US Airways is offering a 100% bonus on shared miles (miles transferred between accounts) through October 15.
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. 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 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, if you need an account with a friend of family member to transfer miles back and forth set that account up today. The rules say
Please note that Dividend Miles accounts less than 12 days old are not permitted to Buy, Share or Gift miles.
Fortunately the promotion lasts longer than 12 days, but only a few days longer.
(HT: Len M.)
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This is great news, as I need to top off my US account, and I think it is time my father gets an account too.. Thank you US!!
Increase in awards??? I have some miles but not planing in redeeming for another year. It would really suck if it increase soon.
Can you transfer between two accounts multiple times or does the bonus cap at 50,000 for each account?
Do the charges on a credit card count as an airline purchase, or do they go to a third party?
@ Robert Concord. That is a great question and I will also wait for the answer. My hunch is no.
@SG, I believe the answer is no, and it comes from points.com but someone can probably confirm.
SG
And that was for Robert Concord, not me 🙂
I’m in a strange situation that this might help me with:
My two kids have accounts with 8,600 miles each that have technically expired. I can reactivate them with some activity by November. I was going to do a couple of purchases through the US Airways shopping mall, which should earn them miles and reactivate the accounts.
If, instead, I were to transfer miles into their accounts, do you know if that would count as activity to activate their accounts? It’s not explicitly stated in the list of activities that qualify, but would the system see that as different from other mileage earning?
And if it did count, do you know if the reactivation would be immediate, so I could bounce the miles back into my account, where they’re easier to keep current? If I moved miles from me to them, then back to me before their 8,600 miles reactivated, would they still reactivate later or would the in-and-out nature of the transaction mean the Dividend Miles system wouldn’t see the transactions?
I realize these are very narrowly focused questions, but any insight is welcome.
Fees are processed by points.com so they do not earn airline spend bonuses
Cap on total bonus earned by a single account is 50k
Can you transfer back and forth within 2 accounts? I have 10k in account A and if I created account B now, can I transfer 10k to account B to get 20k. After that can I transfer 20k in account B to A again? Obviously 20k is not a bonus threshold for transfer, and the cost is going to be higher this way, but you get what i mean.
There are not bonus thresholds with this promotion. Yes you can transfer back and forth, 10k -> 20k -> 40k for a net increase of 30k between the accounts.
Gary,
what’s your current prognosis for the merger with AA? Will it happen in a reasonable time frame? Will it fall apart?
how long does it take for points to be deposited into accounts? thanks
I only have a few miles left on my account. Does it make sense to buy 50k miles at 1750usd and then share them?
Is it possible to do business class to North Asia from HNL via Europe for 90K?
Not being able to change an award ticket once travel has commenced is a problem. I once got burned on a US award ticket and had to find a one way home.
This sounds like a great deal. I have no miles in my account so far. Should I buy miles now, without 100% bonus and share them? Or should I wait for the next 100% buy bonus?
Cheers Fritz
@john transfer should be instantaneous
@AM – American/US Airways getting their preferred trial date for anti-trust litigation boosted the odds but I do not have special insight into whether (a) they’ll settle [the trial date might make DOJ more amenable] or (b) likelihood of their prevailing in court.
@Stever – it makes sense to have your account be the FIRST recipient of miles and then transfer out, rather than the initiator of the first transaction. Find someone with miles to play with.
Thanks for making my morning Gary. I agree this is the best promotion for getting miles. But, as you say each account can only receive 100K (50xfer + 50bonus) maximum during this promotion.
One other point that puzzles me though. You say “US Airways has had challenges ‘seeing’ some Lufthansa award space and even some ANA award space”
Hmm, I thought that you CAN NOT book Lufthansa first with US miles as that is what the partner award chart states in the small print. Or is there some sort of secret trick to that?
Final question – which star airlines does US have big (say over $400) taxes and surcharges on. Just Air Canada? or others too.
Thanks for the great blog!
Sorry to be dense, but I want to make sure that I have this correct:
– Step 1, I transfer 50k miles to my friend, and he gets 100k miles into his account.
– Step 2, he then transfers 50k miles to me, and I get 100k miles in my account
Is that correct?
OR does the 50k bonus cap per account mean that we can only do 25k miles back and forth (with each of us scoring 25k bonus miles)?
Craig – Step 1 & Step 2 are correct. Precondition: Account#1 has atleast 50K miles and Account#2 is more than 12 days old.
@Greg – The US Airways award chart says no Lufthansa first class. They do have some IT issues with other classes of service as well. All of those can be overcome by an agent willing to manually request the same.
US Airways doesn’t add fuel surcharges to awards.
Thanks RP!
I thought this might make sense to grab 5K orphaned in Mom’s account. Paying $85 for 10k is not a clear winner, though, until AA is for sure. I will pass, but this reminds me to get another 35K with credit card. 🙂
MrHalliday – I have a similar situation — my Mom’ account has some orphaned miles.
I think the key is to go from your account to hers first.
I was thinking of transferring 25,000 miles from my account to my Mom’s, then transferring the full 50,000 miles back from hers to mine. That should effectively generate an additional 75,000 miles into my account (25k goes out; 100k comes back) for around $850.
I realize I am leaving 25,000 bonus miles “on the table,” but, if I do the full 50,000 into her account, that will leave 50,000 miles there that will likely remain un-used.
Thoughts?
@Craig
I am doing the same thing… I think that’s the best option.
It seems like a fair deal. So, I was disappointed to read that people are going to scam the airline by transferring to one account and then transferring right back to the original account. I’m pretty darn sure that WASN’T the airline’s intent. I hope US Airways blocks that type of scamming, so everybody who attempts that con will end up with miles stuck in accounts they didn’t want! LOL.
@Lindy – I am sure US Airways is well aware of this possibility.
@Lindy Avianca and US Airways are selling miles like no other airline. A great way to raise cash and screw some *A partners. Well LH & Swiss dont count anymore… 🙂
If I redeem 110K miles to Australia or New Zealand can I stop over at one on the way to the other? Which star alliance partners have a good business class service to those areas?
How much time does it take for the transfer of miles? Do both the 50K miles show up right away in the other account right away?
@Lucky – instant, generally
I don’t know have any friends that I know of with 50,000 miles in their US account (Houston-based) so if anyone would like to take advantage of this offer along with me, let me know. I’d be happy to do the first transfer so I basically bear any risk.
Email me at m_i_k_e_h_o_e_f_f_n_e_r_AT_g_m_a_i_l. Make the obvious edits of course.
Gary – To confirm – the maximum bonus per recipient is 50,000 miles. However, if you have 1,000,000 miles you could share 50,000 at a time to different people’s accounts over and over again as long as each person received only the maximum bonus of 50,000 – right?