US Airways is offering a targeted bonus of up to 100% additional miles when you buy miles through July 31.
The offer is targeted, then you go to the buy miles page you have to enter your account information to see whether you’re being offered a bonus.
I was able to see the offer on able half the accounts I manage. If the offer is available to you, buying miles at a 100% bonus means buying them at a cost of 1.88 cents per mile.
US Airways is almost always selling miles on the cheap, which is to say at a price higher than I’m willing to pay but much lower than the ‘retail’ price that almost never prevails.
- Seriously, has the Federal Trade Commission really never launched an investigation of US Airways Dividend Miles for deceptive marketing practices?
They claim to be offering a 100% bonus — meaning getting twice as many points as ‘usual’ — but since they offer it pretty much all the time it is the usual.
Their 100% bonus on shared miles used to be one of the best deals out there. Even with a very large mileage balance with both US Airways and American AAdvantage I jump on buying miles at 1.1 cents apiece. Last month their transfer miles bonus got a bit more complicated and also more expensive.
Of course US Airways miles aren’t as cheap as they used to be or even as cheap as they used to be.
And you can’t get 90,000 mile Hong Kong awards in business class anymore. But now that those are 110,000 miles, you might as well go for first class which is just 120,000 miles roundtrip. Hard to argue first isn’t worth it, for just 5000 miles more each way eh?
Still, US Airways 100% bonus on purchased miles used to be a fantastic deal — when the miles were cheaper and the award chart was cheaper.
They run these offers all the time. (Sometimes structured a little too clever by half.)
And buying miles from US Airways is cheaper than buying the miles from American, even though US Airways miles should become American miles sometime next year.
But while it’s a strategically valuable play for some, but not for me.
US Airways mileage purchases are processed by points.com which means they don’t show up as airfare, and thus don’t earn bonuses from credit cards like Chase Sapphire Preferred (double points) or American Express Premier Rewards Gold (triple points) that bonus airfare spend.
Avianca’s LifeMiles is the new king of transferred miles and also purchased miles on the cheap and also the new way to access those Star Alliance awards now that US Airways has left Star Alliance and joined oneworld. LifeMiles is the new ‘consolidator of Star Alliance premium cabin seats’.
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Sadly, US miles are probably “worth” about 1.88 cents these days, so there’s really no deal here for most people. It would be hard to find any economy award that would be worth buying at that price. Sure, there would be some modest deals on certain routes, but I doubt it would be worth the trouble of dealing with the paucity of award seats. It would be better to just buy the revenue ticket — and then earn some frequent flyer miles. There are obviously more “deals” to be had buying biz class awards at 1.88 cents, but this makes most of US’s int’l biz class award tickets cost about $2000. Still a good deal, particularly to Pacific destinations, but I’m not sure it’s such a good deal given the difficulty of finding biz class award availability. And at $2000, most people probably have to have a compelling reason to go: you’re not just going to fly over on a lark.
I like these deals but unless you are looking to top up or build your account it’s not typically worth it. I bought some like this last year and it worked out well as the next month they did the share promo so it was good to have some miles available for transfer on that deal. Overall it was a wash I’d say.
Gary – you state in the last paragraph that US Airways has left Oneworld. Didn’t you mean to say that US Airways has left Star Alliance and has joined Oneworld??
Casey – yes, that 🙂