maledictis

I don't fly US unless I can help it, but I have several hundred thousand US miles in the bank from back when they were a good airline.

They were forfeited because of lack of activity. US gave me three choices to have my miles restored. 1) Book a first class ticket by a certain date 2) Pay a $400 service charge for someone to click on the RESTORE button on their screen . Could I use the $400 toward travel? Of course not. Yeah, bite me. BTW, this is just one example of why I don't fly US unless I have to.

I chose choice 3: I got the lowest level (no annual fee) US Airways MasterCard, made a small purchase, paid my bill and voilà, my miles were restored at zero cost AND I got a 5,000 mile bonus for using the card the first time and, of course, the 3 miles for my $3.12 purchase.

This is a no-brainer, folks. If your miles are about to go down the tubes because of inactivity, apply online (http://www.usairways.com/awa/content...es/creditcards )for a US Airways no-annual-fee card and make a small purchase. I'm going to keep the card and use it once a year to "ping" my US Airways account until I finally use up the miles.

CPRich

Much like replacing batteries in smoke detectors at Daylight Savings Time, my new New Years ritual will be to buy a couple of iTunes, some flowers, a lunch, a magazine, and the other items on my list to keep all of my accounts active.

For US, buying one song in iTunes does it.

hscottm

this is good advice - I lost 300,000 Hilton points because I didn't realize my expiration was looming.

uva185

Could you book the first class ticket, get the miles restored and then cancel it.

If you actually have to fly on the ticket I'm sure you could find a cheap A fare somewhere.

maledictis

For me, the free US Airways card was the easiest and cheapest way to restore the miles. I applied online and it arrived a couple of weeks later. One purchase and I had my miles back plus a nice 5K mile bonus.