While I’ve written about it before, this is always worth a mention. One of the coolest features of the US Airways award chart is that they have off-peak awards for travel to the Caribbean, South America, and Europe. For me the most interesting is Europe, given that US Airways has pretty good coverage there.

US Airways serves the following cities in Europe: Amsterdam, Athens Barcelona, Brussels, Dublin, Frankfurt, Glasgow, Lisbon, London, Madrid, Manchester, Munich, Paris, Rome, and Venice. It’s worth noting that some are seasonal, so may not be available during their off-peak travel dates.

Also, as I mentioned earlier, US Airways has a new business class product which can now be found on almost all of their Airbus 330 aircraft. For more details on the product and which routes they serve, see this post.

Off-peak award chart

US Airways’ off-peak awards to Europe are valid for travel on US Airways between January 15 and February 28. Business class runs you only 60,00 miles roundtrip, and if you have a US Airways MasterCard you get a further 5,000 mile discount, bringing down the cost to 55,000 US Airways miles roundtrip.

Off-peak award availability can be searched on usairways.com using their award travel search tool. Just entered your origin and destination along with preferred dates and click “search,” and the following page will display a color-coded calendar with availability.

Award search tool

Award calendar

The turquoise boxes mean there’s low level award availability, so just click on them to choose your preferred dates.

Booking page

As you can see US Airways does have a $50 “award processing fee” which is even charged for bookings made online. It cracks me up that in the three seconds the computer issues the ticket it warrants a $50 “processing fee.” But such is life…

The funniest part of the deal (as pointed out to me by reader Carl) has to be that you can actually originate in Hawaii and travel to Europe for 60,000 miles in business/first class during off-peak dates with a stopover on the mainland, while travel between Hawaii and the mainland would otherwise cost 70,000 miles in first class.

All the way to Europe for 60,000 miles

In other words, you save 10,000 miles by continuing on to Europe instead of just terminating on the mainland — that’s crazy!

Just to the mainland for 55,000 miles

Anyway, even as a warm-blooded Floridian I’m tempted by the prospect of a 55,000 mile business class award ticket to Europe in winter.

Anyone else taking advantage of US Airways’ off peak awards?

US Airways is running a couple of great promotions at the moment, making it easy to rack up a substantial mileage balance with them quickly.

The first promotion is their 50% bonus on points transferred from any of their hotel partners. This is a pretty great promo, since you’re earning 37,500 US Airways Dividend Miles for every 20,000 SPG points transferred (SPG throws in 5,000 bonus points for every 20,000 points you transfer, plus the 50% bonus). Furthermore, American Express Membership Rewards is running a 50% bonus on transfers from Membership Rewards to SPG, making it possible to indirectly convert Membership Rewards points into US Airways Dividend Miles at close to a 1:1 ratio.

US Airways is also running a 100% bonus on purchased miles, making it possible to rack up Dividend Miles at about 1.87 cents each.

With that in mind, I figured I’d share some of the basics of US Airways Dividend Miles so you can determine whether taking advantage of one of these promotions makes sense for you or not.

Award chart

US Airways belongs to the Star Alliance, and you can find their partner award chart here.

Stopovers

On awards between regions you have the choice between an open jaw OR a stopover at a Star Alliance hub or US Airways gateway city (meaning a transoceanic gateway served by US Airways)

Booking fees

US Airways charges a Dividend Miles processing fee of $25 for travel within the continental US/Alaska/Canada, $35 for travel to Latin America/Caribbean, and $50 for travel elsewhere. The call center booking fee is waived for Star Alliance tickets since they can’t be booked online. The redeposit and change fees are $150 per person. Lastly, if ticketing within 21 days of departure there’s a $75 quick ticketing fee.

Holds

You can hold an award reservation for up to 72 hours, even if you don’t have enough miles in your Dividend Miles account.

Routing rules

In theory US Airways follows MPMs (maximum permitted mileage) for awards. In practice I’ve never had an agent check the MPM, because I don’t think they even know how to do so. The only thing they regularly check on is to be sure that you don’t have more than one stopover or one open jaw.

