Think of the bright side.

Last year at this time..liquidation was a possibility for USAIr. At least you are getting something for your miles.

You don't "buy" tickets with your miles. You redeem your miles subject to availability. You have no entitlement.

This is none of my business, but if you hold on to miles earned on a credit card, you are ending up paying a lot for a ticket. It seems mileage credit cards charge a steep annual fee. If it takes you 2 year to earn a ticket, you've paid about $160 for that ticket. Florida flights are generally not that expensive from the east coast.

Credit card miles aren't "free" tickets if it takes you a while to charge up what you need while you are paying a large annual fee.

Sorry, doesn't sound like a scam to me. I thought everyone who travels regularly knows that FF flights are limited and you need to book them far in advance. I used my miles to book flights to and from Maui. I knew when I wanted to go and reserved seats the first day I could (a full year in advance). FF miles aren't a freebie on any flight anytime and aren't advertised as such - you need to plan ahead.

I don't handle the travel reservations in my family - but I'm pretty sure we've never used miles for a free flight.

We usually pay for a coach seat and then use miles to upgrade - which pretty much leaves everything open for booking.

Does anyone else only use their miles this way?

Hi, i know my original post was long, but to clarify, what made me irritated was that NONE of the first class seats had yet been sold or purchased on ANY of the flights i checked, so though i DO understand that FF seats are limited, US AIR had limited the FF seats to ONE on every flight, which made it impossible to get 2 of them, even if i had booked a year ago (I did try a couple months ago, too, without luck, and have kept trying, hoping they would open up more than the one seat per flight). I still CAN get ONE seat in first class on almost ANY flight I want, but since I am travelling with my 10yo son, we can not go on separate flights. as to why i did not try to get 2 FF coach seats, the other posters are right in saying I should have done that months ago, but now there are NO more FF coach seats available on the flights that i checked, which is certainly understandable, bc the coach cabins on most of the flights I checked are about 1/3 full, and some of these may be FF passengers who booked a year ago. it just seems to me that if ALL the first class seats are still available, there should be a way to get 2 FF seats on some flight, esp if I am flexible enough to fly out of any of 4 cities. Since my travel involves returning on july 1 or 2, and us air may go out of business on june 30th, i was under the (possibly mistaken) impression that i will get better service getting rebooked on another airline if i am first class. in coach, i am guessing that FF passengers will be out of luck, and this may be true for 1st class FF ticket-holders too. So, i will just buy jetblue seats for a good price. nice airline, few hassles, no first class to envy. karen

I know I'm kind of getting in on the tail end of this but as one poster said "why use FF for 1st class tickets?

Okay, call USAir back and see if you can get one 1st class ticket and 1 economy ticket for the same flight. Then perhaps you can upgrade using points and both fly together at a fairly cheaper price.

Sounds reasonable to me!!

SFImporter, yes we use our miles this way, and this is why we have a Capital One visa. We use it to get free tickets (with no restrictions) and then our miles to upgrade. I've never had much luck with the airlines having seats for ff miles and when they do there is just so much small print.

Karen - I believe, but I could be wrong, that the majority of First Class seats go to people like my husband, who are business frequent fliers. He's only a silver level FF now, so he has to wait until 3 days before a flight to get an upgrade, but the higher tier FFers get automatic upgrades. Think about it - who would the airline rather make the seat available to - one of their most frequent and loyal customers, or someone who flies infrequently and who earned their miles on a credit card? The availabilty of seats now doesn't mean they won't be sold and that they should just give them away. It is my understanding that some airlines have some flights where there are never ANY FF seats available. I've heard that on some flights to Alaska for cruises, for example, the airline knows that the seats will be purchased and makes no "free" seats available. I know it's frustrating, but that's how it's done. Personally, I'm willing to play the game to redeem as many tickets as we have. We couldn't do as much travel as we do if we didn't fly for free as often as we did. If my husband ever gets another job that doesn't require travel, we're really going to have a rude awakening re: our travel expenses.