US Airways American Airlines Merger March 28, 2015

American Airlines sent out an email this morning stating that existing US Airways Dividend Rewards accounts will be merged into the AAdvantage program on March 28.  We previously showed you how to make sure your American and US Airways accounts were linked together which will make sure that the miles get put into the right account. If you have done that you are all set!

Anything else I should do before this happens?

I have been telling everyone that opening a US Airways MasterCard before the merger finalizes is a great idea.  USAirFirst off, the offer is a great one, 50K miles after the first purchase!  Second, this card is eventually going away and is being transitioned into a new American Airlines card.  By getting the US Airways card now, you are still eligible to get the new card too when it is released (along with any bonus that it offers) Third, you can get both the 50K US Airways bonus, the 50K American Platinum Visa bonus (both are part of our Easy Quarter Million program) and once they combine the programs you will have a cool 100K miles all in one account which is enough to go anywhere in the world!

As always, reply with any questions and follow me on Google+FacebookTwitter and Instagram to make sure you don’t miss any great info!  And don’t forget to share this article with anyone who might be interested using the handy social share buttons right below this post!

Update on AA / US Airways Merger

It looks like the full integration of American Airlines and US Airways merger is chugging along.  When I logged into my AA account today I was shown the following message.AA US MergeOnce I put my Dividend Miles # in, it matched my accounts together and I received an email from both programs saying my accounts had been matched.

As you can see from the screenshot some time in the 2nd quarter of 2015 they will combine the miles and activity of both programs and then email you.  In the mean time you can continue to credit your miles to either American or US Airways.

US Airways Bumps Bonus to 50,000!

The US Airways® Premier World MasterCard® has always been one of our favorites for people to get started and it just got even better!  They have just bumped the US Airways 50Kbonus from 40,000 miles with your first purchase to 50,000 with your first purchase.  This means you can get this card, spend $1 on gas and then earn enough for two round trip flights anywhere in the US!  You do have to pay the $89 annual fee with this offer, but I would trade $89 for two round trip flights every day of the week.

This is really as easy as it comes for bonus miles.  Apply for the card, spend $1, get 50,000 miles!

Some other ways you could use these miles are for a ticket to Hawaii (40K miles), Off Peak to Europe in the winter (30K miles) or you could save up the miles and add some to it and get Business Class to Asia via Europe for 110K miles like I did when I went to Germany and China!

How you spend the miles is up to you, but the important thing is getting them while you can!  As you may know US Airways and American Airlines have partially merged and this card will probably be going away once the merger is completed (or at least rebranded to an AA card).

Some other benefits of this card are first checked bag free on US Airways operated flights, priority boarding, and one companion certificate per year.  If this sounds like something you are interested in (and it should) then click here to apply now.

As always, reply with any questions and follow me on Google+FacebookTwitter and Instagram to make sure you don’t miss any great info!  And don’t forget to share this article with anyone who might be interested using the handy social share buttons right below this post!

United and US Airways Buy Miles 100% Bonus, Good Deal?

Is buying miles a good deal when they have a 100% bonus?  In my email box yesterday I received two different offers from both United Airlines and US Airways, each for an up to 100% bonus on purchased miles.  Purchasing miles is something I haven’t covered much in the past so today I wanted to run the numbers to show when it makes sense and when it doesn’t.

united US Air Bonus

Continue reading “United and US Airways Buy Miles 100% Bonus, Good Deal?”

1500 US Airways miles for Spending $1? OK.

Don’t forget to enter our TravelWithMiles Guru contest that ends Friday.  A free plane ticket to Cancun is guaranteed but maybe even more!

