shawn67

I'll let the mods place the in the appropriate if they feel this info should be merge with another existing thread.

I am sure there are a number of us who did the buy up to CP who did not qualify for the 85,000 mile special dividend for award travel upgrades. It is a huge advantage being able to modify award tickets without paying the $150 pp award ticket redeposit fee. With a family of seven the savings from the waiver of the redeposit fee has already paid for my buy up to Chairman's expenses.

I lost my college roomate in a car accident last week and so I booked award travel last week on USAirways PHX-IND; RT; travel dates 8/1 and 8/3; single pasenger. The available award mileage rates were coach medium (30,000 miles) PHX-IND and coach high (50,000 miles) IND-PHX. I then started monitoring the USAirways.com to see trends in releasing award inventory. What I observed was the following:

1.) Inventory for coach low (12,500 miles) travel would open and close on various early morning/late evening flights starting at the T-7 day window - no rhyme of reason to the availability showing up and disappearing.

2.) First Class Low inventory became available on both legs of the trip at T-4 day point, my guess is after CP, Plat, and Golds clear. I naturally jumped on this and was able to rebook my award travel in first for 45,000 miles (roundtrip, including Dividend Miles MC savings of 5,000 miles) saving 30,000 miles.

3.) Coach low inventory seems to become widely available at T-2 days

Like I said this is what I observed regarding a single passenger award travel. Is this similar to what others have observed?

Superguy

In general, I've seen low awards be available on "slower days" like midweek and Saturday. In my time with them, I've seen that they've been freer with low F award than they have been with low Y awards. I've often just booked low F awards if I was going to be forced to book a high Y award.

Depending on where you're going, I've seen lots of low availability on AA flights, but again, it depends on the day. When we flew my stepson home from his dad's a couple weeks ago, there was plenty of MIA-DCA all day on some days, and nothing on others.

I live near BWI, but typically found better availability out of DCA. DCA was often cheaper for award tickets for some reason, even though there's probably about the same frequency of DCA-PHX flights as there are BWI-PHX flights.

I've generally found no rhyme or reason to US's inventory releases. US seems to sell more expensive fares first and get cheaper closer to departure, so it wouldn't surprise me if they do the same thing for award tix.

Biggie Fries

OP, first off, sorry for your loss. You're making the kind of trip this weekend that no one wants to have to do.

As for your observations, thanks for the info -- I had never thought too hard about how this might work, but the way you describe it means that for CPs there are some chances for savings last minute that, well, I hadn't thought about.

I agree wholeheartedly that the no-change-fee-on-award-tickets aspect of CP is huge. I sure hope that it does not go away, when the programs merge or otherwise. I've always felt that the loss of no-charges-on-upgrades-with-miles augured ill for no-change-fee-on-award tickets, and have been happy that that fear has of yet proved unwarranted.

Btw, in your situation (you as sole traveler) then, yeah, missing the 85K Special Dividend level does have some consequences, but for where I (and, I suspect you; and, as per Superguy's example) use miles for award travel most -- on other family members when we are not traveling same exact itinerary -- the upgrade-to-first-for-CPs-on-awards benefit does not figure into things, so no loss there.

Finally, insofar as you have doped out a bit of US's "method," it reminds me of what I have liked about US's general upgrade policy: That they seem to keep most of the non-sold F seats available for elites.

jfinsocal

It's not common knowledge but there's a 4 day advance purchase requirement for free upgrades on award travel.

US does tend to open award space close in. Its a good thing especially for CP with no change/redeposit fees.

Superguy

Yes, I agree that the no change fee for CP is a huge benefit. I ended up changing my stepson's flight 6 times a couple weeks ago due to issues with his dad and some other events that came up. At $150-200 a pop, that was a lot of money saved.

OP, sorry for your loss. The Mrs. and I had to make this trip ourselves last week under the same circumstances. Definitely not fun. The nice thing about the upgrade benefit is that it makes paying more for a Y award a little more palatable. Our award ended up being a mixed award - a 30k Y award outbound with 25k F return, plus our 5k CC discount. We got upgraded on the way out, so at 50k total miles per ticket, it's what we normally would have paid for a low F award. A bit of a roundabout way of getting it, but it worked at least.

dtremit

The one thing that sort of dilutes the Special Dividend is that -- at least in my anecdotal experience -- First Class-Low awards tend to be easier to find than Coach-Low. So in reality, you're often comparing a Coach-Medium award to First-Low. And as jfinsocal points out, if you switch to that last-minute T-2 Coach-Low award, you won't get the Special Dividends upgrade.

That said, I agree that the CP redeposit fee waiver and good last minute availability has been a great benefit to me.

shawn67

Thank you for the kind words Superguy and BiggieFries...reaching the point of having to accept our own mortality sucks...Superguy Im curious, so when you are upgraded are miles refunded according to what the current rate is for an F award ticket? Let's you get a high Y award at 50,000 miles each way- you get upgraded to F but you see there is now low F availability at 25,000 each way. Do you get refunded the difference or do you have to cancel itin and rebook?

Superguy

I'd have to try to rebook if it came open. To be honest, I didn't bother to look. I was just happy we were on the flight and the upgrades processed properly. As it was considered a hub-to-hub flight (DCA-PHX), I wasn't going to push my luck.

If low F opened up, I probably could have requested a 5k mileage refund per ticket. That would have kept us in F with low risk, so I would have asked for that. I don't see much going wrong there.

But since we booked in high Y, and if low Y opened, I wouldn't ask for a refund as our upgrades already cleared. While it would save us a significant amount of miles, it wouldn't have been worth the risk to me as it was a full 321 with only crappy middle seats left. Considering my wife's fragile state, we were seated together in F, so that took precedence over miles.

Biggie Fries

Both (including jfinsocal's, upstream) useful comments at just the right time....

Usually, as per above, I am booking Award travel for others; I can't afford to Award travel on US if I want to keep status!

But as I book Fall travel, and can basically see my way clear to CP again, I have started trying to figure which (leisure/family) trips might be better off-loaded onto miles. And, sure enough, today, as I was trying to dope the whole thing out, I kept getting flummoxed by the fact that I was usually picking between Coach-Medium and First-Low, which does sort of take the bloom off the rose regarding the Special Dividend upgrade thing.

For that matter, it makes me disinclined to fly on Award tickets at all. For a family member, First-Low is F, versus Coach if I have to buy them a ticket. But for me, for any route that has a First-Low open, I can probably have the F seat if booked sufficiently in advance in Y for less than 1.5 cents a mile paying cash.

Superguy

Ain't that the truth.

It pains me to take trips with miles that I'd rather use cash for. When those sudden ones come up you didn't plan for and you have to be there tomorrow, sometimes using miles is the best option - even if you have to lose out on the miles.