Last week I posted that US Airways 100% bonus on sharing miles is back for a limited time. This promotion ends TODAY, December 6, 2014 and is one of the cheapest ways to purchase US Airways and American Miles. Of course there are some other ways like Vanilla Reloads, etc. but those take up a slew of time and involve effort. This current promotion is actually better than the 100% bonus on purchasing miles promotion that US Airways seems to run every other month (which I was informed will be coming back again soon). You can share miles and take part in this promotion here.
The one caveat to this promotion is you must have a friend/family member who is willing to partake in this promotion with you. This is a tired promotion, so you will only reap the 100% bonus when transferring 30,000-50,000 points.
You can share up to 50,000 miles with another account with that account getting 50,000 bonus miles. The cost of sharing miles is actually slightly less than purchasing miles, so this can end up being an amazing deal! You can only share miles in 1,000 mile increments at $10 per $1,000 miles. This means that the cost to share 50,000 miles with a friend, thus giving them 100,000 miles, will cost you $500. However, when sharing miles you will pay a $30 fee per transaction plus 7.5% tax. This makes the total cost $567.50 when maxing out. While person A is out 50,000 miles, person B is up 100,000 miles, thus a gain of 50,000 miles. Person B can than share the 50,000 miles back to person A for the same $567.50 cost. Ultimately, this means you can “purchase” 50,000 miles for $567.50, which can be one heck of a deal for many! As a frame of reference, the cost to purchase 100,000 miles during the “100% bonus on purchasing miles promotion” costs $1,881.25.
While 50,000 miles alone probably won’t get you anywhere internationally, it can be used for two domestic roundtrip tickets, meaning each roundtrip will cost you $284. Probably not the best deal, but you never know. For domestic travel usage I wouldn’t speculatively partake in this promotion, unless you know there is an absolute need with a cost savings. A flight to Hawaii, however, only requires 40,000 miles if you are able to find low-level award availability – which will cost you $460. The real value, however, is for international travel, especially business and first class award tickets, but you must have existing miles in your account (or plan on purchasing or earning them in the future) to be able to redeem for a higher amount.
Some sample award redemptions include:
- 60,000 miles from the US to Europe in economy
- 60,000 miles from the US to South America in economy
- 60,000 miles from the US to North Asia (includes: China, Hong Kong, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macau, Mongolia, S. Korea, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan), but for only 30,000 miles more roundtrip you can fly in business class!
- 70,000 miles from the US to Africa
Remember, you do not have to redeem your US Airways miles only on US Airways flights. When you look for point redemption opportunities at usairways.com you will only get the availability and mileage required for US Airways operated flights. To fly a partner Star Alliance airlines (which might have more award availability and a better redemption) you can check on the united.com website for availability – this will show all Star Alliance award availability. You will, however, then have to call US Airways to book your flight. Remember, US Airways is leaving Star Alliance this Spring and joining OneWorld.
The one thing I hate about US Airways is that you cannot redeem their points for one-way travel, only roundtrip – so keep that in mind. However, you typically can do three-legged trips allowing you to get a higher value out of your points.
This can also be a way to purchase American Airlines on the cheap. Starting at some unknown time in 2014 (earlier in the year), you will most likely be able to transfer US Airways miles to American Airline miles 1:1.
Will you be taking advantage of this deal? As always, I do not really recommend purchasing miles speculatively as award charts can change.
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Doesn’t person A have to have 50K miles already in order for this to work?
@dave – yes
I took this as an opportunity to move miles in preparation for a combination of AA and US miles and to maximize combining them in AA elite status accounts (primarily AA PLT and EXP accounts).
US management is so much more hooked to fees on miles/mileage tickets than AA management that I think it’s a safe bet to assume that the fees for non-status AA account holders will get far worse with USdbaAA.