Barclays Bank just loves to keep on giving!  I received a 40,000 US Airways Mile sign up bonus after spending just $1 on my US Airways® Premier World MasterCard® a few years ago.US Air Bonus Banner

Since I have been out of town, I haven’t been able to activate a replacement card they sent me.  Well, I guess they really wanted me to activate it because I got this in the mail as well.US Air 1500This is one of the reasons I tell people not to cancel their cards right away after they get the sign up bonus.  Sometimes they will surprise you with little bonus offers during the year that are a great deal.  In this case, I just have to make any purchase, even if it is $1 and I will get 1500 US Airways miles!  And then when I logged onto my account online, I got another offer!US Airways 20 PercentThis means I’ll get 1.2 Miles per dollar for normal purchases and 2.4 miles per dollar for US Airways purchases for the rest of the summer.  Nothing earth shattering, but free miles are free miles!

So US Airways card holders check your email and online because you might have a similar offer.  And if you don’t have this card yet, then why not apply now for 40,000 Miles after spending $1!

As always, reply with any questions and follow me on Google+FacebookTwitter and Instagram to make sure you don’t miss any great info!  And don’t forget to share this article with anyone who might be interested!

US Airways card improves their sign on bonus to 40,000 Miles!

The US Airways® Premier World MasterCard® has had a 40,000 mile bonus for a while now that we have been including in our Easy Quarter Million program. I used this bonus when I got this card for part of my recent trip to Germany, Austria, and China for only $184 in business class.  Up until yesterday, you would get 30,000 of the miles when you spent $3,000, then another 10,000 when you transferred a balance (at 1 mile per dollar transferred).  For those people who don’t have any balances to transfer, it was effectively a 30,000 Mile bonus!

US Airways New

The new offer is definitely better at 40,000 US Airways miles after your first purchase!  So you can get this card, spend $1 and get 40,000 US Airways miles.  You will have to pay the $89 annual fee as well, but for 40,000 miles it is totally worth it.  You will eventually be able to transfer these US Airways miles to American Miles when the two airlines get fully merged, but you can redeem them before then as well. They still have the balance transfer option and have increased the 0% from 12 months to 15 months! There is a 3% balance transfer fee with a $10 minimum fee.

Some of the other features of this card are:

  • Earn 40,000 bonus miles after your first purchase and payment of the $89 annual fee*
  • First checked bag free on eligible bags for you and up to four companions on domestic US Airways operated flights
  • One companion certificate good for up to 2 guests to travel with you on a US Airways operated flight at $99 each, plus taxes and fees
  • Priority boarding Zone 2 on US Airways operated flights
  • Redeem miles for award travel on US Airways and American Airlines booked through usairways.com or US Airways Reservations
  • Earn miles on every purchase with 2 miles for every $1 you spend on US Airways purchases and 1 mile for every $1 on purchases everywhere else
  • Please see terms and conditions for complete details

So what are you waiting for?  Apply now and get the miles for your next free trip now before you need them.

As always, feel free to comment with any questions and follow me on Google+FacebookTwitter and Instagram!

How I am going to Timewarp in Germany AND Beijing in Business Class for $184

This is part 1 of a series on my trip to Austria, Germany and China.

I received 40,000 of the 100,000 miles I used for this award ticket by getting the US Airways® Premier World MasterCard®!  This is a great card and one I still carry.  These miles will eventually become American miles which are some of the most valuable.  Click here to apply now for one of your own!

I’ve been wanting to go to the Timewarp Music Festival in Mannheim for years now but with the timing right after Winter Music Conference in Miami it was hard to make work.  I had heard from DJs and friends who have attended that this 24 hour multi floor festival was one of the “really big deals” in the techno event calendar. When you see pictures like this it is easy to see why.TimeWarp 2013Another of my bucket list items has been a leisurely tour of mainland China including the famous Great Wall!  I had visited Hong Kong and Macau during my round the world award trip that inspired this site, but didn’t have the time then to give the rest of the country a proper visit. China is so vast and has so many incredible sites that I wanted to see as much as I could and not be rushed.Great Wall ChinaWhat if I could combine both of these amazing trips into one kick ass adventure?  It turns out I can!

