USAir Award Miles
 

What a ripoff!! I've saved all my USAir miles for a first class ticket to Europe only to find out there are no free ticket awards available yet!! I called the first day the 2012 date opened. Do others experience the same thing?? The airlines tell us to use there credit cards and airline partners to earn miles to exotic destinations, only to find out they don't open free award seats until they've sold some tickets first. Why have the program if you can't use it! I'm feed up and will call my local paper in Phoenix to see if someone will print this scam the airlines are getting away with!!

This is routine, happens often. You simply have to do what everyone else does, which is to call the airline every day (or check online) until the award seats are released.

You are about 20 years too late. It's been this way for ever. Why do they have the program? Because there are people who continue to think they can use their miles on any flight they want, and there are banks who continue to buy them.

The programs are the airlines'. You are free to join or not join. And they are offered to you for free.

Anyways, the actual <b>frequent flyers</b> which the programs are called can find plenty of benefits, especially if they can maintain elite status with one or more of the programs. For those who don't, I always tell people to not bother.

If I had nothing else to do, I would speak to a local policitian and the newspapers to try and reform the system. The airlines just turn their noses up at us and say "tough"!! I finally emailed a USAir VP who reluctently helped out. I should not have to do that! Can you imagine any other business that could get away with this kind of poor service and still survive!

No other industry, but the airlines industry in the US has been like this for years. Too easy to get into the industry, workers too unionized, and then politicians/banks/whoever make them almost impossible to go Ch7 bankrupt and disappear. That's what we have in the US - cheap airfare, but poor service overall.

Again, I am not saying you don't have a point and I am sure there has been thousands of people like you who feel you've been scammed in the past 20 years. But I think you're just wasting your time.

[Meanwhile, there are others who learn about the programs and use them to our advantage. Personally, I am totally fine with the current system now. My family just claimed one-way standard/saver award tickets from Houston to Hong Kong for 32,500 miles + $40 in Sept , a roundtrip open-jaw ticket from Boston to Barcelona, then London back to Boston for 60K miles + $200 in Oct/Nov; and earlier this year two other Houston-HK roundtrips, all on pretty much the dates we want at standard/saver award level, not double. That's over 220K miles spent. So, it is clearly NOT TRUE that miles cannot be used, like many always claim.

And of course, we get upgraded domestically all the time, we can use airport lounges around the world when traveling internationally while flying coach.]

More specifically about USAirways. This is a company that had been providing crappiest service for decades (until some improvement very recently), and almost the same could be said about America West before the merger. Both should have been let to shut down and disappear long ago. Yet, it is still around and will be around for decades more. Meanwhile you ask help from your local politician? How long do you think this politician will be around and what power does he/she have to actually change things, rather than just get your vote the next time around? :p

I use the airline credit card, use the partners to earn miles, then get screwed when I follow the rules and want to use them! What a system!!

You bought into the advertising hype, most of the credit card companies. The rules of the airline programs have been there for the start, and can be found on their websites. USAirways and most other airlines definitely never promise award availability on all flights at all times. And like I said, it's their program and in fact, they are allowed to confiscate all miles and terminate their program at this moment and there's nothing one can do about it.

Consider lesson learned and stop believing the advertisements.

I actually think that USAir, via the Star Alliance, has one of the better inventories of award flights. Are you using the ANA tool to find flights on partner airlines? Using US miles for partner tickets is also cheaper in many cases than using US miles to fly on US metal.

Also, and please don't take this is criticism, but are you actually searching for a "first class ticket to Europe on USAir" because those tickets don't exist. USAir only flies Business TATL under the name Envoy.