Randy Petersen offers US Airways a face-saving way to bring back elite bonus miles — something pretty much every other carrier still features: return the bonus miles for those elite members who carry a Barclays bank co-branded Mastercard (and, ahem, provide retro credit of the missing bonuses back to August 6th).

Given the importance of the co-branded credit card relationship (funding for the America West – US Airways merger was greased by the new credit card partner), this is certainly a plausible idea… made more so by the fact that no other carrier has followed US Airways’ lead on this one.

Certainly a constructive suggestion from the guy who brought you Save Dividend Miles.

Meanwhile, I recently suggested getting the Northwest Visa Signature card before the US Bank relationship disappears with the Northwest-Delta merger (the best current bonus is probably this one).

Certainly the US Bank-issued Northwest Visa will go away. But Randy continues his post with the suggestion to Delta and American Express that the exclusive credit relationship not crowd out the possibility of a co-branded debit card, something that Amex does not offer but the Northwest currently has through US Bank (and which they could of course offer via a different provider as well). If I’m American Express, I’m not ok with it, I like my exclusivity the way it is thank you. But it all depends on the details of the contract between Amex and Delta…

Way to keep that thinking cap on for creative ideas — perhaps the incremental revenue to Delta from Skymiles purchases associated with a co-branded debit card would provide the Skymiles program with enough revenue to reverse their fuel surcharges. A guy can dream, can’t he? 🙂