Why I had to do this trip now?

I wrote an article back in November when the US Airways / American Airlines merger cleared the justice department about some of the strategies you should consider for the merged airline.  I followed up with another article detailing why you might want to get the US Airways card before March 31st when it might disappear into airline history (or more accurately merge into the new American Airlines).  I also personally was sitting on 127,423 US Airways miles in my account!

US Air StatementOne of the best values in award travel is the North America to North Asia in Business Class Award for only 90,000 US Airways Miles.   To make it even sweeter they allow you to route this award ticket via Europe with a stopover if you pay 10,000 miles more (the rate agents said they had to price it at the Europe award rate since it was the higher of the two zones). This means I could plan a 3 week China trip in and out of Beijing with a 5 day mini trip to Timewarp in Germany first! Yeah!!!

Edit: This award sweet spot survived the merger with a little increase in price (to 110K for biz) and is now bookable with OneWorld partners!

How I booked it

I followed the steps in my article on how to check Star Alliance Availability on United.com and found some awesome lie flat new business class seats on Austrian Airways 777 from New York to Vienna and then Austrian Airways 767 from Vienna to Beijing. Then I found a seat on Air China’s 777 new lie flat business class product.This is an almost 14 hour flight from Beijing to Houston, Texas! Think about that one in coach, ugh!  Once I found the long distance legs (which are usually the hardest ones to find) I searched for the other flights from Miami to New York, Vienna to Frankfurt, Frankfurt to Vienna, and Houston to Miami.  After an hour on the phone confirming everything, they came back with the damage.  100,000 US Airways Miles and $184 in fees and taxes! US AIr Award SuccessBOOK IT!

But I didn’t tell you the best part!

My best friend and TWM reader Andres was able to use his United Miles to get on the same flights with me on the way over for Timewarp too!  You may recognize him from our Meals for Miles article! 🙂IMG_7673We will be living it up in Germany for 5 days (with a day stop in Vienna ) then he will return to Miami and I will continue on to China.  I’ve always said one of the reasons I started this site is because I want to help friends experience the things I’ve been able to and also to selfishly get my friends with me on some trips!  I’ve given a trip to my Dad as a Christmas present, given away two award seats to the BPM Festival in Mexico to two lucky techno fans, but now an amazing trip with my best friend for close to free is finally becoming a reality!

Conclusion

It is not too late to get a trip like this yourself if you get the 40,000 from the US Airways card now.  You will need a total of 60,000 miles to do this exact trip in coach or 110,000 in Business Class.  I’ve always said the best time to get miles is before you need them.  That is why I tell everyone to read our Getting Started Guide.  But don’t just read it!  Do it!

As always, feel free to comment with any questions and follow me on FacebookTwitter and Instagram!

Why you should apply for the US Airways card before March 31st.

Updated April 30, 2014.  This card has improved its sign on bonus.  Click here for more details!

Some of your already have this card which is the first card in our Easy Quarter Million Program, but for those who don’t, read on.

As some of you may know, US Airways and American Airlines merged recently but they are still operating separately in their respective alliances until March 31st. You can read our article about how airline alliances work here. This all changes at the end of March when US Airways officially pulls out of Star Alliance and joins OneWorld.  And why is this important?  Well typically you can only get one sign up bonus for each type of card that an airline issues.  So, for example if you apply for the Chase British Airways card and get the 50,000 mile bonus that it has, you will never be able to get the bonus for that same card again. Right now, there are two different sets of cards, the US Airways one issued by Barclays that has a 30,000 mile bonus(10,000 more if you transfer a balance), and the American Airlines one issued by Citibank that has a 50,000 mile bonus.

AAUSAirAA has a deep business relationship with Citibank and will end up being the survivor of the merger (even though US Airways is technically acquiring American).  This means that the Barclays US Airways card will be disappearing, never to be seen from again.  They haven’t announced that this will happen on March 31, but it is my best guess since that is when they exit Star Alliance. If you don’t get the card now, it might be your last chance to get this one time bonus before it is gone.

