USAirways has apparently added a $5 surcharge to flights booked on its own website. CrankyFlier has the goods.

This seems inconsistent with USAirways’ own policies

There is no booking fee for tickets purchased or redeemed on usairways.com.

However, when CrankyFlier confronted USAirways with evidence — that the website was pricing out itineraries $5 higher than the airline’s published fares — they acknowledged it, but refuse to call it a booking fee.

[T]he $5 increase you’re seeing is essentially a fare increase to fares booked at usairways.com.”

Regardless of the semantics, it is now $5 more expensive to book tickets at usairways.com than it is to book at some other online engines such as Priceline.com (their traditional airfare booking site, not the name your own price site – Priceline doesn’t add booking fees).

Even booking through Expedia, Orbitz, or Travelocity is superior as you can access those sites via a cashback portal (eg FatWallet, but always check EvRewards for the best current offers) and receive a rebate that in many cases is larger than the booking fee those sites charge.

Juniper Bank, which issues the USAirways Mastercard — one of the better airline mileage card values — now has a business card though it isn’t quite as lucrative.

The best offers for the personal card include two years fee-free, 50% bonus miles on first year spending, and 15,000 miles with first purchase.

The business card will match the signup bonus but at a $79 annual fee. (There’s a no fee version with just 5000 bonus miles at signup.)

USAirways and most other airlines have offered status matches — a way to pilfer the best customers of other airlines.

Elite status with an airline usually locks a customer into flying that airline. They get upgrades, bonus miles, and other perks. How can they give that up, even to change to another airline?

Airlines make it easier for customers to switch by advancing status to customers who already have it with a competitor — if I were an American Platinum member I could get Continental to give me Gold status right away so I’d still have elite benefits when I switched.

(The definitive discussion of the subject is a Flyertalk thread I started in October, 2003 that’s still going strong.)

Most US domestic airlines offer status matches of one kind or another. American has long required challenges — an accelerated way to earn status, rather than granting it outright (although with no need to demonstrate existing status with a competitor, but they’re also not granting status right away anyway). United has recently been offering temporary status matches of 90, along with an accelerated way to earn status during that 90 day period. Both are more restrictive than the traditional challenge.

But as Upgrade: Travel Better notes, USAirways has gone more liberal. They’re letting customers buy trial elite status and challenges. In other words, no longer is there a requirement that customers be an elite customer with a competitor to get instant status with USAirways. All they have to do is fork over some cash. Now, in my view the price probably isn’t worth it. And their product isn’t so good as to entice too many elites over. But someone who is really going to start flying USAirways a great deal due to their specific routes and who wants to get status right away rather than starting from zero might well consider the offer.

It’s generated some outrage on Flyertalk, and I understand the sentiment, but I don’t see it as a huge issue since I don’t expect elite ranks to be swamped by the offer. It’s much less of a big deal than USAirways offering their ‘all miles count’ promotion last year when some members earned even top tier elite status (which can’t be purchased through the current offer) by sending enough flowers…

Free Frequent Flyer Miles points out that the USAirways Mastercard offer of

• 15,000 bonus miles with first purchase
• No fee for two years
• 50% bonus on all spending the first year
• Complimentary USAirways Club pass each year (admit two people)
• Annual $99 companion certificate (there are some restrictions, but I used mine successfully last month)

is still around. Truly a great deal, but don’t bother with the extra 10,000 miles for balance transfers due to the associated fees.

As always (and though you’ll rarely need this) it’s a good idea to print a copy of the offer as well as the associated terms and conditions.

USAirways seems to have updated their award chart with no notice whatsoever. The first item I’ve noticed is that flights between North America and “South and Central Asia” now run 80,000 miles for coach/120,000 for business/160,000 for first class — up from 60/90/120 thousand respectively.

This really is a disappointment. I know that USAirways has had a much maligned program, and things have generally changed for the worse since America West took over things. But I was just starting to collect USAirways miles again over the past few months, racking up about 90,000. And now that doesn’t buy my favorite award any longer.

