USAirways seems to have updated their award chart with no notice whatsoever. The first item I’ve noticed is that flights between North America and “South and Central Asia” now run 80,000 miles for coach/120,000 for business/160,000 for first class — up from 60/90/120 thousand respectively.
This really is a disappointment. I know that USAirways has had a much maligned program, and things have generally changed for the worse since America West took over things. But I was just starting to collect USAirways miles again over the past few months, racking up about 90,000. And now that doesn’t buy my favorite award any longer.
Update: This was discussed briefly earlier in the week on Flyertalk. It surprises me that there’s less attention being paid to it than I would have expected. One summary of the changes to the award chart:
- New groupings of various geographic areas.
Used to have South Asia and Central Asia as seperate levels, now just South & Central Asia. Mileage for this new grouping is the higher of the two previous groups.
Africa has been discounted by 10,000 per class.
Australia, New Zealand, & Oceania are now missing, possibly grouped with South Pacific. South Pacific area is 10,000 per class less then Australia, New Zealand, & Oceania.
It now costs the same mileage to fly C as F to Hawaii from North America (70,000 miles – F has been discounted to old C level).
It now costs the same mileage to fly C as F to within North America. (Other then UA on their 3 class planes, this doesn’t make a difference)
New chart does not have any information about what countries are included in what geographic areas.
A A* award is now the same price as a US only award for North American, Hawaii, and Caribbean & Latin American travel.
