Debunked Award Rule: US Airways Star Alliance Hub Stopover

Note: This post may have a shorter shelf life due to the impending US Airways merger.

Our Award Booking Service receives numerous requests from clients trying to maximize the value of their miles. These savvy travelers want to fly in the best premium cabins and take advantage of any and all liberal routing rules available.

Luckily, many of our clients have large Dividend Miles balances.

Your Miles Are Going Up in Value, But You Should Still Spend Them

Tomorrow your miles will be worth money than today for two reasons:

The price of paid tickets is rising.
The knowledge of how to use miles efficiently is increasing.

I see a lot of arguments that miles should be used now because they depreciate. I don't see it like that. I see the value of miles basically following this pattern.

The default position of miles is to increase in value. Then every once in a while, they take a sharp drop.

The 2012 AAdvantage Stats

I love stats, so the 2012 AAdvantage stats at the top of the AAdvantage FAQ caught my eye.

For all of 2012, there were 7,426,930 redemptions of American Airlines miles.

Over 700,000 were for "merchandise" including vacations, which I don't consider merchandise. Let's say the vast majority of these redemptions were awful values. Not all non-airfare redemptions are awful--Mommy Points found a good deal for Cubs tickets and experiences with Starpoints--but I rarely see values of even one cent per mile on these types of redemptions.

Over half a million were for upgrades.

Double Dipping on American Airlines Flights with Business ExtrAA and a $424 Sign Up Bonus

Business ExtrAA is an American Airlines program designed for small businesses to be rewarded for their loyalty to American, and it's a great way for you to double dip your rewards on American flights, earning more free awards faster!

Right now, people who sign up for Business ExtrAA and meet minimum use requirements--more on those below--can earn 5,000 AAdvantage miles and 2,000 Business ExtrAA points.

Free First Class Next Month: Cancelling Cards

Hey! You're reading an outdated Free First Class Next Month series. Check out the latest version published in April of 2015 here.

This is the fourteenth post in a monthlong series that started here. Each post will take about two minutes to read and may include an action item that takes the reader another two minutes to complete. I am writing this for an audience of people who know nothing about frequent flier miles, and my goal is that by the end, you know enough to fly for free anywhere you want to go.

How We Value Hotel Points

Not all points are created equally. At MileValue, we take pride in assigning values to frequent flyer miles and analyzing their best uses. Scott worked up the Mile Value Leaderboard, and his math reveals the rational step-by-step method he used to arrive at his cent per mile valuation. He even created a Mile Value Calculator to help you with your own valuations if you want to take a crack.

In the coming months, we will assign a value to hotel points as well. The process is going to be a bit trickier.

Anatomy of an Award: Sidetrip to Hong Kong from Tokyo

Part I: The Main Award & Finding a Free Oneway

Part II: US to Asia via Europe for 90k Miles in Business

Part III: Adding a Great Sidetrip

This is the third and final installment breaking down my trip to Asia using US Airways miles. The main award is posted below:

Washington-Dulles -> Istanbul (23 hour layover) [Turkish]
Istanbul -> Seoul-Incheon -> Tokyo-Narita [Asiana]
Tokyo-Narita -> Washington-Dulles [All Nippon Airlines]

US Airways is extremely relaxed with their routing rules as you can see above.

The Trick If You Don’t Live at an International Gateway City

With my recent posts about flying to Europe all year round for 20,000 American Airlines miles or flying to South American for negative 7,500 miles, there's one problem for a lot of people.

Using both tricks requires taking a stopover on an American Airlines award.

Wyndham: Another Hotel Program Devaluation?

According to this thread on FlyerTalk, the Wyndham hotel group has devalued their loyalty program in a big way.

This is terrible news, especially coming on the heels of Priority Club adjusting their award chart for the worse by introducing a whopping nine redemptive tiers. For a complete breakdown of that change, check out my post, Priority Club's Big Award Chart Devaluation.

What does the new chart look like?

I have attached a screen shot of the new award chart below:

That looks fairly innocuous.

American Airlines & Virgin America: Complete Buy Miles Analysis

American Airlines Buy Miles Promotion

American Airlines is offering bonus miles on all AAdvantage miles purchases through January 31. As with past promotions, the bonus miles awarded are scaled. Buying 40,000 (or more) miles will yield a 15k bonus. Buying lesser quantities will result in fewer bonus miles being awarded.

The full promotion chart can be found below.

American seems to be running these deals fairly regularly.