Update: This was discussed briefly earlier in the week on Flyertalk. It surprises me that there’s less attention being paid to it than I would have expected. One summary of the changes to the award chart:

New groupings of various geographic areas.



Used to have South Asia and Central Asia as seperate levels, now just South & Central Asia. Mileage for this new grouping is the higher of the two previous groups.



Africa has been discounted by 10,000 per class.



Australia, New Zealand, & Oceania are now missing, possibly grouped with South Pacific. South Pacific area is 10,000 per class less then Australia, New Zealand, & Oceania.



It now costs the same mileage to fly C as F to Hawaii from North America (70,000 miles – F has been discounted to old C level).



It now costs the same mileage to fly C as F to within North America. (Other then UA on their 3 class planes, this doesn’t make a difference)



New chart does not have any information about what countries are included in what geographic areas.



A A* award is now the same price as a US only award for North American, Hawaii, and Caribbean & Latin American travel.

I’m flying USAirways next weekend and was a bit apprehensive, because that’s supposedly when the airline cuts over from Sabre to Shares (and more specifically, to the America West implemention of Shares called Qik).

A Customer Service Director for a USAirways call center details some of the difficulties that the switchover is going to cause in a thread on Flyertalk.

It looks like the transition may be delayed because of a data error compromising the privacy of some frequent flyer members. It doesn’t appear to be a widespread problem, but it’s changed the priorities for their programmers.

”We’ve got our entire development team, which is supposed to be working hard on migrating our systems, pulled off and working on this,” Danziger said Friday. “And they are hoping they will have a solution to make an emergency change tonight — otherwise over the weekend or Monday.”

Back in August I posted about a first class fare glitch to St. Croix and I took the trip earlier this month.

The deal was Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to St. Croix, so I drove up the night before (could easily have done it same day, but the newly converted Wyndham is a Sheraton at just 3,000 points a night and they give breakfast in the restaurant to Platinums when the club lounge is closed on weekends). Satellite parking for the week ran $35. Shuttles very frequent in both directions. This is such a great airport, it’s almost laughable… huge, new, expansive, but only a handful of flights and gates. The old terminal still stands and there’s a banner encouraging people to suggest uses for it.

Flights were standard domestic service. Harrisburg-Charlotte was booked as an Airbus, swapped for a regional jet, so no first class and no bonus miles on the flight. Charlotte-St. Croix was delayed an hour, but I didn’t mind as I was in the USAirways club and Charlotte has free wifi.

We landed in St. Croix, walked outside and around the corner to baggage claim where it took nearly an hour for the bags to come up. Grabbed a taxi to the King Christian hotel for one night. Hotel was a little sketchy, but on the water in the historic district and sheets were clean and it was cheap for the one night… It was wonderful to sit on the balcony and relax. Walked around the pier for some food. Bar food, boisterous crowd. Next morning walked around the town and checked out the Fort (they charge $3pp but it was a decent time-killer, and Alexander Hamilton’s mother was imprisoned there).

Back to the airport, we caught an American Eagle flight to San Juan and spent three nights at the Westin Rio Mar (upgraded to an Atlantic Suite, report forthcoming). In any case, there was no elite checkin for the American Eagle flights at St. Croix… all the counters are outside… and there was only one person processing passengers for awhile as another was handling a large band checking in with ticketing problems. Line hardly moved at all… an hour passed.. finally to the front of the line with 20 minutes till scheduled departure.

Checkin at St. Croix is a difficult affair. Check your bags, proceed through customs (for US – to – US connections!) then collect your checked bags, present them to TSA for inspection.. which can take a minute or two or a very long time as we unfortunately found out, we got the one staffer that all the others rolled their eyes at, she literally unpacked item-by-item each suitcase and then slowly repacked them. As we watched our time to flight ticking away..

Ran through the checkpoint (which was not so overzealously staffed, though the difficult woman was working the checkpoint on our way back through a week later) and found the plane boarded but still on the ground. They grudgingly allowed us on, and our bags made it too, as the flight was delayed for awhile while they figured out weight and balance issues and unloaded cargo.

