Backpacker’s Guide to Miles and Points: US Airways Award Charts and Stopover Rules

In the Backpacker’s Guide to Miles and Points I will be going over airline mileage programs—I’ll cover the quickest ways to earn miles and how to maximize the miles to help make traveling for less much easier. With careful planning and following a few strategies you can easily get a free flight or two within 6 months from now.

Backpacker’s Guide to Miles and Points Index

Part One: Introduction to Maximizing US Airways Miles
Part Two: Ways to Earn US Airways Dividend Miles
Part Three: US Airways Award Charts and Stopover Rules
Part Four: Redeem US Airways Dividend Miles with Partner Airlines

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A few thing that always attracts my loyalty to a particular airline’s program are routing options and their award charts. In the end, you want to walk away feeling like you made a good purchase because after all, airline miles should be treated like money.

US Airways offers flexibility towards adding stopovers and open jaws to your award ticket and that is essentially a free flight.

US Airways Award Charts

US Airways has pretty good award charts especially because you’re given the option for a stopover on round trip awards. In addition to regular award prices, there are also off-peak awards which are discounted award flights. The regular awards are the standard costs for any level of ticket whether its First or economy class and are the costs which vary based on region start at 25,000 for economy or the main cabin and 50,000 for First/Business Class.

Here is the link to both the regular awards chart and the off-peak award chart so you can refer to the mileage required to fly from one country or continent to another.

Between North America and South America (not including off-peak awards) awards flights looks like this:

Economy
Low: 60,000
Medium: 110,000
High – Level 1: 150,000
High – Level 2: *

First/Business Class
Low: 100,000
Medium: 220,000
High – Level 1: 300,000
High – Level 2: *

“Low” is the least amount of miles that is required for a round trip economy award between the US and South America, which is 60,000 miles. As award seats become less available as well as during busy travel times of the year such as Christmas or New Years, you may see the minimum miles jump up to the medium or high levels starting at least 110,000 miles.

For First or Business class awards mileage requirements begin at 100,00 and based on seasonal demand the mileage requirement bumps up to 220,000 miles to 300,000.

For off-peak awards the mileage requirements can be much less than regular awards and they are only available for international flights. One other thing to note is that you cannot book a stopover with an off-peak award.

Off-peak awards must be flown on US Airways carriers so unfortunately you cannot redeem the lesser amount on any of the Oneworld partner airlines. However you can save miles if you do have The US Airways® Premier World MasterCard® because one of the perks of being a card holder is that you get a 5,000 mile discount on round trip awards.

 Off-Peak Award Chart

Off-peak awards offer significant discounts for international flights, even for First class to South America. They are perfect if you are planning to travel during the dates that are allotted for that specific regional route since the time frame is limited to certain weeks or months. One more thing to keep in mind is that off-peak is unfortunately not available for every region.

Let’s compare mileage requirements for international and domestic awards originating in the US for off-peak and low fare :

Europe

Off-peak: 35,000 miles
Low: 60,000 miles
Savings: 25,000 miles

South America

Off-peak: 35,000 miles
Low: 60,000
Savings: 25,000 miles

US/ Canada/ Caribbean

Off-peak: 50,000
Low: 60,000
Savings: 10,000 miles

Stopovers

A stopover is a connection that lasts at least 24 hours long and can last up to one year of the day you purchased your ticket for. Every airline has different stopover rules. So say from Los Angeles I would like to fly to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, but before I get there, I would like to spend a couple of weeks in Paris. On the same ticket, I can have a stop in Paris because it is on my route to Addis Ababa without ever using more miles. Stopovers are basically a great way for you to get a free flight. It gets a bit tricky with US Airways, but it’s not too complicated.

US Airways requires that stopovers be in either a Transatlantic Gateway City or at a Oneworld Hub, which is still a good deal because American Airlines does not even offer stopovers any more. Another rule is that you can only have a stopover on a round trip award which is not as flexible as American Airlines rule when they allowed for stopovers. With American Airlines you were allowed a stopover one one way awards, so if you booked two one way awards you essentially could have booked two stopovers Los Angeles to Paris (stopover) Addis Ababa, then Addis Ababa to Madrid (stopover) to Los Angeles, but neither airline allows it so I will not get into it.

If you were hoping to maximize your miles even more by taking advantage of stopovers during off-peak awards, unfortunately it is not allowed. Off-peak awards must be flown on US Airway airplanes and US Airways does not fly between European cities so a stopover would not be possible.

What are the Transatlantic Gateway Cities that you could fly to with US Airways?

Amsterdam	Edinburgh	Madrid	Shannon
Athens	Frankfurt	Manchester	Tel Aviv
Barcelona	Glasgow	Munich	Venice
Brussels	Lisbon	Paris	Zurich
Dublin	London	Rome

What are the US Airway Hubs?

Air Berlin	Berlin, Dusseldorf
American Airlines	Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami, New York
British Airways	London
Cathay Pacific	Hong Kong
Finnair	Helsinki
Iberia	Madrid, Barcelona
Japan Airlines	Tokyo
LAN	Buenos Aires, Lima, Santiago
TAM	Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo
Malaysia Airlines	Kuala Lumpur
Qantas	Melbourne, Sydney
Qatar Airways	Doha
Royal Jordanian	Amman
S7 Airlines	Moscow
US Airways	Charlotte, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Washington

A stopover can be virtually at any city, as long as the routing makes sense and that a Oneworld partner airline has its hub there–you don’t have to be on a flight with the airline. This means I can fly from Los Angeles to Istanbul, with a stopover in Paris. Or instead I could also have one in Madrid, Frankfurt or Amsterdam, but I would try to avoid London because flights from London have high fuel surcharges tacked on to them. With US Airways alone you would not be able to have international stopovers because US Airways does not fly between international cities, so taking advantage of Oneworld partner airline hubs can be a huge benefit to you.

You can get creative with the stopovers, but because it gets “complicated” as you will be required to book a leg with a Oneworld airline partner because US Airways does not fly between international cities, you have to call and  book through a US Airways agent by calling (800)428-4322. Like with most airlines, if you do book over the phone you will most likely have to pay a $25 fee. You can always ask to have it waived, but paying the fee is something you may want to keep in mind.

Last Bit

US Airways Dividends is a great airlines loyalty program to be a part of and earn miles with because of the low cost awards that you can book. In addition to the off-peak awards and the free international stopovers it’s possible to even save miles by having the US Airways World Premier MasterCard which get’s you a  5,000 mile discount on round trip awards. In case you are wondering what happens to your mile if you don’t redeem them for an award before the merger is completed with American Airlines, know that you miles will be converted to American Airlines mileage program. However, it’s still a good time to try to take advantage of US Airway’s mileage redemption discount, stopover rules and award charts before they do go away permanently.

 

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