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This deal just went live today and is a nice reappearance of one of the best values in “purchasing” miles in the frequent flyer world. US Airways ran this promo in October of this year (and the year before at the same time). This promotion is a little different this time as well as being shorter. Also, this will very likely be the last mega share bonus that US Airways runs as they prepare to exit the Star Alliance and merge with American Airlines.
Here are the details:
- Receive up to 100% bonus on shared miles (you need to transfer miles from one account to another account of a friend or family member)
- The bonus structure is: 10K-19K – 50% bonus / 20K-29K – 75% bonus / 30K-50K – 100% bonus
- The most miles that can be transferred is 50,000 miles (which means the recipient account would receive a total of 100,000 miles)
- The most miles that can be received is 50,000 miles per account (not counting the bonus)
- The cost to transfer is 1 cent per mile plus $30 transfer fee plus 7.5% tax – to transfer the maximum of 50,000 would cost $567
- This deal runs from December 2 – 6
- The receiving account must be a minimum of 12 days old to receive the bonus
- This is not a targeted deal – the transfer page can be found here.
Is this a good deal?
This is a VERY good deal! Thanks to a friend, I received 100,000 miles in the last promo (which would take 50,000 miles and $567). Even though you are buying miles, you are buying them at an insanely low rate. At this rate, it even makes sense to take advantage of this deal for coach travel to Europe (which requires 60,000 miles round-trip). Depending on where you are flying from in the US, it can cost as much as $1400 to fly in economy to Europe. Counting the taxes and fees on award tickets still places you about $700 for certain travel!
Obviously, the real value comes in redeeming for premium cabin travel. I will have a post this week how I used 90,000 miles for an upcoming trip from the US to Europe to North Asia to the US – all in business class. I really only needed to go to Europe, but adding North Asia saved me 10,000 miles! This type of award deal will no longer exist once the merger with American Airlines is completed, so if you would like to do something similar, stay tuned for the post this week!
HOWEVER, be careful about purchasing these miles without some type of trip in mind. I would not recommend purchasing these miles and sitting on them for months towards future travel. Before all the recent airline devaluations, this made sense and was a great way to be in a position to have quite a bundle of the new American Airline miles (when the merger is complete). However, since everyone else has devalued their program, look for a fresh award chart from the new American Airlines that will follow suit with the other airlines (think over 150,000 miles for business travel to North Asia on partner airlines as a potential example).
If you have a good idea of a possible trip within the Star Alliance, then I would jump on this deal as it is most likely the last time we will ever see it!