Will also share details on the new Westin on St. Maarten which we visited on the trip (then flew back through St. Croix on the way home, clearing customs and immigration on the way in, of course, and then funny that we had to clear customs again to fly St. Croix-Charlotte a few hours later).

Photos from St. Croix after the jump….

Read More…

Through the end of the year, miles earned from select partners (mostly hotel and car rentals but also FTD flowers) count towards elite status with USAirways. No registration required.

This has already gone out over Fare Alert so not sure how long this will last. As discussed on Flyertalk, there’s a $156+tax first class fare from Harrisburg, PA (just a few hours drive from DC) to St. Croix on USAirways.

Go to Travelocity (or the USAirways site), enter MDT and STX as your origin and destination, and select discounted first class for your fare type. (Or don’t specify fare type, it will still pull up this fare as it’s the cheapest fare in the market even for coach.)

Service is only on Saturdays — and only from Aug 12 to Sep 2 and starting again November 4 — so you either fly in and out same day (just under an hour in the airport!) or stay for a full week.

It’s an A fare which is a discounted first class fare and you are given the first class seat map to choose from. So yes, this is a first class fare.

Not all Saturdays will work. Since A fares are ‘discounted first’ they won’t be available on all flights, especially those that are already heavily booked.

Via the Upgrade Travel Blog, USAirways is selling day passes to its lounges for $25 through August 31 — rather than their usual $40 — by mentioning promo code ES25. Details here.

Most US carriers sell day passes for $50, though $25 is the usual price for access to the Alaska Airlines Boardroom without a membership. (Boardroom members can buy day passes as gifts for only $15, and a year and a half back Alaska was selling these around Christmastime for only $12.50.)

The Upgrade Travel blog shares USAirways discount codes good for travel through November 15.

If flying US Airways, and booking on usairways.com, try entering the promotional code RR506FS to receive a 10% discount on purchased first class tickets, or promotional code RR506CU for 5% off economy class tickets. On the flight booking page, enter these codes in the “e-certificate” box located below the “return date” field.

Both USAirways.com and AmericaWest.com now both direct you to the same, new website.

It looks like a rocky transition, the website was put up before it was ready. Some Flyertalkers are reporting that the merger of their frequent flyer accounts is a mess, with their status being downgraded. Others see miles missing from their accounts. Some attempted ticket purchases either are or are no going through, or in some cases going through without notice to the traveler (so they’ve bought tickets but need to call the airline to find out, and even the airline representatives take awhile to figure out that yes, indeed, a ticket has been purchased).

Developing…

USAirways and America West haven’t quite gotten their act together combining their two frequent flyer programs. They don’t want to send out new elite membership cards under the old programs and can’t send out new cards under the combined programs (which count status from having flown both airlines) until they’re further along with integration. So they’re extending everyone’s elite status in the meantime.

If your status was set to expire or be downgraded on February 28th, you have a reprieve. If you were counting on combining last year’s flying from both carriers to boost your status, you’ll have to wait. An email like the following was sent to current elite members:

As a valued Gold Elite member, we want to make you aware of some important information about your membership.



The new Dividend Miles program will debut in late spring of 2006. At that time, we will be combining qualifying elite miles and segments earned in both US Airways Dividend Miles and America West’s FlightFund programs into a single Dividend Miles account. When the new Dividend Miles program is introduced, we will send you updated membership credentials and benefits information.



In the meantime, your FlightFund Elite status, membership card and existing benefits are valid until your new Dividend Miles membership credentials arrive. Please be sure to:

• Ignore the expiration date on your FlightFund Elite membership card even if it expires in February 2006.
  
• Continue to use your existing FlightFund Elite membership card when you travel on US Airways, America West or our partners. We have advised employees, partners and airport security to honor cards with a February 2006 expiration date.
  
• Update your account information. If you have accounts in both programs, make sure your contact information is identical.
  
