US Airways Credit Card

Final call for the US Airways Credit card

I just received today the latest offer from Barclays Bank Delaware for the US Airways co-branded credit card. This is a solid card with a nice offer that is going to vanish soon. So hurry up! It is well accepted that Citi will be the new credit card issuer for the combined American Airline / US Airways once the merger is complete.

So probably one of the last opportunity for astute travelers to grab the Barclays US Airways Mastercard before it disappears for good. Remember, this comes with 30,000 miles free which is sufficient for more than one domestic round trip in North America on US Airways or any of its Star Alliance partners such as Air Canada or United Airlines. It may also be used for a free one-way ticket to Hawaii and an off-peak flight to South America or Europe. There is an additional 10,000 miles leading up to a 40,000 mile offer for balance transfers but I do not particularly recommend that.

In addition, you get two $99 companion-certificates for roundtrips within the 48 contiguous states and Canada. This can be of significant value for high-value airline tickets such as the ones for major holidays (Thansgiving, Memorial Day, Labor Day, Christmas) when airfares skyrocket.

The US Airways Mastercard will most probably disappear once the American Airlines and US Airways merger is complete which is scheduled to happen later this Summer. So this is probably one of the last opportunity to apply for this credit card.

You can apply here for the US Airways card.

Some of the benefit are given below:

For a limited time, you can earn up to40,000 bonus miles with qualifying transactions on a new US Airways Dividend Miles Premier World MasterCard.

Start earning benefits such as:

	30,000 bonus miles with first use
	Up to 10,000 bonus miles on initial
	balance transfers
	First Class check-in and Zone 2 boarding2
	Annual certificate redeemable for up to
	two $99 companion tickets

United Airlines Mileage plus adds award change fees for non elite customers.

These are my thoughts regarding the recent enhancements of the United Airlines Mileage Plus frequent flyer program. For quite some time, Mileage Plus has been one of my preferred frequent flyer program even though I was based outside the traditional catchment area of United and Continental frequent flyers.

It has been well publicized during the past year that United Airlines CEO, Jeff Smisek, has carried on a campaign against the “over-entitled frequent flyers” although with a questionable track record for United Airlines. Along this line, came yesterday the announcement that the frequent flyer program would add some revenue requirements for earning Elite status.

What is new however is that this campaign has been extended and now also target what I will refer as the general public. I learnt this morning with shock that United Airlines has added some new fees for changes made to award flights outside of the 21-day period. This is definitely a non-customer-friendly step that I believe is in the wrong direction. 

After all, even the famed former CEO of American Airlines, Robert Crandall said recently “I think the airline industry is making a fundamental mistake when they rely as heavily as they are now on ancillary revenues. The industry cannot have a long future if they are focused on hosing their customers”

It is well admitted that using and reserving capacity constrained awards can be difficult due to the lack of availability at many desirable dates. Some frequent flyers try to grab seats almost a year in advance and as soon as awards become available and before they are gone to other customers. Most of the time, this is done without a full knowledge of our own schedules, meetings and vacations for the following year. However, customers were still allowed to change their awards without penalty whenever more desirable dates became available or if their business schedule warranted so. This will no longer be the case.

Besides, this new fee has nothing to do with costs. Instead it is merely another revenue stream, trying to nickel and dime customers. Indeed, the cost for United of letting customers change awards more than three weeks before departure is minimal. On the other side, changes made less than 21 days in advance, when it becomes critical for United Airlines to find new customers to replace newly vacant seats have always come with a fee which I believe is fair.

I urge United Airlines to reconsider this decision although I am skeptical this will be the case given the recent consolidation in the airline industry and the resulting bargaining power legacy/network airlines now have compared to their customer base. I will nonetheless reconsider my flying choices whenever I can because I don’t want my business to favor non-customer-friendly airlines.

Let me also add to this that I am quite annoyed by the US Department of Justice and the US Department of Transportation that drink the airline kool-aid and that keep letting legacy airlines consolidate and therefore reduce competition. With only three major network carriers remaining in the United States, it is no surprise they are making so many customer-unfriendly moves. Yes, I know there are also some other supposedly low-cost carriers but their networks and particularly their international networks are very limited. I can't fly JetBlue to Guam, I can't fly Frontier to Bangkok and I can't fly Southwest to Dubai...