The cool part is that at some point, they will completely merge their two frequent flyer programs and you will be able to combine your miles across the two programs (Dividend Miles and AAdvantage).  So if you don’t have enough miles in your American account for the 60,000 Milesaver award ticket to Paris then maybe you will when they combine your accounts.

Eiffel TowerThe best thing about this card is the spend requirement! You get the full 40,000 miles with your first purchase! So buy $1 worth of gas, get 40,000 miles!  Bing! Bam! Boom!  It has a number of other good benefits such as:

  • Earn 40,000 bonus miles after your first purchase and payment of the $89 annual fee*
  • First checked bag free on eligible bags for you and up to four companions on domestic US Airways operated flights
  • One companion certificate good for up to 2 guests to travel with you on a US Airways operated flight at $99 each, plus taxes and fees
  • Priority boarding Zone 2 on US Airways operated flights
  • Redeem miles for award travel on US Airways and American Airlines booked through usairways.com or US Airways Reservations
  • Earn miles on every purchase with 2 miles for every $1 you spend on US Airways and American Airlines purchases and 1 mile for every $1 on purchases everywhere else
  • New! Receive a 25% savings on eligible US Airways and American Airlines in-flight purchases
  • Please see terms and conditions for complete details

That last point can be important to many of you who carry a balance leftover from holiday spending.  0% for 12 months can save you a lot if you are paying interest now.  They do charge a 4% balance transfer fee, but they give you 1 bonus mile for every $1 in balance transferred up to 10,000 bonus miles.  If you have a balance you are paying interest on (especially if it is a high APR) it is a no brainer to do a transfer to 0% even with the fee.

But as I mentioned in the beginning, the best reason to apply is that you may not be able to get this bonus after March 31!  And if you don’t use it, you will lose it! So what are you waiting for?  Apply now!

As always, feel free to comment with any questions and follow me on FacebookTwitter and Instagram!

How to use shopping portals to make mega miles!

I love shopping portals.  I have literally made hundreds of thousands of points all at one time by taking advantage of shopping portals. See how I made 264,000 Ultimate Rewards Points + $1000 shopping at Sears or how I made 189,000 Rapid Rewards Points + a companion pass shopping online. But what exactly are shopping portals and how do they work?

What are Shopping Portals?

A shopping portal is just like the name describes it is a portal (like a doorway) that takes you shopping online.  Think of it like a mall.  It is full of many shops that are all owned by different companies.  What if I told you if you went through one entrance of the mall that you could get 5 miles for every dollar you spent? And if you went through another entrance you could get 10 miles for every dollar?  And if you went through yet another entrance you would get no miles at all!  That is how they work!  But it’s easiest to explain with an example.

How do Shopping Portals Work?

Let’s say you have gone through our Getting Started Page and have already signed up for a free United MileagePlus number.  If you haven’t, go do it now! We are going to use the MileagePlus Shopping Portal in our example. This portal gives you United Airlines Miles for shopping in their mall.  Some malls you need to create a separate login, but this one you can just log in with your United MileagePlus number and PIN or password you use to access your MileagePlus account online.

After logging in, search for the store you want to go shopping in. FYI here is their version of how the online shopping portal works.

shoppinghowitworks

In our example we are going to use Walmart.  Online is about the only way I will ever go to Walmart. I search for Walmart in the search box and it brings up a screen that shows details about that merchant.UnitedWalmartYou can see that they are offering 1 Mile for every dollar that you spend. This means if you buy a $500 LCD TV from Walmart on Black Friday, you can get an extra 500 United Miles just by starting your shopping session through this portal!  They also list some sale and coupon codes that you can sometimes use. Since you are already logged in just click on the Shop Now button and you will be transported to the exact same Walmart.com as if you went their directly.  Same products, same prices.

