US Airways Bringing Back 100% Mileage Purchase Bonus in December

Via Lucky, US Airways will be offering a 100% bonus on purchased miles throughout the month of December.

It’s interesting that US Airways has listed this on the web page for buying miles, presumably they’re going to be measuring whether an announcement of a future bonus reduces purchases that would otherwise be expected the last several days of this month. Still, odd, they’ve never announced this before. Perhaps they think drumming up advance interest will net them more than twice as many mileage purchases as the early announcement will lose them.

Last month US Airways raised the price of purchased miles for the second time in a year and a half. That, combined with the award chart bump of two years ago, means that buying an award ticket from the US to Europe in business class through mileage purchase is about 80% more expensive than it was in December 2009. I no longer buy US Airways miles speculatively.

However, if you need to top off your account, a 100% bonus (ie 50% discount) is great. And since US Airways allows you to put an award on hold without the needed miles in your account, you can set up an award and then and only then buy the miles (which usually post instantly), making this still strategically useful.

Me, I’m still hoping the price increase means that next year they test a 150% bonus… 🙂

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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  1. I always thought it was a steal being around $1600 for 100,000 miles + taxes when booking for F class from Asia to the EU.
    This time with the higher pricing of miles as well as only a max of 40,000 x 2, and many airlines not offering reward
    F anymore — is it still worth it? I thought $1800 for F class was great but I have noticed they are harder to find.
    Now we have to pay more than $2000 for F class…mmm.
    Have to think about it.

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