• Go to americawest.com Benefits-At-A-Glance for program benefits and information.


All of us at US Airways are pleased to serve you. Thank you for flying with us and for continuing to be a loyal customer.

The Charlotte Observer reports that USAirways is planning to delete accounts that have had no activity for 36 months or more unless something posts to the account by February 15.

According to the piece USAirways has not enforced its 36 month rule for several years, but plans to as part of the database cleanup involved in merging the America West FlightFund and USAirways Dividend Miles programs together.

Any activity is enough to keep an account active, but the activity needs to post by February 15.

You could always buy miles, book an award and redeposit it, redeem miles for magazines, or transfer points into or out of your account via Points.com (you could even transfer your points to America West and then transfer them back with no cost or devaluation).

(Hat tip to Today in the Sky.)

The February issue of Inside Flyer predicts (subscription required) that the combination of USAirways and America West will allow you to combine your miles in the two programs in “late March or early April.”

Readers of this blog know better. As I mentioned last month, you can combine the miles in your accounts now on a self-service basis using Points.com.

Points transfer between USAirways and America West on a 1:1 basis at no cost. Transfers from America West to USAirways appear to complete in real-time. Having tested it the other way as well, it looks like transfers from USAirways to America West take somewhat longer.

This method will let you combine points to top off for an award, or even move all your miles from one account to the other to take advantage of current partnerships that the other program has or to take advantage of the other program’s award chart.

Best of all, you can even use Points.com to move your points back if you change your mind (bearing in mind that going from USAirways to America West doesn’t seem to happen real time).

It used to be that points could only be moved out of a USAirways account if you had a USAirways co-branded credit card. These America West transfers are an exception. And using Points.com usually means devaluation, again these transfers are an exception. And best of all it’s free.

Of course, USAirways and America West will be trying to combine accounts in a few months on their own, and where they aren’t able to figure out which accounts match (perhaps due to slight variations in name or different addresse) they’re certainly be able to handle it for you. But in the meantime your best bet is do-it-yourself.

Through February 8 USAirways is offering 10,000 bonus miles for purchase of a club membership.

Certainly not worth it for the miles, and I heavily object to their charging extra for access to United clubs and those of their other Star Alliance partners. But if you were going to join anyway this is a reasonable offer.

Existing club members are not eligible for the bonus.

USAirways quietly increased the number of miles required for a first class award seat from North America to Europe (.pdf) from 100,000 to 125,000 miles — a 25% jump.

Oddly enough, a first class seat from New York to London is now more miles than a first class seat from New York to Bangkok.

There may be other changes to the chart, I haven’t looked closely yet…

The Arizona Republic compares the two USAirways co-branded credit cards and correctly sides with the Barclays/Juniper Bank Mastercard product that I’ve been touting the past couple of days over the stale Bank of America card.

The new USAirways Visa site is operational. It looks like a pretty sweet card, especially for the first year of cardmembership:

• 15,000 bonus miles with first purchase
  

• Up to 10,000 bonus miles for balance transfer
  

• 10,000 miles towards Preferred® status
  

• No fee for 2 years
  

• 1.5 miles per dollar spent for the first year
  

• Preferred check-in and boarding
  

• One complimentary US Airways Club® pass per year
  

• $75 off one annual US Airways Club® membership
  

• 0% introductory APR for 6 months on balance transfers
  

• No annual mileage cap
  

• Annual Certificate redeemable for two $99 Companion tickets

I’ve written previously about USAirways dumping Bank of America in favor of Juniper Bank (over $400 million cash infusion from the new bank certainly helps with that decision). The credit card was supposed to be available January 1, but the website still shows a ‘coming in 2006′ graphic.

I’m anxiously awaiting details like annual fee, signup bonus, and elite qualifying miles for reaching a spending threshold, but I do know that it will offer 1.5 miles per dollar spent for the first 12 months of cardmembership and it will give 3 miles per dollar spent with USAirways (industry standard is 2).