US Dividend Miles Buy/Gift Miles 100% bonus - Cheap way for F/J *A Awards

[mhen]

T&C say
The maximum number of Buy and/or Gift Bonus miles that can be received by one member for this offer is 50,000 bonus miles. All miles purchased beyond this limit will not be eligible for a bonus.

From FT it seems the bonus for gifting by Silver still applies but purchase (or receive gift) above the first 50K will not attract bonus. So will need to purchase 8K at 11.b not 4K.

 

[Alanslegal]

Big thanks for the step by step process sr81.

Just a query.... The promo says

Buy miles for yourself and get twice the miles. Or, gift miles and your friend or family member gets twice the miles. You can buy or gift up to 50,000 miles – and get or give up to 100,000 miles!

.

So I would interpret this as each member can only buy or gift a max. Of 50k, so if the third silver member for eg gifted 50 to traveller 1, that person can't gift to traveller 2... Would this be right?

 

[sr81]

T&C say
The maximum number of Buy and/or Gift Bonus miles that can be received by one member for this offer is 50,000 bonus miles. All miles purchased beyond this limit will not be eligible for a bonus.

From FT it seems the bonus for gifting by Silver still applies but purchase (or receive gift) above the first 50K will not attract bonus. So will need to purchase 8K at 11.b not 4K.

I know this is the way that the T&C's read but your interpretation is not right.

Forgetting the Silver Bonus of 25%. It appears that the traveller can be gifted miles (in this case the full 50,000) PLUS can buy miles with the full bonus for their themselves.

USAirways use points.com and have a fully automated system that applies the bonus miles (excluding the Silver Bonus – this takes most of the 72 hours) instantaneously. I.e. you buy the miles and logout then login and the miles have posted.

I have tried to attached the confirmation emails to one of the travellers. This should clear this up.

 

[pucca_0420]

hi sr81 - thanks so much for your tips

is this a transaction u did recently? i understand that this could be done with the promotions previously, but based on the discussion at flyertalk i thought it would not be possible to be gifted miles with a 100% bonus (if you were gifted 100,000) and subsequently purchase more miles with a 100% bonus also?

thanks a lot! it would be really helpful if we could get the 100% bonus on additional purchases also =)

 

[spudwa]

Well I'm about to take the plunge on the current offer which ends on the 15th Nov. My wife and I are making a trip to the UK in March 2011. I going to buy the full 50k + bonus now and hopefully get the extra points soon.

Do you experts think as we're travelling shoulder season I'm not taking too much of a risk as we wont have the points for F/J straight away and will have to wait for another promo offer?

Any recommendations on which airline / class to pick flying out of Perth?

Thanks

 

[yohy?!]

hi sr81 - thanks so much for your tips

is this a transaction u did recently? i understand that this could be done with the promotions previously, but based on the discussion at flyertalk i thought it would not be possible to be gifted miles with a 100% bonus (if you were gifted 100,000) and subsequently purchase more miles with a 100% bonus also?

thanks a lot! it would be really helpful if we could get the 100% bonus on additional purchases also =)

Hi pucca, I purchased 50k +bonus in this promo. The Gift Miles screen still shows I am eligible for the bonus for Gifts also.

 

[kamchatsky]

Well I'm about to take the plunge on the current offer which ends on the 15th Nov. My wife and I are making a trip to the UK in March 2011. I going to buy the full 50k + bonus now and hopefully get the extra points soon.

Do you experts think as we're travelling shoulder season I'm not taking too much of a risk as we wont have the points for F/J straight away and will have to wait for another promo offer?

Any recommendations on which airline / class to pick flying out of Perth?

Thanks

Try TG or SQ. You would more chance on TG than SQ given *A J/F awards is not available on SQ A380/77Ws. OZ only flies to SYD, CA only flies to SYD/MEL and not PER. You can always try NZ J going the other way (ie via North America).

If you have miles in ANA account you can even check availability in advance.

 

[yohy?!]

If you have miles in ANA account you can even check availability in advance.

Or if you search a valid ANA route first then you can select Star Alliance without having miles

 

[sr81]

To make this a little more interesting it appears that LH is now making it difficult to get access to F flights via USAirways. I could find F flights from FRA-JFK on ANA pretty easily but the USAirways agent could not.

A check on Awards Nexus showed availability but still the agent could not see it. I tried three different agents and multiple dates. This makes getting from Europe to the USA difficult in F as LH easily has the largest number of flights and destinations in *A.

At the moment I am going to check with a "long sell" method (like used for LX awards) and see what happens.

 

[yohy?!]

Current 100% promo extended to 30th Nov

Buy miles for yourself and get twice the miles. Or, gift miles and your friend or family member gets twice the miles. You have until November 30, 2010 to buy or gift up to 50,000 miles - and get or give up to 100,000 miles! You don't have to register - we'll automatically double the miles for free.

 

[kamchatsky]

Current 100% promo extended to 30th Nov

Sometimes I wondered how US airways can get away with this, with everyone buying US miles and redeemed in F/J awards on *A airlines, instead of actually paying full price for normal F/J ticket.

I am glad that most Australian public does not know this, otherwise there will be no availability for redemptions.

