June is Mileage Bonanza Month if You Go for These Offers
For the third month in a row, mileage bonus promotions appear on our front page. If you missed out on the last few promotions we highlighted, or need miles for upcoming travel, this is the time to lock them in.
In the past few months, Delta and US Airways have offered mileage bonus promotions, but now both have sweetened the pot: Delta went from a 50% to a 100% bonus on purchased and gifted miles (see FCF, Apr. 2010, page 1), and US Airways has added a 50% bonus on hotel-point transfers. Here are the details.
Delta/SkyMiles: Buy or gift the maximum miles allowed (60,000) and you net 120,000 (offer ends on June 30). What makes this deal worth pursuing, even if you don’t fly Delta, is that the miles are valid on 24 Delta partners, among them Air France, Alitalia, KLM, Korean Airlines, and Malaysia Airlines. Granted, there is a catch: To get the bonus, you must buy your miles with a Delta SkyMiles credit card from American Express. The first year is free ($95 annually thereafter), and you get another 20,000 miles as a joining bonus after your first use of the card.
Sample savings: A First Class award seat for domestic travel on Delta starts at 45,000 miles round-trip, but with the 100% bonus, the actual cost for miles is $672 for 24,000 miles (sold in blocks of 2,000)—1,000 fewer miles than many carriers charge for coach. By comparison, Delta’s First Class fare from Los Angeles to Washington, DC, is $1,818 (plus taxes and fees). For a First Class award ticket to Hawaii, you’ll have to buy 38,000 miles for $1,064, a much better deal than the published fare of $2,734 from Atlanta to Honolulu. A Business Class ticket to South America or Europe takes 50,000 miles ($1,400); to Asia, Africa, India, and the Middle East, you’ll need 60,000 miles ($1,680).
For details: SkyMiles Bonus Offer Delta American Express Gold Card
US Airways/Dividend Miles: Earlier this year, it offered a 100% mileage bonus on miles purchased and gifted. (Both expired Mar. 31.) Now the offer is back, through July 31, and a 50% bonus on hotel-point transfers has been added.
Buy or gift the maximum of 50,000 miles and you, or the recipient, nets 100,000. Transfer points from Starwood and earn Starwood’s 25% transfer bonus for every 20,000 points, on top of the 50% bonus from US Airways. The miles are valid on 23 US Airways partners, among them All Nippon, Continental, Lufthansa, SWISS, United, and Singapore, which is why the deal is worth pursuing even if you never fly US Airways.
Sample savings: US Airways has one of our favorite allianceaward-chart anomalies: It charges 50,000 miles for a domestic First Class seat on United, for which United charges 70,000 miles. With the US Airways promotion, you need to buy only 25,000 miles to score this award. To put this into perspective, that’s the usual cost of an economy award ticket.
For optimal value, buy 25,000 miles ($688) and use the 50,000 net for a First Class Los Angeles-New York round-trip on United—a $5,344 ticket. You save $4,656 (87%). For a First Class award ticket to Hawaii, you’ll have to buy 35,000 miles ($963); for Business Class to South America or Europe, 50,000 miles ($1,375), and to North Asia (Hong Kong and Japan, for example), 45,000 miles ($1,238).
If your schedule is really flexible, book an off-season (Jan. 15-Feb. 28) Business Class award to Europe, which costs only 30,000 miles ($825). We show plentiful award-seat availability in both directions on the Charlotte-Paris, Philadelphia-Madrid and Philadelphia-Manchester routes.
For details on bonus transfer: Dividend Miles Promo
For buying or gifting miles: US Airways Miles Transfers
Sample Business Class Savings
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