What Will Happen to My US Airways Dividend Miles in 2015?
TPG reader @MrMainStreet tweeted me to ask:
@thepointsguy-- "Are Dividend Miles going away with the US Airways/AA merger? Do we need to spend them before Quarter Two?"
People get nervous about airline mergers, as there always seem to be winners and losers. American Airlines recently announced that the AAdvantage and Dividend Miles loyalty programs will merge in the second quarter of 2015, meaning the end of Dividend Miles as we know it. Going forward we'll just have AAdvantage.
Basically, Dividend Miles are going away in the sense that they'll all be transferred to the AAdvantage program, so if you have an existing AAdvantage account, you'll be able to link the two accounts. On the actual day of the merger in 2015 (there isn't a specified date yet), the miles will all just become AAadvantage miles.
You don't need to spend your Dividend Miles before then, and you don't have to worry about them disappearing. However, you could take advantage of some of the great deals Dividend Miles has to offer before the program goes away. While Dividend Miles doesn't allow one-way awards for half price, there are certain awards that cost much less using US Airways miles than American Airlines miles.
For example, you can go around the world for only 110,000 Dividend Miles round-trip in business class to Australia or Southeast Asia. You can also route around both oceans as a normal award. You can no longer leverage stopovers with AAdvantage like you can with Dividend Miles. There are nuances to both programs, but US Airways are among my favorite, and I'll be sad to see the program go. I'll probably book some of these awards before the merger is complete, and you should look at your options too.
To reiterate, you don't have to use the miles; you'll still have them in the form of AAdvantage miles after the two programs merge.
If you have any other questions, please tweet me @thepointsguy, message me on Facebook, or send me an email at info@thepointsguy.com.
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