Last week I wrote that, as part of merging US Airways Dividend Miles into American AAdvantage within 30 days, we can expect Dividend Miles to start locking itself down.
This is a major data migration project, it’s hard to imagine one larger.
In advance of the integration — and as I would expect with a complex data migration project that will involve over 100 million separate database records once complete (!) — they’re going to begin to lock down their systems.
- They’re going to stop ‘linking’ accounts before the programs merge. This page says March 20.
- They’ll presumably stop allowing new enrollments in Dividend Miles before the date the programs actually combine.
- “Dividend Miles award bookings and mileage upgrade requests will be disabled a few days before we combine programs”
They have to start locking down pieces of the equation to reduce the chances of error. In fact, I would expect that at some point prior to the data migration they’ll stop posting miles to Dividend Miles as well, and wait to post them to American AAdvantage after the cutover instead.
And now it is no longer possible to join the Dividend Miles program.
There’s still a ‘join’ button on the US Airways website.
It takes you to the page to join American AAdvantage.
Next stage of lockdown is to stop allowing members to link their accounts. So if you have both a US Airways and an American frequent flyer number and you haven’t yet linked your accounts to ensure that miles are combined smoothly do that today or tomorrow.
Will I be able to make a dividend miles booking tomorrow?? I’ve been waiting to book an off peak Europe award for 2/16 and I’m getting nervous
If I sign up for the credit card and check the assign me a us airways number box, will I get it in time to link my accounts? Or would they just give me an aa number?
Ah, that explains it. On my flight Sunday, when they got to the part of the announcement about “if you’re not already a member…” they only mentioned aa.com instead of both sites as a sign-up option.
@Irene – that is a good question because I signed up 2 days ago for a US Airways card and checked for them to assign me a number. Hopefully everything works fine.
@nathan i think you should be able to
I received this email from US Airways Dividend Miles program on March 17:
“It’s easy and convenient to transfer Dividend Miles® between member accounts. Get those extra miles you need, or share them with friends or family who are close to flight awards. Through March 25, 2015, you can save up to 30% when you share.”
I would highly recommend printing out your current miles and most recent mileage statement and most recent mileage activity today or tomorrow just in case something goes wrong.
Causing some issues with BA – Had a few USAIR flights booked with AVIOS – They all now show as cancelled – When I called BA they noted that USAIR had “Realigned” their fare classes but the flights were all fine and ticketed
Why is it so hard for US/AA to give a definite date for the last possible day to book with US miles? I am contemplating transferring SPG points as I always thought “combining in Q2/2015” means April 1st at the earliest, however, the announcement of accounts getting locked ahead of time makes me very nervous.
Any additional insights anyone?
I just applied for a US Airways credit card. It was automatically approved and assigned me a Dividends number. There’s no way for me to set up an online account on US Airways (I think they removed it in preparation for the merger) and when I called US Airways, the number wasn’t active in their system yet. They did offer to match the AA and US Airways account for me (by calling AA).
This past Sunday I got my son (he is 19) and dividend mile number and then applied for the credit card which was approved on the spot with $4,000 credit limit, nice way to get an extra 50,000 miles