1 Mile per dollar is pretty much the bare minimum you will find and many of them offer much higher rates.  I have even seen up to 60 Miles per dollar on occasion which is incredible!

The miles will typically show in your account after a week or so, but sometimes it might take up to a month to see them reflected. You can see your earning history by clicking on the My Account link at the top right of the screen.

recenttransactions

What shopping portals are there?

Almost every major US airline, most hotel chains and even some random point programs have shopping portals.  Here are a few of them.

There are also some straight Cashback shopping portals that give you cold hard cash instead of miles such as:

How do I know which shopping portal to use?

Luckily there are web sites whose whole purpose is to help you decide which portal to use.  Of course if you are specifically after United Miles then that might be the best one to use.  But you should at least compare a few of the portals to make sure a much better deal isn’t available.  The shopping portal comparison site I like to use is EVReward.com.  If I go to that site and type in Walmart for instance, here is what I see.

EVRewardAs you can see, UPromise and ShopDiscover are offering 5% cash back.  I would rather have that than 1 mile per dollar all day long!

Conclusion

I hope this has showed you how easy it is to make extra miles and cash by shopping online.  You really shouldn’t shop online without utilizing a shopping portal.  If you don’t, you are simply leaving free miles on the ground that you should be picking up.  If you have any questions then leave them in the comments and I will answer them.

The American / US Airways Merger is back on. What should your strategy be?

AAUSAirHave you liked TravelWithMiles on Facebook yet or followed us on Twitter?  Make sure to do it today so you don’t miss any of our great deals to travel the world!

If any of you have been following the news like this article in Forbes, you know that US Airways and American Airlines made some changes to their merger plans that allowed them to get the blessing of the Department of Justice.  This included giving up some take off and landing slots in Washington D.C. and New York, and two gates in Boston, Miami, Dallas, and Los Angeles.  In general, I think that more choice in airlines is better, but American wasn’t able to compete for a variety of factors so this needed to happen to get them out of bankruptcy.

What does this mean to the Travel With Miles reader?

Even though US Airways is technically the acquiring company, in practice American will be the surviving entity, keeping the American Airlines name.  Currently Citibank is deep in bed with American, issuing many different credit cards for them and even pre buying a billion dollars worth of miles in 2009 to help them survive.  The US Airways card is issued by Barclays and while it will take some time to get integrated, from what I have read, the Barclays card will be going away. US Airways miles will become AAdvantage miles so a good way to get a bunch of AAdvantage miles will be to get the 40,000 Mile US Airways card now and then those miles will be rolled into your AAdvantage account when the merger is complete.

Aren’t they in different alliances?

Airline AlliancesIf you have read our article on the ABC’s of Airline Alliances you know that US Airways is in Star Alliance and American is in OneWorld.  They have announced that the new airline will be in Oneworld and there will be a “quick exit” from Star Alliance after the Merger is complete.  They have also stated that you will be able to get reciprocal elite benefits and mileage earning starting on January 7 2013.

What this means is if you have been banking US Airways miles and were planning on using them for some of the Star Alliance sweet spots like 90K miles for business class to North Asia via Europe or 25K/30K for coach/business from South America to South America then you might want to make those bookings sooner rather than later. When they merge with American, the cost for both of those trips will likely be much higher.

There are some deals that are better on the American side that will hopefully remain such as a Round the World trip such as the one I took (up to 35K miles flown) in Business Class for 190K which would cost 300K with US Airways today.  If you have a specific trip in mind, take a look at the US Airways Chart and the American Airlines Chart and see what makes the most sense for you.  If you don’t have enough miles to get a good trip with either of them, then your best plan might be to wait until they combine and you have enough!

Conclusion

For better or for worse this merger is happening so I just wanted to help you think about some of the issues to consider so you can make the best decisions about what to do with your hard earned miles. I know I have some choices to make!