Last Day to Get Up to 50,000 US Airways Miles at 1.1 Cents Each via Share Miles

by Gary Leff

US Airways is offering a 100% bonus on shared miles (miles transferred between accounts) — an outstanding offer that expires tonight.

You can earn up to 50,000 bonus miles with the offer, which should appear instantly with the transfer.

Share miles bonus

For a limited time, when you share miles, the recipient will get a 100% bonus – up to 50,000 miles. Just share your miles by October 15, 2013.

  • Share 10,000 miles, give 20,000 miles
  • Share 30,000 miles, give 60,000 miles
  • Share 50,000 miles, give 100,000 miles

Transfers are available in 1000 mile increments, and each 1000 miles transferred — up to 50,000 — earns a corresponding 1000 mile bonus transferred into the recipient’s account.

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.

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 round trip, and no changes to an award ticket once travel has commenced. In addition, US Airways has had challenges ‘seeing’ some Lufthansa award space and even some ANA award space, my sense is that this is the result of a technical glitch that US Airways has not at all seemed eager to solve (“a feature not a bug”).

Since it’s now been nearly four years since they increased prices across the board on their award chart, I wouldn’t be surprised to see another round of increases — held in check only by the uncertainty surrounding the American Airlines merger — in the near or medium-term. I’m not sure I’d be truly stocking up on US Airways miles.

It’s still hard to go wrong at less than 1.2 cents apiece. So I intend to take advantage of this offer. This is a great way to buy miles in conjunction with a friend (you transfer to them and they back to you) as well as a great way to clean out orphan accounts.

Note, though, that accounts must be at least 12 days old to buy, share, or gift miles — meaning that you cannot open a new account at this point to take advantage of the offer which expires tonight.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. Initiated a transfer yesterday, and it still has not gone through. I called USair and they said that points.com servers are backed up. The credit card does have a pending charge. We’ll see what happens. Anyone else not seeing their transfers post instantly?

  2. Gary, sorry if I have missed prior discussions of this – do you have any thoughts on how my hard-earned (and other) US miles will be treated for lifetime status on AA when/if the merger goes through?

  3. I did a transfer early on ( 01OCT) and the transfer and bonus posted within an hour. I’m currently waiting on another posting however this one is taking longer. (More than 24hrs thus far)
    Have you heard of any problems with the postings?

  4. Caveat Emptor…per FT, transfers to newly created accounts are not posting immediately. These new accounts are older than the 12 day minimum, but ostensibly created shortly after this promotion was announced. What this means is that if you intend a new account to be an intermediary transfer point, the points may not transfer in time to be transferred again with a bonus.

  5. @gary, @work2fly I’ve got several accounts open >> 12 days, and friends with accounts open 12 days +/- 12 hours. If I try to share and they’re “inelgibile” still, will the transaction bounce? Or will it go through without the bonus. Definitely don’t want to spend $$$ and get hit with a technicality.

  6. @jettfrogg:

    i transferred last night around 10pm. i received the order confirmation with match at 5am.

  7. I created an account on 10/1 and transferred miles into it. Posted in one day. Then I transferred miles from a new account on 10/13 and no miles have been posted. Flyer Talk site indicates that new accounts faced delayed or denied. I am on the road today and decided to wait it out and see. I don’t want to be charged for something that I did not get, considering what others complainted about US Airways Customer Services representatives.

  8. I xfered 50k on 9/30 to an old dividend miles account and it went through almost immediately. Today I xfered 50k to a different account opened on 9/30. Two hours later no confirmation, but I do see a pending charge from points.com on my credit card. So finger’s crossed this goes through.

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