US Airways has posted a new Star Alliance award chart (.pdf) on their website, I haven’t noticed any changes yet to their mileage prices but the zone definitions have changed slightly.
Russia used to be listed as North Asia, and so flying Russia – Europe – Hong Kong (for instance) for only 40,000 miles roundtrip in first class. Now Russia is gone from the list of countries on the chart, it’s possible that it’s been recategorized to Europe, I haven’t checked with US Airways yet. But they may have read about all the Flyertalkers jumping on that award value bandwagon.
The one most interesting to me is that Thailand was moved from South Asia to North Asia. So first class from the US to Thailand just dropped in price from 160,000 miles to 120,000. Wow. All of those TrackItBack stickers and purchased miles just became worth a lot more, perhaps.
Update: Looks like Thailand (and Philippines) shows up now in both North Asia and South Asia. This is US Airways after all… Hah!
I just put a Russia – North Asia award on hold with US. Let’s hope we will be able to enjoy these 40k award in the future!
Also, Mexico removed from “North America” and thus increased! The Caribbean and the Mexico + Central America rows are actually identical, I’m not sure why they’re not consolidated into one, but 10K more for awards to Mexico in each Y and F.
Though, Gary, that’s probably the last devaluation you’re worried about 🙂
Also, I remember seeing Central and South Asia being higher in numbers. It seems that they have reduced that too to match other airlines. 80K in Y and 120K in J.
Central/South Asia (incl. India) has always been 80k/120k/160k on US.
US Air corrected the award chart again. Philippines and Thailand are now only under North Asia..