For the most part US Airways agents are geographically challenged, to put it nicely. A few examples from the past couple of weeks:

• Last week I was trying to book a ticket for a client between New York and Dubai, and found a routing through Zurich on Swiss. That’s about as direct as routings get. The agent claimed the routing included backtracking, so I asked her to double check on that. After putting me on hold for a while she came back and said “oops, you’re right, I was a little confused about where Zurich was.”
• On the other hand, I’ve seen plenty of people book tickets from Miami to Buenos Aires via Frankfurt without an agent batting an eyelash. After all, Buenos Aires is in Spain, right?

The key with getting a US Airways agent to book whatever you want is to minimize the number of segments involved. If you fly from New York to Frankfurt via Boston, Toronto, Montreal, London, Paris, Zurich, and Munich, that’s actually a legal routing in terms of the MPM, though it will likely confuse the agent, since US Airways agents seem to assume that lots of segments means lots of miles. If, on the other hand, you tried to book Newark to Tokyo via Singapore, you’d be exceeding the MPM by a ton, though I’d be willing to bet most US Airways agents wouldn’t have any issues with it. After all, Asia is tiny and Singapore and Tokyo are like 30 minutes apart, right?

Anyway, what this means is that you can do just about anything within reason with a bit of effort. However, if an agent tells you a routing isn’t legal, just hang up and call again instead of arguing. You’re by no means entitled to a routing that exceeds the MPM, and once an agent notes your reservation you’ll have trouble ticketing it.

Lastly, keep in mind that routings aren’t confirmed till the time of ticketing. What this means is that even if you’re able to place an “illegal” routing on hold, that doesn’t mean the agent has to ticket it when you call back. As a result, if you get a really good routing, I suggest ticketing it right away.

Other restrictions

Award tickets can include a maximum of 10 segments.

Award chart gems

• 90,000 miles for business class to North Asia. This is just about the lowest cost in the industry for business class to Asia, so it’s quite a value. By US Airways’ definition, North Asia goes as far South as Hong Kong. Furthermore, US Airways lets you route from the US to Asia via Europe, so you can have a stopover in Europe enroute. This is pretty funny since US to Europe in business class costs 100,000 miles, so you save 10,000 miles by continuing on to Asia.
• 120,000 miles for first class to North Asia. All the same conditions as above apply. I did this exact award just a couple of months ago to Tokyo via Europe, including a couple of segments in first class on the Lufthansa Airbus 380. It was quite a value!
• 110,000 miles for business class to Australia/New Zealand. This is considerably cheaper than the competition, not to mention that US Airways will let you route from the US to Australia via Asia (and sometimes Europe), which is often helpful given how limited award availability is nonstop between the US and Australia/New Zealand.

Future award chart adjustments

I hate to be Mr. Negative, but something tells me that US Airways will be devaluing their award chart substantially over the coming months. They haven’t had a major devaluation for a while now, and they really don’t have an incentive to be priced below the competition on the award front, especially given how inexpensively they sell miles. So I’d only take advantage of the above if you have a relatively short term use for the miles. If you don’t think you’ll be able to redeem the miles within the next six months or so, I’d hold off on doing any transfer or purchasing any miles.

Any questions?

Here’s a gem. Through March 31, 2012, US Airways is offering a 50% bonus on points transfers from their hotel partners to Dividend Miles. There’s no need to register, and the bonus points post 6-8 weeks after the qualifying activity.

The best transfer bonus here would be with Starwood Preferred Guest. SPG points transfer at a 1:1 ratio to US Airways Dividend Miles, and for every 20,000 points you transfer you get a 5,000 point bonus. That means transferring 20,000 SPG points would earn you 37,500 Dividend Miles during this promotion. That means you’re basically earning 1.875 US Airways Dividend Miles per SPG point, which is an amazing transfer ratio.

I’ve on many occasions purchased US Airways miles when they were selling for 1.5 cents each. Using that value, through this promotion I would be getting 2.85 cents of value per SPG point, which is more than I value them (2.5 cents each). I know many will say they can get more value out of points, though this isn’t retail value I’m stating, but rather their value to me. Now that US Airways has raised the cost of purchased miles to over 1.8 cents each, it’s even more of a no brainer for me.

When making the transfer, keep in mind that the transfer limit is 79,999 points per day. That means for all practical purposes you won’t want to convert more than 60,000 points per 24 hours, since that would max out the 5,000 point bonus for every 20,000 points you transfer.

