Here we go again – it must be a weekday because US Airways is running another mile bonus! 🙂 Seriously, they have really ramped up these promotions lately and it is not something that I particularly care for (which I will address below).
US Airways 100% Buy Miles Bonus
If you are not already familiar with this bonus, US Airways has a tiered structure when you purchase miles through this promo. It is targeted, but you may not realize it until you login to check. Some in my family got the e-mail, some did not but all of us were “targeted” – it just makes you feel better to be “targeted” for a promotion, doesn’t it. 🙂
The US Airways 100% Buy Miles Promo
This type of purchase is certainly not for everyone, especially with us airways and american airlines making immediate changes without notice. But, if you do have a desire to purchase 100,000 miles, this is the best time to do it as you will pay a total of $1,881. Considering that is business class to Europe, the price to purchase the tickets may only be a bit more than if you were to pay for economy.
If this sounds like it might be of interest to you, head on over to this page to purchase the miles. Unfortunately, the transaction is handled by points.com so you will not earn any type of bonus for airline purchases. So, this would be a good purchase to put on a card that you are trying to hit the minimum spending on or to hit a particular spending threshold.
Here are the details:
- 1,000 – 9,000 miles – 25% bonus
- 10,000 – 19,000 miles – 50% bonus
- 20,000 – 29,000 miles – 75% bonus
- 30,000 – 50,000 miles – 100% bonus
Just looking at the numbers, you can tell it really does not make much sense to purchase a small amount of miles during this promo. If you decide to purchase, it makes more sense to go big.
This promotion runs until July 31, so there is plenty of time for you to line up the trip that you plan on taking with these miles. You can hold an itinerary with US Airways for 72 hours, so you could assemble the whole trip and then purchase the miles.
The maximum miles that can be received by one member through this promo is 50,000 miles. That means you can only purchase 50,000 miles, but you will receive the 50,000 mile bonus. This is per account, so if you want to fill other accounts you can do that.
Just note that the account that you are purchasing the miles for must be older than 12 days to be eligible for this promotion. To max out this promotion, it would cost $1,881 after figuring in the recovery tax of 7.5%
Why I Do Not Care For These Promos
US Airways use to run a share or purchase promo once or twice a year. Now, they seem to run these every 6 weeks or so. I thought for sure that the promos would stop once they joined American Airlines but they actually seemed to ramp them up more.
With the impending award changes that are going to certainly be extreme, it is not a good idea to be collecting these miles unless you are ready right now to book an award. But, even though this is a “deal” should you move on this?
The truth is that this promo will probably only be a good fit for a very select group of people. The cost of almost $1,900 just for the miles is high already, but then you have to add in the award booking fees and fuel surcharges. If you are flying to Europe and using British Airways for any of that, it is going to cost close to half of that price for the taxes and fees for a business class ticket.
If you use them instead to fly to North Asia (you will need an additional 10,000 miles to make this happen), you will still be paying taxes and fees that could bring the total cost to $2,000 for a business class ticket. If you were purchasing a ticket at that price, it could be considered a “good” deal because of the amount of miles you would pick up. But, you will not earn any miles with an award ticket and once you fly the first segment, you are unable to make changes.
So, what is the biggest reason I do not care for these promos? Because I believe US Airways is trying to make as much money with these promos as possible before hiking the redemption rates so high that 100,000 miles will not get any type of business class ticket. The more they flood the market with these miles, the less they will be worth in a very short time. So, if you really want a business class ticket for $2,000, buy these miles. If not, just pass – it is not really that great of a deal.