 

[Alanslegal]

Sometimes I wondered how US airways can get away with this, with everyone buying US miles and redeemed in F/J awards on *A airlines, instead of actually paying full price for normal F/J ticket.

The buying points is probably only for quite a handful of (savvy) flyers. And I'm making that quite a few US DM members are redeeming 120K for iPhone4 and iPads rather than on J flights and thus US DM makes some $$$$ back Just like how some QF frequent flyers redeem 120K points for a Dyson vacuum cleaner rather than return flights to Asia in J.

 

[somebol]

To make this a little more interesting it appears that LH is now making it difficult to get access to F flights via USAirways. I could find F flights from FRA-JFK on ANA pretty easily but the USAirways agent could not.

A check on Awards Nexus showed availability but still the agent could not see it. I tried three different agents and multiple dates. This makes getting from Europe to the USA difficult in F as LH easily has the largest number of flights and destinations in *A.

At the moment I am going to check with a "long sell" method (like used for LX awards) and see what happens.

A bit more information about that please mate..

 

[sr81]

Long sell is basically a way to get the agent to manually look up and request the seat from LH.

Ask for a manual sell / long sell / manual request / whatever. Hang up and keep trying if necessary. Just be friendly and polite at all times.

90% of agents I talk to have no idea what this is and even then most won't do it.

At the moment this appears to be only for EU-North America in F. I could get out of BKK on LH in F and I could get C for everything else.

Don't forget that Thai is still available in F so going Aus-EU is still possible out of SYD.

 

[sr81]

Booking made! Travel in August 2011.

MEL-BKK-FRA - TG - Business
FRA-EWR (dest) - CO - Business
EWR-ZRH (stop) - LX - Business
ZRH-BKK-MEL - TG - Business

Miles gifted as a Silver Prefered so with the 25% bonus.

Total miles: 110,000
Taxes: USD211

Total cost in AUD after credit card fees: $1745.27. Note that early bird fares to EU in Y are about $1800.

I had wanted to do this in F but couldn't get LH to play ball. Estimated cost in F would have been about AUD2180.

 

[somebol]

thanks for the tip..

 

[lovetravellingoz]

The buying points is probably only for quite a handful of (savvy) flyers. And I'm making that quite a few US DM members are redeeming 120K for iPhone4 and iPads rather than on J flights and thus US DM makes some $$$$ back Just like how some QF frequent flyers redeem 120K points for a Dyson vacuum cleaner rather than return flights to Asia in J.

I think that this is why we can do what we do...

The vast majority of FF members do not either have the the knowledge, or the time, or the desire, or all three to maximise their benefit from the system.

That they do not, opens the door to a small % of people to extract very good to exceptional value.

If the masses all did try and maximise, the the FF various FF programs would be more careful to prevent loopholes and the like. But as most just go with the flow, a small % are tolerated in our supercharging of our FF benefits.

This is not Qantas FF..but as an example they have millions of QFF Member now, but probably only thousands to tens of thousands are really savvy about how they earn and burn QFF points. I even know many people that fly a lot but are FF -ignorant. Some fly so much that they just do not care. some just can't be bothered, or just fail to understand the value that can be extracted.

I have seen too many peoples eyes glaze over and so that I rarely even bother advising people now.

 

[Alanslegal]

Totally agree on your points lovetravellingoz .

Last week I went to a focus group re: travelling and credit cards, and alot of folks in that group were interested in earning say AX MR points, and then redeeming them for gift cards. I guess those FF program or whatever would love these types of members as they are happy redeeming 50K points for $350 worth of vouchers, rather than some type of premium travel.

Some even suggested they would like a card that would allow their points earnt to offset UTILITY BILLS :shock:

 

[Alanslegal]

Just a very newbie question, and any assistance here would be great?

Can I fly into LHR (as my destination), open-jaw, and depart from say CDG?

Also 2nd similar question, my destination is ATH ... can I fly into IST and make that a stopover? (IST is not in the same zone as ATH , correct?)

Thanks,

 

[sr81]

Just a very newbie question, and any assistance here would be great?

Can I fly into LHR (as my destination), open-jaw, and depart from say CDG?

Also 2nd similar question, my destination is ATH ... can I fly into IST and make that a stopover? (IST is not in the same zone as ATH , correct?)

Thanks,

Hey Alan,
You can have an open jaw OR a stopover.

Under USAirways you need to have a stopover at the hub of the inbound carrier.
TG = BKK
LX = GVA, ZRH
LH = MUC, FRA
TK = IST
CO = EWR, HOU
etc.......

So, you could fly into LHR and out of CDG but not have a stopover.

You could also fly into IST with TK, take a stopover then proceed to ATH as the destination. On the return leg you would need to go straight through. ATH and IST are in Europe so the same region.

Also, don't go only to Europe on this.

I would go:
SYD-BKK-IST (stop)
IST-JFK (Dest)
JFK-FRA-BKK-SYD

It is cheaper by 10,000 points to include the USA.

If you only go to Europe and you want to fly to CDG then go SYD-BKK-CDG on TG then go CDG-LHR on BMI and use that as the stopover as BMI hub into LHR. Don't forget that TG have the full flat beds on BKK-CDG.

Anyway, hope this helps.