USAir Frequent Flier Miles

USAir does a huge amount of promotion to convince people to sign up for their frequent flier miles. They promote it on every flight. They have multiple credit card offers, many flower clubs, discount shopping clubs, and more. I had always wanted to go to Hawaii, and my boyfriend claimed he did not want to go for such an incredibly long flight. He said, jokingly, that the only way he would ever go is to ride first class where it was at least a comfortable flight. I had a goal.

I made it my deliberate aim to send every single purchase I could through my USAir frequent flier credit cards. I had all of my bills auto pay to the cards. All purchases went through those cards. Any flowers I bought for people were bought on USAir partner accounts. After many years of this, I finally had saved up enough miles to get us there!

The USAir Frequent Flier / Divident Miles website has three different rates listed for flights to Hawaii. Standard "Premium" rate is 140,000 miles per person, round trip. The discount "Mileage Saver" rate which only has limited availability is 70,000 miles per person. Then they have an off-peak saver award which is only available from January 15 through February 29th.

OK, I began doing a search on their on line system for that date range. I did this search in early September. Their system only shows a limited number of months ahead, so it was not possible to search much earlier than this. To fly out of Boston there was only ONE date - January 8th - that was not the full 140,000 miles. It was at the 70,000 miles rate. Not only that, there was no RETURN date available. You had to pay full price to fly back.

They link to a live chat on the side of every page. I clicked that link, and got a human. They claimed they could not look at schedules at all while chatting and that I'd have to call in. So while they tell you to use the chat, the chat people can't actually help you with what you are doing.

I called in to the Dividend Miles phone number that was listed. It took me a while to get through their automated menus and to a human being. The agent said they couldn't help me at all and I'd have to talk to reservations.

Soon I was talking with an agent in Reservations. The woman had a very thick accent which was nearly impossible to understand. She said that I could only ask for ONE date in that date range - and that she could then tell me what the flight availability was. I was reduced to guessing randomly at dates within that range, and NONE had first class tickets from Boston to Honolulu. Apparenly after 7 dates, they have to cancel your call and you have to call back in again.

There is an email link - but that says it'll get back to you in FIVE TO SEVEN DAYS. Talk about a non-helpful response window!

With all the work USAir does to get people into their system - and spending thousands of dollars to earn miles - it is disgraceful how they then prevent you from actually using those miles. I would have done far better signing up for a card that gave me cash back, and simply saving that cash in an account to buy my tickets from someone else.

Lisa and Bob's Travelogue Homepage