The one thing I’m trying to figure out is what this part of the terms and conditions means:

Dividend Miles members will earn only one bonus when they transfer hotel points into Dividend Miles during the promotion.

I’m not sure if that means you can only earn the bonus points for one transfer, if the points all post at once, or what, but I’ll certainly be looking for clarification on that before making any transfers.

Transferring Membership Rewards points to US Airways ~1:1 ratio

It’s almost never a good idea to transfer American Express Membership Rewards points to SPG, though through March 31 Membership Rewards is running a 50% transfer bonus for SPG. So while the transfer ratio is usually 3:1, it’s now 2:1, meaning 40,000 Membership Rewards points earns you 20,000 SPG points, which still isn’t a good deal. That being said, through the US Airways transfer promotion you can convert those 20,000 SPG points to 37,500 US Airways Dividend Miles. So when all is said and done your 40,000 Membership Rewards points will net you 37,500 miles, close to a 1:1 ratio.

I’m not suggesting everyone run and transfer their points now, because I do believe Membership Rewards points just got much more valuable due to Singapore Airlines’ new policy of allowing saver awards in their new first and business class products. But I have for a long time been hoping that US Airways Dividend Miles becomes a Membership Rewards transfer partner, and this is about the closest I’ve seen to that for those of you looking to “cash out” your Membership Rewards points.

I’ll certainly be transferring a minimum of 60,000 SPG points, though won’t be converting any Membership Rewards points to SPG in order to take care of this promotion.

Coming up shortly: a summary of the Dividend Miles program and some of the best award redemptions it offers.

In January US Airways offered a 50% discount on the purchase of Dividend Miles. This month they’re offering a 50% discount on the purchase or gifting of Dividend Miles through February 29, 2012, for US Airways credit card holders. Through this promotion you can purchase and gift a maximum of 50,000 miles per account for approximately 1.87 cents each.

As usual, it’s a pretty good offer, though US Airways seems to offer these just about nonstop nowadays…

US Airways is offering a 50% discount on one transaction for the purchase of Dividend Miles through January 31, 2012. This offer seems to only be available to those that purchased or gifted miles last year. Through this promotion you can purchase a maximum of 50,000 miles for approximately 1.87 cents each.

Usually they offer a 100% bonus on purchased miles, which makes the per mile cost the same. The difference is that this promotion greatly limits the number of miles you can purchase. In the past you could purchase up to 50,000 miles and receive a 100% bonus. The last time they offered this promotion they limited the bonus to 40,000 purchased miles (for a total of 80,000 miles). And this time they’re limiting the bonus to 50,000 purchased miles. So since it’s a 50% discount instead of a 100% bonus, that’s the maximum value you can get out of this promotion.

US Airways’ strategy is pretty clear here. They like making money off of selling miles, but they don’t want you to be able to purchase enough miles to book an international premium cabin ticket. Add that to the fact that they recently raised the cost of purchased miles to 3.5 cents each, and this deal isn’t as good as it used to be.

Introduction
Swiss First Class Lounge Chicago
Swiss First Class Chicago to Zurich
Swiss First Class Lounge Zurich
Lufthansa Business Class Zurich to Frankfurt
InterContinental Frankfurt
Lufthansa First Class Terminal Frankfurt
Lufthansa A380 First Class Frankfurt to Tokyo
Park Hyatt Tokyo
ANA First Class Lounge Tokyo Narita, Lufthansa A380 First Class Tokyo to Frankfurt
Westin Grand Frankfurt
Lufthansa First Class Terminal Frankfurt, Lufthansa First Class Frankfurt to Orlando

Back in May I had the opportunity to fly first class on the Qantas Airbus 380 (see this trip report), and ever since I’ve been obsessed. I remember first seeing pictures of the Airbus 380 when it was in production and thinking “okay, what’s the big deal?” It wasn’t until after I flew it that I realized just how passenger-friendly the plane is. Not only is it spacious and does it usually have cutting edge first class products, but what really sets it apart for me is how quiet the plane is and the awesome tail camera, which takes the flying experience to a whole new level.

