US Airways is offering a 100% bonus on shared miles (miles transferred between accounts) during the month of October.
You can earn up to 50,000 bonus miles with the offer, which should appear instantly with the transfer.
The cost for this is “$0.01 per mile plus a processing fee of $30 and a tax recovery charge of 7.5%” — transferring 50,000 miles from one account to another will deposit 100,000 in that account at a cost of $567.50.
Since that’s a net increase of 50,000 miles you’re buying miles at $0.01135 per mile. At that price I’m a buyer.
What I love about US Airways is awards in premium cabins on Star Alliance partner airlines, and a generally reasonable award chart — in some cases downright generous such as 90,000 miles roundtrip between the US and Hong Kong, and 110,000 miles roundtrip between the US and Australia or Africa. Here’s my guide to using US Airways miles to book Star Alliance awards.
What I don’t love about US Airways is that there are no one-way awards at half the cost of roundtrip, and no changes to an award ticket once travel has commenced. In addition, US Airways usually can’t “see” Lufthansa transatlatnic first class award seats and will see fewer Swiss first class seats than are actually available (though in both cases, availability is rare in any case, and for the most part only close to departure).
Since it’s now been three years since they increased prices on their award chart, I wouldn’t be surprised to see another round of increases in the near or medium-term. I’m not sure I’d be truly stocking up on US Airways miles. But it’s still hard to go wrong at less than 1.2 cents apiece. So I intend to take advantage of this offer.
This seems like a GREAT way to leverage my wife and I both having DM accounts, but is there anything in the TOS that would raise alarms if I:
1) Transferred 50K from my account to hers,
and then
2) Transfer 50K back to mine,
netting 100K total bonus miles for $1,135?
@Len – that would be perfectly fine
Brilliant, and I thought they would never offer another 100% share promo!
I’m thinking I should transfer my 50k to my wife and then have her give me 50k (plus the bonuses) but seems like there has been a limit in the past where 50k per year is the max?
@DaninSTL – 50k bonus per account on this offer, not per year
Can someone elaborate on this offer? Does it mean if I pay $500 odd dollars, I can transfer 50k to my friend and I would receive 50k miles in my account as well. Then my friend could transfer 50k to me for $500 and she would have 50k and the other 50k will be for me…is this right?
Also, if my mom does the exchange purchase with me, does she need to use her credit card to buy the miles or can I use mine to get the miles?
@silvana
No, only your friend will receive the 50k bonus mile, but then your friend can transfer the 50k back to you, you’ll then receive 50k+50k bonus.
@silvana, The bonus goes to the recipient of the miles. So you transfer 50k miles to your friend for $567.50, and she actually receives 100k miles. She could then transfer 50k back for an additional $567.50, and you’d get 100k from that transfer. You’d each be net 50k miles (-50 then +100; +100 then -50, respectively) and would have paid $1135 total.
wonder if this will be a points.com transaction. If the bill came from US Airways directly then it would a great way to jump on the Q4 freedom 5x on airlines 🙂 However doubt this will work.
Its times like this that I wish I was married……
So if you want all the miles (base + bonus) to end up in the originating (transferer’s) account, is the maximum share 25k miles…so you can get 50k back?
Can you transfer (take advantage of this promo) more than once as long as you don’t exceed the 50K limit?
Is open-jaw on partners to Asia allowed on US airways?
@Sid – sure
@Andras – yes. I had 35K in my account and transferred all of it to my son. After he transferred 50K to my wife, who then transferred 50K to me, I gave him another 15K so that he got the full 50K bonus.
Not bad for 20 minutes of work first thing in the morning!
Hi, would like to ask about your experience wrt redeeming awards on SQ metal – is it readily available as with all other star alliance partners or is US airways very limited when it comes to SQ specifically?
Hi, Great post, Gary! do you know if the 50K bonus limit applies to the recepient or the sender of the miles?
Thank you Gary. I purchased 75K miles for $866.25
I set up a family member with 5K last year
thinking to use it for a Grand Slam transfer this year.
Without GS, this may still make it reasonable
to share the 5K into 10K for $84.
Or I could just get another US air
credit card for 10 to 40K for free.
Or both.
I have 40K in my account and have an award ticket in mind that costs 80K miles. Can I just transfer the 40K to a friend’s account and have him book the ticket for me? How long do these miles transfers take to appear in the account? Is US Air OK with booking award tickets for others (my friend booking for me)?
If you buy 50k miles in Oct and get a 100% bonus, could you still send/receive that same 50k you just bought and get that 100% bonus too for a total of 200k miles? I ask because I got a 100% bonus email for buying up to 50k miles in Oct.
Does anyone know if there is a limit to the maximum number of miles you can transfer out? My father has 103,000 miles in his account, and I was interested in sharing 50k with bonus to my account and 50k with bonus to my friend’s account. Ideally, at the end of everything, my father would only have 3000 miles left in his account.
Would this purchase be coded as “travel” with Chase because the vendor is USAir? Or does a third party handle these transactions for them?
Hi There,
Anybody who has done the transactions, please share who handles the transactions? I mean the charges on your credit card, is it US airways or points.com? Thanks a lot!
Ok so something unexpected happened. I called US Air to check a partner award ticket on ANA airways. They say it isn’t available even though it shows as available on united.com . Not sure what to do next.
@Sid – what travel date and what route? Sometimes US Airways has a hard time with ANA flights operated by Air Japan. Otherwise hang up, call back, sometimes US Airways agents are just too clueless to help.
Is this a one-shot deal? Do they actually track it or can you do it again tomorrow?
Can I receive multiple 50K + bonus from other friends? Or is the limit 50K + bonus one time only.
@Norman you can receive 50k bonus per account
Gary, just to clarify what you’re saying – if I trade with 6 different friends I will net 300K miles?
@Norman one account can receive no more than 50,000 bonus points from sharing
Gary,
One account can receive 50k from sharing AND buying or sharing OR buying? Thanks in advance!
Gary,
I was trying to book NRT-DEL on 24th or 25th Dec and returning on 13th Jan. These flights are clearly available on united and ANA websites but US Air can’t see them. The earliest date the agent can see is 5th Jan.
One reason I can think of is that this route is ‘Subject to receipt of govt operating authority’. So the route doesn’t actually commence till 22nd Oct. Could that be why the US Air agent can’t see this? Any other tips?
@Sid what flights exactly?
12/24
(MO) NH917
Tokyo(Narita) Delhi
1/13
(SU) NH918
Delhi Tokyo(Narita)
Both show as available on ANA
@Sid – so I do see the routed operated by a 767 and I see coach award space, assume you’re looking for coach? And it doesn’t look to be an Air Japan-operated flight (which as a 767 it certainly could be!). So I’m a bit at a loss, other than ‘hang up, call back’ — how many agents have you talked to?
Yes I’m looking for coach. Talked to 3 agents already 🙁 I’m worried at this rate I’ll end up coming back to the same agent. Anyway this segment it part of a larger reservation which I have held till day after tomorrow. I’ll try again couple of times tomorrow.
Spoke with 2 more agents today and still no luck. They can see availability on 21st Dec but not on 24th or 25th Dec. I still see coach seats available on ANA and United sites.
Asked them if they can check manually with ANA but they said they can only book what shows in their system.
I just did this and it worked great…..just what I needed to top off my account for first class travel to Europe next fall.