Sheepdip

Looking forward to my company making all the new signs for American

Always try to fly home Charlotte - Gatiwck with US as their planes are way better that Delta's on the Atlanta - Gatwick route. Lost my silver status this year which was a real disappointment

civilservant

Sheepdip - You're a little behind, the Delta Gatwick route was canned last year

Sheepdip

Wow! Didn't realise that but that would explain why LHR keeps coming up in the searches!

civilservant

I was glad, the horrible older 763's they were using with the older IFE fold down TVs were excruciating for 10 hours. The 764s with the full AVOD from LHR are much nicer.

tonrob

I posted this on my stickied travel thread - summary of expiration rules for airline programmes and also how best to stop your miles from expiring.

US miles expire after 18 months of account inactivity, but you can create activity as simply as downloading and performing a search on their shopping toolbar, or buying a $1 iTunes song from their shopping portal.

Personally I'm going to miss their defective IT and untrained CSRs that combine to allow the most improbable award routings, and even the stuff that's officially allowed, like their bargain-basement 90,000 mile return in business class to North Asia with a stopover in Europe!

sir_eccles

I found their CSRs to be very hit or miss (usually miss). Very occasionally you'll get one who knows how to make a simple booking but the number of times I've been sat there for an hour while they check with a supervisor on how to do something even a little odd.

Steerpike

Did you know - if you spend $25,000 on the US Airways card, you get a 10,000 mile 'credit' to your silver status? I didn't realize this and couldn't explain why I got silver when I did. Turns out I only flew about 15,000 miles but with the 10,000 'credit' I got silver. I've called and asked about this but not everyone at US Airways knows about it, but I was able to confirm it again last week. You only get it on the FIRST $25,000 - if you spend %$50,000 you don't get 20,000 for example.

My problem now is - I am no longer allowed to use my personal credit card for work purchases so the days of racking up tens of thousands of $ on the card are over ... f*(&(ing bureaucracy!

Steerpike

I had an awesome incident with United ... I booked my mom's ticket using miles; I then had to change it. The guy said 'in order to do this, I'll have to cancel the existing ticket and re-issue ...' which he did ... and somehow the credit happened but they did not pull the miles for the re-issued ticket. So I gained about 60,000 miles and was able to reuse them! I kept waiting for them to catch it but they didn't.

jeffreyhy

f*(&(ing bureaucracy!

Regards, JEff

scrubbedexpat091

its not that they are untrained, its that when US Airways merged in 2005 with the smaller America West, they kept the America West system and virtually overnight the much larger US Airways workforce all of a sudden had to learn a new system.

Having worked for both America West and US Airways at different points pre-merger, its not nearly as simple to do a booking as passengers think it is.

Its nothing like using a website. There were times, when I would just book a passengers ticket online vs dealing with the reservations system, I could price it online in about 30 seconds, vs 1-2 minutes.

The system US Airways currently uses is not the best, same one that United now uses, its archaic, a pain in the ass, and not all that user friendly.

Steerpike

I have a question for you frequent flyer program experts ...

I have a good number of miles with USAirways - 250,000. But United is my airline of choice, based on routes served. I realize that both USAirways and United are members of 'Star Alliance', so are my USAirways miles usable on a 'mile for mile' basis on United? That is - if I find a 'free flight' on United's Mileage Plus program for, say, 80,000 miles, can I use 80,000 USAirways miles to get that flight? I can't seem to find any guidance on this one.

Also - I have about 40,000 United Mileage Plus miles. Can I add those 40,000 to my 250,000 USAirways miles and essentially have 290,000 'Star Alliance' miles to use on any Star Alliance airline?

Thanks!

sir_eccles

My experience is that generally to use miles for an alliance member rather than the direct airline needs more miles.

Also check out points.com for shifting miles between programs though not always at 1:1 rates.