Reminder: Sunday, 03/30 is the final day of USAirways being part of the Star Alliance. They will transition to OneWorld on Monday, 03/31.
Originally posted on 03/21:
1. March 30th is the final day to use USAirways miles for travel across the entire Star Alliance network.
2. March 30th is also the final day to use miles from other Star Alliance airlines, like United, to travel on USAirways. If you have ANA, Lufthansa, or Singapore miles and want to redeem for travel without fuel surcharges you may want to consider booking travel on USAirways before its too late as those programs do charge fuel surcharges for travel on most other airlines.
3. After March 30th USAirways will remain partners for at least a short period of time with Aegean, Air China, Air New Zealand, Avianca, Eva Airways, Hawaiian Airlines, Jet Airways, Qatar Airways, Royal Jordanian Airlines, Shenzhen Airlines, Singapore Airlines, South African Airways, TACA, TAM Airlines, TAP Portugal and Turkish Airlines. You will still be able to earn and redeem miles with these airlines until their bilateral contracts expire. The exact end dates are unknown for all except EVA, which has announced that May 14th will be their final date to earn or redeem miles with USAirways. It’s also possible that some will stay on as partners.
Note that Aegean’s site says that you can only earn tier qualifying miles from USAirways flights through 03/30. That means you can only keep accumulating lifetime Aegean Star Alliance Gold status when flying on USAirways flights until 03/30, afterward it would just earn non-elite status award miles. Last minute mileage run anyone?
4. On March 31st USAirways will be joining OneWorld and you should be able to use USAirways miles for travel on all OneWorld alliance airlines on that day. I say should as doing so on the 31st may be a logistical nightmare if not impossibly as they get things converted over from Star to OneWorld without any planned downtime.
5. You should also be able to use miles from other OneWorld carriers to travel on USAirways on March 31st. Yes, that means lots of new British Airways Avios flight awards starting at 4,500 Avios.
6. The USAirways Dividend miles program will remain separate from American AAdvantage for the time being. At some point in the future you should be able to transfer miles back and forth between the programs and eventually all miles will be merged into a new combined American Airlines program as the USAirways brand is phased out.
7. USAirways has an incredibly generous partner award chart, including round-trip awards for just 90K miles in business to Asia, 110K in business to Australia or Africa, and 120K in business to the middle east.
It will apparently retain the same lucrative award chart even after the switch to OneWorld. Don’t get your hopes up, it will be eventually devalued. But for now it seems that it will remain in place, perhaps until the programs are combined or until miles can be transferred between the 2 programs.
8. For the time being you can still transfer American Express Membership Rewards points earned from cards like American Express® Premier Rewards Gold Card to USAirways. That can be done by first transferring points at a 1:1 ratio into Air Canada Aeroplan and then from Air Canada to USAirways via Points.com. Up to 100,000 miles can be transferred out of one Aeroplan account per year and 100,000 miles would yield 84,011 USAirways miles.
9. Starwood points like those earned from the Starwood Preferred Guest® Credit Card from American Express can still transfer to American or USAirways at a 20K:25K ratio. American will reject transfers if the name on the Starwood account (or at least the last name) doesn’t match the American mileage account. For now though USAirways doesn’t require names to match.
10. Most people are familiar with American’s region based award chart. But the real fun is in their distance based OneWorld award chart.
It allows for 16 flights and stopovers and my wife and I had an incredible time flying around the world in first class on such an award. With USAirways joining OneWorld a whole new slew of possibilities is opened, including the first ever OneWorld flight between the US and Israel.
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29 Comments On "10 Days Until USAirways Joins OneWorld, 10 Things You Should Know"
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Any news on the PHL-TLV flight?
Luckily, its one program I do not have. why luckily? cause its hard to manage multiple FF programs. I guess i wont be able to do 120k biz on US Air with AA miles? or is it still possible?
How can you get Singapore to FRA with United miles? call United? can transfer UR? which airline is lowest cost Fankfurt to Berlin?
Thank you
regarding your point #8 – doesn’t it cost 1.8 cents/mile to transfer points from Aeroplan? I’m Canadian and bemoan the fact that moving Aeroplan points is so expensive and the charges are exorbitant when redeeming for flights.
If I have Us gold status will that convert to one world
I’m trying to figure out if I should wait or book NOW my tickets to Australia for this summer. I finally got together the 110k points per person to do business class. Now with this merger, I’m wondering if I should book through oneworld or star. I know I should definitely get a better product with oneworld, but I’m also worried about availability. Any ideas on what would generally be the better approach?
If I want to book Aegean Air inter Europe one way —
1) do it on A.A. site or U S Air ?
2) can it be done starting April first?
3) what will it cost business for one way
As far as I know — can not do one way US AIR —A.A. has one ways , yet I think it will cost a lot more on A.A. THAN US AIR
Thanks DAN
Any guestimate on when Number 7 may happen i.e. you can transfer miles between programs?
Hi Dan you said you you will post direct flights from PHL like you did a couple weeks ago for NYC?
I hope the day for transferring miles between US and AA comes before 6/30/14 – I have a bunch of AA miles expiring then.
Was excited about the additional BA Avios options until I looked at US Airways nonstops out of NY. Not too many good options. CLT, DCA, BOS and PIT.
Can miles be switched from Starwood to USAirways and then to United?
@Reuvenhunt:
Never mind. Thanks for the AA trivia game post:)
Right now I can barely give away my 100k us airways. Hopefully will be more versatile now.
DAN – I have alot of amex points and would like to transfer them to an airline and then sell the miles. However, I read the t & c of some airlines and they dont allow selling miles.
Due to the nature of my work, I can’t be doing anything ify and not 100% legal.
would you know of any airline which has no rules restricting the sale of miles?
@anon:
So use them.
@yankel:
Why transfer them to an airline instead of selling them just how they are now?
Dan–we are very new to this “game” My husband and I have kids living in Israel and miles scattered all over USAirways, United and So African (we have kids living there as well:)–How do we figure out what to do? We will need to go to Israel the end of May for our Grand daughters wedding, will it be too late to use all our miles? Thanks, Me
i am totally confusd. does this men that i will not be able to use my uysair miles if i am travelling in the future? are they totally useless after march 31?
Any idea when #6 will happen – US & AA ff will merge?
#8. Transferred points to dividend miles bit it took 3 days for aeroplan to approve it. If you are going to do it at this point, consider that if the points.com transfer doesn’t go though, will you be okay with aeroplan miles?
@Daniel:
That should still work after 03/30.
If I need tickets to israel for june, and have MR points should I wait for after us merger or transfer them now to us air?
On your number 6) when do you expect future… in a few weeks, month or years…? I still have both, a AA and a US CC. its almost another year for both I don’t know if I should already sell the miles or wait untill they merge?
How do you use AA miles for a US airways flight?
How can I book us airways with Lufthansa before it’s too late, being that I can not do it online, and the phone lines are closed on Sundays?
To clarify, this is a flight within the US, not bookable on Lufthansa’s website.
@Question: When searching for a flight on aa.com, results include US Airways, like the daily PHL-TLV.
Speaking of one world, when do you think BA Avios will be doing their bonus transfers with Amex? The last few years they were available during April.
While we’re talking about miles, is there any way to transfer aeroplan miles to united?
Hi,
if my US airways miles were credited to my united milesgeplus account will they be deducted now?
Please answer via email.