre-offer Preferred status up one level.
# 8 to 11 hops, skips and jumps will move your pre-offer Preferred status up two levels.
# 12 to 15 hops, skips and jumps will move your pre-offer Preferred status up three levels.
# 16 or more hops, skips and jumps will move your pre-offer Preferred status up four levels.



My interpretation of these two items are that if you are gold at the end of the year (your pre-offer or BASE status) and get those 8 h/s/j segments, you are CP. Agree/disagree?

Disagree. As detailed elsewhere in the T&C, your pre-offer status is just that, PRE-offer, i.e. the status you had as of July 7th.

I would've originally agreed with you, but I expressly asked this question, BUT according to the email above it sounds as if pre-offer means your status before tacking on this offer so if you fly 4 segments, you'll effectively have a +1 status level next to your profile (i.e silver+1 = gold, then you hit gold+1 = platinum, etc.).

In the 'CP Revolt' thread someone posted that if you managed to go from nothing to CP with this promo you probably would have gotten it anywhere. Sounded like an interested question to figure out, so I did (I think).

The following are the flights I could determine, based from CLT, with the lowest number of EQM (based on gcmap.com) and segments:
Origin Destination Miles H/S/J met
CLT DCA 500 North America East
DCA BOS 500 Shuttle
BOS PBG 500 BOS-PBG route
PBG BOS 500 none
BOS PHL 500 none
PHL YHZ 692 PHL-YHZ route
YHZ PHL 692 none
PHL CLT 500 none
CLT MLB 500 CLT-MLB route
MLB CLT 500 none
CLT YOW 751 CLT-YOW route
YOW CLT 751 none
CLT BTR 675 North America West, CLT-BTR route
BTR CLT 675 none
CLT PVR 1784 Central America, CLT-PVR route
PVR CLT 1784 none
CLT PHX 1773 none
PHX HNL 2917 Hawaii
HNL PHX 2917 none
PHX MBJ 2343 Caribbean, PHX-MBJ route
MBJ CLT 1165 none
CLT SJD 1918 CLT-SJD route
SJD CLT 1918 none
CLT GIG 4694 South America, CLT-GIG route
GIG CLT 4694 none


This assumes a 500 mile minimum per segment even though that isn't true at the beginning of the flying. This means I don't have to worry so much about the specific ordering of flights and when exactly the status bumps occur.

All of this together is 35,143 miles and 25 segments. Have no idea of the costs as I didn't feel like trying to minimize both miles and costs.

Definitely doable though to go from nothing to CP with a significant number of miles and segments less than the normal qualifying.

That's not the way I read the email. I read the email to say that your status will be based on both this promo and the normal miles/segments method, i.e. you won't penalize yourself if you get bumped to Gold through this promo but flew enough miles during the year to make Platinum.

yes, so right now im about a RT short of gold. if I was to do the h/s/j I would get probably around 3k miles, which would put me about 4k short of 50k. Therefore I would have 46,000 miles and be gold. on my next RT flight i would have 53,000 and would still be... gold!

like I said, I don't take seriously what they say unless i hear from 5 reps the same thing. if that was the case, I would be pretty upset.

For those of you good with word problems:

What would the following routing get me using the HOP, SKIP or JUMP PROMO?

CVG-CLT-PVR-PHX-CLT-CVG?

Kevin L