Insider info on US Air
 

I realize that none of us are fortune tellers, but was wondering if anyone has any inside information or knowledge of what will happen. We have dividend mile tickets booked for February and also for April. We actually traded our Marriott points for these US air points. If they go under, are they obliged to honor already booked tickets? or should we bite the bullet and buy now with another airline. It's kind of a double whammy for us because we took points in trading our timeshare to the Marriott and then transferred them to US air. Of course we did this last March and May. Any frequent travelers or anyone who has any past expererience in this....Help!!

Nancee

Usairways just reached an agreement with its pilots, so that is a good sign. This may sound odd, but apparently there aren't any assets in the event of a liquidation. Everything is pledged to the govt to pay off the bailout loan, ergo, its' creditors have more of an interest in seeing it come out of bankruptcy and returning to profitability. Otherwise they'll get nothing. They still have labor contracts to settle, but the pilots was the big one, so I think that you'll be okay. Word was they had enough money to operate until Jan with the status quo, now that they've reached an agreement with the pilots assumably it would take them thru February at the least. Also they've filed for interim relief from the remaining labor contracts with the court and they're likely to get it. Hope this helps.

Also have dividend miles FIRST Class tickets for Florida in early Feb to go on cruise. We figured we should use them in case USAirways goes kaput. I am not getting too worried because I assume other airlines would honor the tickets ... Am I wrong?

You may be wrong - there is no requirement that another airline honor your FF mileage tickets if USAirways goes belly-up. There is a bill working its slow way thru Congress that would require airlines to honor, with some limitations, PAID tickets, but I know of no provision for free tickets.

I believe <b>gail</b> is correct, but assuming there is a provision for award tickets under the regulation, you would be the last in line and if that's the case, I would not count on very much.

The regulation states that other US based airlines have the responsibility to accept the bankrupt airline's tickets and also have the right to charge $50 (not sure if it's R/T or one-way). The general thought behind the lawmakers thinking is that the airlines can line up at the bankrupcy court with the tickets and hopefully collect at least a small percentage of the money and besides, if they have empty seats, what's the harm?
The airlines are required to open any seating that's still available once boarding begins (meaning &quot;standby&quot;) and once every one of their passengers, paid or award was taken care of on that particular flight.
Most airlines are opposing the extension of this regulation, but it will probably pass.
BUT, the airlines are not stupid. If they are forced to do this, here is how they will approach it.
They will put everybody that's interested on the standby list, but their computers will sort out the list. Anybody with a paid first class or business class or full economy fare ticket will automatically go to the top of the list and will be accomodated first. The economy and discounted economy and finally award tickets will be at the bottom. The airlines know that they will recover just pennies on the dollar, if that, at the bankrupcy court. Collecting 5% or 10% on a $1000 ticket is still better than 5%-10% of $100 ticket. Award tickets are the least valuable, so for obvious reasons they will only accomodate award tickets if there is nobody else left on the list and there are still seats available. Again, that's assuming that award tickets are even included in the regulation. I'm not sure about that.

Good luck! :-)