US Airways has uploaded a new award oneworld/partner award chart effective immediately.

Revised Award Chart

This is the old award chart.

This is the new award chart. I’ve highlighted the devaluations in red:

You can see the full chart here.

US Airways Devalues North Asia Redemptions

This is a really significant devaluation, in my opinion, as this redemption was one of the best values within the USDM program. North Asia to North America/Mexico/Caribbean is now 110k, instead of 90k, which is close to a 25% increase. There was simply no other program that could match 90k redemption to North Asia with a stopover in Europe from North America.

The devaluation also showcases the absurdities now in USDM’s chart, as Mexico/Caribbean to South Asia, still 90k, is now cheaper than Mexico/Caribbean/North America to North Asia, which is now 110k. That also means now, North America to North Asia in business class is the same price as North America to Oceania via North Asia. Furthermore, first class is now only 10,000 miles more expensive to North Asia, at 110k vs 140k. which is absolutely insane.

The other issue I’m irked about is the lack of advance notice. With the major Aeroplan, United, Delta, and nearly all other loyalty programs (with the exception of Lifemiles), there’s been at least a few days if not months notice for the award chart to change. There’s no option for me here to even ticket at the old rate so if you were stockpiling 90k miles for a North Asia business class trip, you’d be sort of screwed. I cannot express how un-customer friendly this move is.

What now?

I was really hoping that Dividend miles would hold off on changes until the Given the lack of notice and the strange devaluation to only one region pair, I’d assume there will be devaluations coming soon as well. So with the 100% Share Miles Promotion that’s going on, I strongly recommend you only buy miles that you have an immediate use for.

Furthermore, this also means an empty account will only receive 100k miles, which is not enough to go to Asia. Given that oneworld is relatively weak transatlantic (as BA charges fuel surcharges), people with empty USDM accounts will find it harder to leverage the Share promotion. It’s important to note that there are no change to first class redemptions and all other business class redemptions to other regions, so if you do have the miles, now is as good of a time as ever to redeem your miles.

I’ve always assumed that there would be a devaluation when US Dividend Miles and AAdvantage merged. I certainly was prepared for a devaluation, though not without advance notice. This makes me very cautious with the award chart and I’m not sure if I do want to maximize the share miles promo to the extent that I was going to. The next thing they could do is gut the routing rules and any change to the current award chart could significantly damage the value of Dividend miles. The optimistic side to this means that this devaluation stays any more potential devaluations, but I’m not sure.

In any case, we’ll see soon enough whether there’ll be any more changes to the Dividend Miles Award chart.

A dAArk day for all…

(Tip of the Hat to Boris)

—

Let’s connect: Twitter | Facebook | Instagram