US Airways is once again offering a 100% bonus on purchased miles. With this promotion, you can buy 50,000 US Airways miles for $1881 and get an additional 50,000 free. That’s enough for a low mileage business class ticket to or from Buenos Aires (and many other places as well).
Business class seats routinely sell for upwards of $3800 each, so this is a great value. Plus, if you look at the normal cost of a coach ticket (around $1400) and add in the excess baggage fees, you’ll find that you’re probably already close to the cost of flying business and getting the additional luggage allowances as well.
Now, US Airways does not have a lot of flights to Buenos Aires, but since they’re part of Star Alliance, you’ll find that their partners do have a good amount of award space. Simply search for low mileage award space at United.com, find the flights you want, call up US Airways and book the ticket on a partner airline like United or Copa. You can read this guide for the exact steps involved, or follow this one for a brief primer on how to search for award space. Note that they do have a $50 phone booking fee for international flights that cannot be avoided.
This offer expires on August 31, 2013, and you must have been a Dividend Miles member for 12 days in order to purchase miles, so you’d better create an account right away if you do not have one. It also helps to have a flexible schedule in order to find the lowest mileage days.
If you do not have any upcoming trips planned, this may be a good way to bulk up your American Airlines miles as well. The US Airways and American Airlines merger is schedule to be completed at the end of this year and all these US Airways miles should convert to American miles at that time. This is a bit speculative but could be very worthwhile as American has some great off-season mileage deals to Argentina.
I’ll be taking advantage of this promotion and helping to meet the minimum spending requirements on my recent credit card app-o-rama too. Go buy your miles now!