USAIRWAYS FF Coach AWARD Travel for Summer 2003??
 

I have been earnestly saving my USAIRWAYS miles to use for 3 coach seats to Europe summer 2003. I have phoned the Awards Desk numerous times (starting the day the seats could have started being booked). I keep getting the news that no COACH are available for the entire summer 2003 to anywhere in Europe. Does anyone have a clue to what is going on? We are very flexible and can travel anytime during the summer months. We do not have enough miles for First class or Envoy. This is all they are offering.<BR>Please let me know if you have any insight into what is going on.<BR>Thank you.

Award seats are capacity controlled and that means that in peak travel periods, there may be few or no award seats available in coach for popular routes. When the airline has a pretty good idea that it is going to be able to sell those seats, the carrier is not inclined to give up revenue by having many award seats. (In a perfect world -- from the carrier's standpoint -- award seats would be those that otherwise would have gone empty.) Often, seats are released nearer to the flight date so it can pay for you to keep calling and checking. But at some point, you may catch a fare sale and end up throwing in the towel on getting it done for miles. (Of course, THEN they will cut some of those award seats loose...)

Do they have any partners left? We've been able to get seats on partner airlines when USAirways had none available. They don't generally offer that information...you have to ask.

Parnters are a good bet, do try that -- got me to Hawaii once on United when I had Delta miles. Also try posting something on www.flyertalk.com. This is a board of FF miles folks, they know every trick in the book and would be glad to help you figure out USAirs system.<BR><BR>Cheers,<BR><BR>Beth

Seconding Beth's post....Flyertalk is a wealth of information regarding all these programs.....One thing that you could consider, tho perhaps not many people actually do it is:<BR>The people who run Flyertalk have a travel agency that will do all of this work for you (on an unlimited basis!) for a fee of $50 per year or something like that.<BR>It may not be of help in this case, but it's certainly worth checking out. Best wishes on getting your flights.

Bridget: We used USAirways FF miles to fly four of us to Paris and home from London in June. We called in February and had no trouble, but we didn't get our first choice of dates (fortunately, we were flexible, too). Also, we originally were going to fly into London and home from Paris, but those FF seats were all gone, so we just changed around our itinerary.<BR><BR>Another note: At the airport Sunday while checking in for a flight to Vegas, I confirmed some free tickets to Tampa for late Feb. (using tickets my son and I got from being bumped off a flight home from Miami in April). When I first made the reservation, they had to re-route me through JAX, because they said there weren't any free seats available on the direct. But at the airport on Sunday (because USAirways has been cutting some flights), they opened up more seats on a direct flight for us).<BR>Just keep trying; as others said, if the seats don't fill up, they will release more seats.<BR>Good luck!<BR>Pam B.<BR>

It could have something to do with USAirways filing bankruptcy. Perhaps it will be very hard now to redeem those FF miles!

This may be a dumb question, but since it sounds like you're getting the word from a recording, have you tried to talk to a "real" person about the situation?

I am having the same trouble as Bridget. The man at the Awards Desk told me that maybe more seats will open up when usairways gets its alliance with United.