The thing is, I’m not just obsessed with first class, miles, and travel, but my first passion was actually aviation and planes. I started working on my private pilot’s license at the age of 14, and my love for planes hasn’t died off one bit since.

So I’ve made it a personal mission to stalk fly the Airbus 380 every opportunity I get, at least in a premium cabin. Hell, if there were an Airbus 380 with first class award availability flying to Topeka with a forced six day layover I’d take it in a heartbeat.

Which brings me to this trip. With the exception of Qantas, no airline consistently releases first class award space on the Airbus 380 to partner loyalty programs. That doesn’t stop me from looking hourly every now and then to see if there’s a mistake or change in policy. During one of my late night sessions with the ANA tool and Continental award search tool, I happened to stumble upon some Lufthansa Airbus 380 first class award space between Frankfurt and Tokyo. It was a complete coincidence, though woke me up pretty quickly. I was actually shocked to see that most dates in late December and early January had multiple first class award seats on the Airbus 380.

I assumed it was a glitch, so opened a different browser to verify availability with ANA, Aeroplan, and Continental. Yep, the space was actually there.

Now, admittedly there’s probably a reason there was first class award space to Tokyo right after Christmas — Tokyo isn’t exactly the warmest place that time of year. But still, this trip was about the Airbus 380, and even if it would be cold in Tokyo, I’d deal with it and still enjoy the city.

After playing around with availability I found a flight from Frankfurt to Tokyo with first class award space, and then two days after arriving a flight from Tokyo to Frankfurt with first class award space. Since there were two seats, I convinced a friend to come along.

I should mention that this all occurred just three days before departure, so there wasn’t all that much time to plan. Now the challenge became finding award space between the US and Germany. Since I was only planning a few days in advance I was confident the space would open up, as Lufthansa is great about opening up unsold first class seats to awards last minute. So for the time being I just held the flights between Frankfurt and Tokyo using US Airways miles. They allow a three day courtesy hold, so I left the reservation like that until Christmas Day, the day before I knew we’d have to depart.

And sure enough, award space did open up that day between the US and Europe. For the outbound, Swiss had space between Chicago and Zurich in first class (their new product no less!), while Lufthansa opened up award space from Frankfurt to Orlando for the return. I really lucked out with that, since US Airways doesn’t allow any changes after the original departure flight, and that return award space opened up literally the night before I was leaving. The stars had aligned and it was meant to be… or something like that.

In the end my itinerary looked as follows:

12/26 Swiss 9 Chicago to Zurich departing at 7:10PM and arriving at 10:55AM (+1 day)
12/27 Lufthansa 1191 Zurich to Frankfurt departing at 1:45PM and arriving at 2:50PM
12/28 Lufthansa 710 Frankfurt to Tokyo departing at 1:25PM and arriving at 8:35AM (+1 day)
12/31 Lufthansa 711 Tokyo to Frankfurt departing at 10:25AM and arriving at 2:15PM
01/01 Lufthansa 464 Frankfurt to Orlando departing at 1:35PM and arriving at 5:55PM

Given that we were looking at travel the day after Christmas, it’s no surprise that there was no award space to Chicago. However, as some of you may remember, I was 13 miles short of requalifying for Executive Platinum with American, so this worked out perfectly. While American charged $200 for the one-way ticket from Tampa to Chicago, it was well worth it to lock in Executive Platinum status for the following year.

My favorite thing about the whole trip was the cost. I used just 120,000 US Airways miles, which I had purchased through one of their mileage purchase promotions for under $1,800. Taxes and fees were roughly $200, so I paid about $2,000 for four longhaul international first class segments on some of my favorite airlines, including two on the Airbus 380. I always live in fear of US Airways devaluing their award chart, so this was a nice way to burn some miles guilt free.

As far as hotels go, in Tokyo I redeemed 22,000 Gold Passport points per night for the Park Hyatt Tokyo — an absolute no brainer, given the number of good things I’ve heard about this place (and it didn’t disappoint). We also had two overnights in Frankfurt, one in each direction. I decided to book the InterContinental for our outbound stay at a rate of 107 Euros, and the Westin Grand Frankfurt on the return at a rate of 129 Euros.

Sit back, relax, and enjoy, and see you in Chicago tomorrow.