I’ve written in the past about US Airways’ off-peak awards to Europe, which are one of the best values in the airline industry. For travel in the off season, a US to Europe award costs just 35,000 miles in coach or 60,000 miles in business class. Beyond that, if you have the US Airways Mastercard you get a further 5,000 mile discount, making roundtrip business class to Europe just 55,000 miles. Now, the dates are limited (January 15-February 28), but if you could take advantage of it, it’s an unbeatable value, especially since US Airways has fully flat Envoy Suites on many of their transatlantic routes.

Well, it seems that US Airways has eliminated this award in business class:

I’m not sure whether it’s worse that they didn’t provide any advance notice, or the fact that when they made the change they didn’t make any sort of an announcement, but rather just quietly updated the award chart.

There are some other minor adjustments to the award chart (three cabin first class to Hawaii going from 70,000 miles to 80,000 miles, Alaska being split out as a separate destination with different pricing at the “medium” and “high” level, etc.)

So this is truly puzzling to me, and believe it or not, I actually think maybe we’re supposed to be happy about this. I’ve been expecting a massive devaluation of the US Airways award chart for a while (in particular the 90,000 mile business class award between the US to North Asia), so if these changes were made, does that mean everything else is spared for now? If so, this might just be good news. Or is this just the start of more that’s on the way?

Typically during mergers devaluing the award chart isn’t at the top of their list of things to do, so maybe this is it… for now?

(Tip of the hat to The Wandering Aramean)

Posted on February 7th, 2013 by lucky
Filed under: Awards, US Airways | 20 Comments »

  1. February 7th, 2013 at 9:39 am

    mrredskin said,

    they’re playing “just the tip” with us.

  2. February 7th, 2013 at 9:45 am

    stvr said,

    I took time off from work next week as did my girlfriend. I was trying to book our tickets and they turned to mush!

    Now we don’t have enough miles to go!!! How could they do this? Couldn’t they wait until March 1?

  3. February 7th, 2013 at 9:51 am

    Ozaer N. said,

    as you speculated Ben, the clouds are brewing and the keymaster will soon meet Zoul.

  4. February 7th, 2013 at 9:52 am

    Gene said,

    So glad we’re going to MUC (IC Berchtesgaden!) an a 55k award this month!

  5. February 7th, 2013 at 10:12 am

    Heels05 said,

    @stvr My girlfriend and I did the same thing. Now we are stuck

  6. February 7th, 2013 at 11:14 am

    Michael said,

    US Airways sucks, they always sucked and they will always such. Such a shame that AA is even considering a merger with that woeful airline.

  7. February 7th, 2013 at 11:21 am

    Flyer said,

    A quick noob question. I am flying to BOM (india) with a 5 day stopover in JED. I was expecting 120k miles required for 1 return ticket in Biz class. Is there anything changed for my plan with this revised redemption rules?

  8. February 7th, 2013 at 11:36 am

    dale m said,

    Those much ballyhooed awards were rare as hens teeth. I looked for 2 yrs, for almost any destination and almost any dates — never saw a darn thing available.

  9. February 7th, 2013 at 11:41 am

    lucky said,

    @ Flyer — Nope, those prices haven’t changed.

  10. February 7th, 2013 at 11:42 am

    lucky said,

    @ dale m — If planning far in advance I actually found availability to be quite good. Just didn’t find very much space within a few months of departure, unfortunately.

  11. February 7th, 2013 at 12:05 pm

    Ryan from MA said,

    this sucks…i saved up US Airways for next FEb…was waiting another month to start booking…oh wells 90K to Asia here we come!

  12. February 7th, 2013 at 5:32 pm

    Will said,

    So they do this right after people took advantage of their sale on award miles – nice.

  13. February 7th, 2013 at 5:48 pm

    lucky said,

    @ Will — Hah, do they ever stop putting miles on sale?

  14. February 7th, 2013 at 5:58 pm

    I Need To Work On Being More Observant… | Traveling To… said,

    [...] saving graces?  Lucky points out that the 90k mile business class award from North America to Asia (via Europe) has been spared… for….  In the meantime, I’m continuing to not look forward to the merger. This entry was posted [...]

  15. February 7th, 2013 at 6:05 pm

    Chris said,

    Doug Parker doesn’t just promise changes you’re going to like: He delivers.

  16. February 7th, 2013 at 6:21 pm

    Frequent Flyer University said,

    Interesting because AA also doesn’t offer Off Peak Business Awards, but does offer 40,000 Economy Awards…

  17. February 7th, 2013 at 8:22 pm

    TG said,

    Anyone notice they’ve only changed US Airways awards? Star Alliance awards seem to be unaffected.

  18. February 7th, 2013 at 8:32 pm

    lucky said,

    @ TG — I could be mistaken, though I believe they’ve raised the cost of Star Alliance awards to Hawaii in first class from 70,000 miles to 80,000 miles.

  19. February 8th, 2013 at 10:51 am

    Andrew B said,

    I was pretty sad about this news. I’m taking advantage of the 55k mile off-peak award to go to CDG next week, and was really hoping it’d be around next year as well.

  20. March 5th, 2013 at 5:16 pm

    Angela said,

    I’m not sure if it was by luck, but yesterday I was able to book off-peak business class (Envoy) for only 30,000 miles for one-way and the other way in 17,500 miles for Economy class. 47,500 – 5,000 = 42,500 with US Air Mastercard discount! (booked through phone rep)

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