bcworld

1. Generally you can only benefit from these promos to the tune of 50k maximum bonus. So multiple people cannot gift you more than 50k bonus in total.

2. No, that's not right. You are quoting the cost for SHARE miles which is $0.01/mile. Share miles is for when you already have miles in an account and want to give them to someone else. Gift miles is buying miles outright for someone else and the cost is the same as buying yourself...$0.035/mile.

nickthepom

Hey bcworld,

I'm thinking of buying points with the 50% bonus deal to fly business return from Sydney to London in August.

I have 17,000 points with Thai Airlines, do you know how I can transfer these into my dividend miles account ?

Also, I have looked at AwardTravelr and there looks to be plenty of seats available on my preferred dates (6th Aug returning 28th August) is this site reliable - I dont want to buy the flights and then find I can't get a FF seat !!

Many thanks

Nick

bcworld

No, you can't transfer your TG points. Not directly anyway. There may be some way of doing it via a hotel program but you would likely lose most of the value anyway.

What AwardTravelr shows you is likely to be accurate. As well as possible TG I can see options on Air China for those dates. Don't overlook them...full flat beds the whole way (as opposed to angled with Thai). On the way out you could even take a quick day trip into Beijing if that interested you (no visa required).

nickthepom

Thanks a lot bcworld, I'll look into Air China, a day trip sounds very interesting.

Cheers for the quick reply.

Regards,

Nick

blue_hotel

Thanks for your answer BC. Funny, on the US Airways site it seems I can gift 50,000 miles for $500. I only joined a few days ago, and haven't received the February offer, but this is all looking very promising. thank you!

Koolcat

Was watching American news at 4am this morning and one of the headlines was that US Airways and American Airlines are expected to announce a merger next week....

Wonder if that has any consequences for those of us sat with a significant pool of dividend miles???

Koolcat

Koolcat

Mr Google came up with this....

Are my miles safe?

This is one of the top questions people want to know any time there's a merger. Fortunately, the answer is "yes." Mileage programs are a key perk airlines use to hold on to their top customers, and they'd be unlikely to risk alienating any of those customers by not honoring the "other side's" miles in a merger. It would take several months, but the carriers would eventually consolidate their frequent-flier programs and merge the accounts of fliers who have miles with both airlines.


http://www.usatoday.com/story/todayi...r-you/1899185/

louie

In my view, yes, it's bad news if you tend to use your miles to travel to Europe as the merged airline would be in OneWorld, so no more Thai first class to London. If you've ever tried to find seats on BA to Australia, you'll understand why I say that - needles and haystacks come to mind. Though Malaysian joining OneWorld last week should help a little bit and there are alternatives to BA and Qantas, such as Cathay.

You wouldn't lose your miles though, but how many miles you'd need for any journey compared with what you need now, no-one knows, but it's not likely to be fewer.

And this week's news is a new $50 booking fee and increases in the mileage needed for most flights on US Airways' own planes.

bcworld

I've seen this mentioned this week but I don't really understand as there has always been a $50 booking fee.

I'm not too concerned about the probable eventual move to OneWorld. I expect that the T&Cs of the program will be pretty much that of AA. Swings & roundabouts but I like AA's program. OneWorld availability is certainly not as good as Star...F is generally easier to get than J between Aus and EU. Flights on BA would attract significant fuel surcharges (they do currently with AA) so CX would be the preferred option...QF's availability is generally dire.

I'll continue to use LifeMiles for Star Alliance. If US/AA allows one way bookings at half cost as I expect then this could be a useful combo.

louie

I put flights on hold on Tuesday and was quoted £X for taxes + $75 close in ticketing fee. Today I rang back to book and was told (by an irritable and aggressive agent) that the taxes were £Y (approx X + 50%) after I had slightly tweaked the booking + $75 + $50. After I queried both the increase in taxes and the $50 he basically said take it or leave it ("of course I can cancel everything if you don't want to pay"). Fortunately I had to call back as apparently I wasn't authorised to use hubby's miles account (even though I could see onscreen my name in the authorised user box). Next agent had no problem dealing with me and happily cancelled the $50 fee when I pointed out that the itinerary had been on hold for a couple of days, saying that it came in on the 6th but I was OK as the flights were held on the 5th. She then confirmed the taxes as exactly Y / 2, so it seems agent 1 had been quoting the total for 2 pax as being per pax (or to be fair, maybe I misunderstood). Have to say Y / 2 (£232) seemed way too low for 7 flights, so I'm more than happy with that.

Not so happy with having to tweak the flights in the first place though as the reason was that US somehow lost one of the flights on hold and it had gone when they tried to reinstate it. I have spent hours and hours and hours trying to find anything from LHR - SIN - SYD - LHR even with flexibility of a week either side leaving later this month returning early April and really struggled, so that was all I needed. Still looks like it's all sorted now, though I'll be ringing Thai tomorrow just to make sure!

commonwealth

interestingly dividend miles and AAdvantage miles are currently offering 50% bonus on purchased miles.

if AA merges with US, will AA abandon oneworld?

bcworld

No - US will abandon Star - definitely.

commonwealth

thank allah, jesus and buddah for that!

keefymonster

Is awardtraveler a suitable search engine for Oneworld award seats?

Out of interest I've done a couple of searches SYD >LHR over a range of dates for oneworld award seats and came up will nil!

Does that sound about right?

louie

Yes. BA in particular you have to book within 5 minutes of them becoming available, though they sometimes have seats appearing a couple of days before travel.

You might have better luck building in a stopover or going on one of the less obvious routes so via Tokyo for example.