Effective this past Saturday, May 20, United Mileage Plus members earn miles on “USAirways West” — USAirways flights operated under the America West flight certificate.

This ends one of the more confusing mileage accrual issues in recent times, where USAirways is a member of Star Alliance and a partner of United’s but a sizable portion of USAirways flights were ineligible for United mileage accrual because they were ‘really’ America West flights operating under the USAirways name — meaning they were old America West flights, operating under the old America West flight certificate, and America West was not a United partner even though the company was merged into one and now called USAirways and the flights were sold as USAirways flights.

Mergers are indeed messy things, and in this case quite customer unfriendly.

That piece of the sage is finally ended. However other tidbits continue, for instance I’ve read that some USAirways elite members are now having success adding their frequent flyer numbers to other peoples’ reservations and accruing miles for those flights, and having those other passengers receive elite status-based upgrades as a result. It’s not even always a nefarious endeavor on the part of colluding flyers. Instead, agents sometimes simply enter the wrong frequent flyer number and that number sticks in spite of the lack of a name match. No doubt this mess will get sorted out eventually.

Rumors of an America West-USAirways linkup have been all over the news. The two carriers are certainly in talks. There’s a certain logic to it: USAirways has a strong East Coast route network, America West has a strong West Coast route network, together they’d be a true national carrier (the nation’s 6th largest).

But America West is close to profitability and is winning analyst plaudits. USAirways remains in bankruptcy for the second time since 9/11, is short on cash and on life support. USAirways has a much more senior workforce than America West. Integrating union labor pools is always a difficult task and one which can lead to significant acrimony.

It’s really unclear to me how America West would make USAirways’ assets profitable.

Rumors of the two carriers combining go back to 1997 (or at least that’s how far back my memory goes, perhaps rumors go back farther).

United almost bought America West purely for the planes, in order to throw most of ‘em at USAirways which was building a significant presence at Dulles in 1998.
Then United tried to buy USAirways but the unions scuttled the deal (so United didn’t put up a fight with regulators, allowing the Justice Department to kill it which got United out of heavy breakup payments to US).

What a long time ago that was in the airline business. Airplanes are parked in the desert and on the market cheaply now.

I wonder why America West doesn’t just grow organically, rather than taking on expenses and combining workforce cultures. There really aren’t too many barriers to airline expansion, except at a couple of airport such as LaGuardia, Reagan National, and O’Hare.

I also wonder what would happen to USAirways’ Star Alliance membership and partnership with United if an America West deal goes through. Perhaps America West gets swallowed up into the larger picture. Perhaps the USAirways linkages fall apart, as United and America West are significant West Coast competitors.

When I read the headline in the Phoenix Business Journal, “America West adds Australia to frequent flyer program,” I assumed that America West must have inked a deal with Qantas.

Nope. They’ve expanded their partnership with Hawaiian Airlines to include Hawaiian’s service to Sydney via Honolulu.

Oh well, any new award redemption option is a good thing.

Through May 2, America West is offering 1000 bonus miles that count towards elite status when using the ‘bill me later’ feature for the first time for ticket purchases on their website.

This is in addition to the one bonus mile per dollar spent when using the feature and the 500 mile online booking bonus.

Of course, it’s important to pay prompty as the fees can otherwise be significant.

The offer for an America West Visa Platinum has improved — 10,000 bonus miles after your first purchase if you apply online.

That just more or less brings the signup bonus to industry norms, and so I’d only get this card (which comes with an annual fee) if I really wanted America West miles in particular, though other cards like the Starwood American Express will still earn the points more efficiently for regular spending.