If you use US Airways miles to fly internationally, February 21 was a bad day.
On that day, US Airways reorganized their frequent flyer mile award chart (pdf) for international travel on Star Alliance or partner airlines. (Itineraries entirely on US Airways appear to be unchanged.)
Gary Leff compared the old chart to the new chart, and found a few itineraries that now cost more. Most notably:
The first item I’ve noticed is that flights between North America and “South and Central Asia” now run 80,000 miles for coach/120,000 for business/160,000 for first class — up from 60/90/120 thousand respectively.
On the flip side, flights from North America to Africa are cheaper 10,000 miles cheaper than before, in every class. But considering how many more passengers fly to Asia than to Africa, this doesn’t cancel out the price hikes.
But far, far worse than the devaluation of miles is the fact that they didn’t tell anybody. There was no press release, no announcement, and according to reports on FlyerTalk, no mention of the changes on the US Airways website until March 6, 2007. Thumbs down.
At least other airlines, such as United and Delta, gave several months’ warning when they changed their awards programs. Way to stay classy, US Airways!
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