Last night we said good-bye to an old friend in the frequent flyer world. Like WorldPerks and OnePass before it, Dividend Miles is now one for the ages, a casualty of the era of airline consolidation. Dividend Miles will always hold a special place in the hearts of many of us. But rather than mourn…
Continue reading: Celebrating The Life Of US Airways Dividend Miles
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Managed to do DEN-DFW-ORD-HKG in Cathay First class then return HKG-DOH-MIA-DEN on Cathay and Qatar in Biz. That was for two passengers together for all segments. Going around the world is fun.
I'm a bit later to the miles/points game so missed the earlier promotions, but USDM helped us with our first first premium cabin travels for the last couple of years. I will miss it dearly.
Had a toast to the end of USDM last night at dinner and my wife thought I was crazy. She doesn't seem to mind the premium travel though. Haha.
Track-it-back was the greatest mileage promotion of all time. I bought 1.5 million miles through this deal, and regret not buying 10 million. And, I donated the stickers (before TIB went under, so they still had value) and got a tax deduction, lowering the net cost to ~.5 cents per mile
Is this revisionist history? What I seem to recall about US Airways and Dividend Miles is that they were the butt of the joke among *A carriers -- at least they seemed be on FlyerTalk....
Back in the days when they actually were in Star alliance. I would love a good mileage program for Star Alliance now that Lifemiles, Aeroplan and Mileagplus are all from not great to useless
Man, I'm gunna miss this program, over the years I've had so many great redemptions.....
My best "value" redemption from Dividend Miles was right after the switch from Star Alliance to Oneworld I got quoted 15,000 miles for a ticket that was PVG-HKG-NRT-HKG-PVG in CX First Class. Needless to say, I ticketed it in a heartbeat (supposed to be 40,000 miles). Brilliant time.
Back in the day when they sold miles even cheaper (circa 2010), I flew PVG-SFO-DEN-ATL (Dest)-FRA-CDG::ZRH-PVG for around $1500 using United, Lufthansa and Swiss in First Class. Was only 19 at the time.
There was a time when they offered double miles promotions if you registered. However they had multiple registration codes and did not limit you to 1 registration. During the Get out More (referred to as GOM) promotion people were getting 5x or more miles, which included preferred miles and redeemable miles. A friend went from having no miles to gold after 1 trip from the east coast to London.
The promo ran for several months and there were people who were doing transcons weekly and racking up the miles.
The layer cake game is based off of the "Towers of Hanoi" problem if that helps at all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Hanoi
Yes! Andrew beat me to it - the infamous GOM (Get Out More) stack-able EQM bonus codes! There were five of them mailed and emailed to DM members. I was Gold at the time and very quickly became a Chairman's Preferred in addition to racking up several hundred thousand miles while the promo was in place. A few mileage runs to the west coast and one over to LGW (I think).
And while everyone likes to bash US, I always liked flying the under-dog. US Dividend Miles took me lots of places and always in the premium cabins: Australia on QF, lots of CP roundtrip upgrades on cheap $500'ish European fares, ANA/TG business class for my honeymoon in HKG/Thailand, LH FC to Europe, SWISS FC to Europe, CX FC to HKG and lots and lots of European trips in US Envoy or UA business. No complaints here.... RIP!
mwwalk -- I did read about the Tower of Hanoi while doing my google research. Didn't know that. Still looking for a pic of the game! Somebody needs to port it over to iOS!
RIP USDM 🙁
My best redemption: BOI-SFO-PEK-SIN(overnight)- DAC(overnight)-IST(destination) - DAC(overnight) -SIN-BKK(stopover)-ICN-SFO-BOI all for 100K in Biz on 5 airlines
"Off-peak" awards to Europe in business for 60k miles round-trip, and with the 5k credit card discount only 55k miles. Only got to do this one year PHL-MUC for a ski trip for 110k DM for 2 passengers.
Probably too soon to go with the eulogy format following an event that killed hundreds of airline passengers. Obviously unintentional, but it's a bad look.
This became fairly well known on Australian forums but a few of us worked out that GUM and SPN were zoned SWP, the same as Australia, despite them being geographically located in North Asia, so 30k for J and 40k for F. We also worked out that the only way to get there was going via North Asia thanks to UA hubbing there and although stopover were technically not allowed on intra-zone awards after a few of us found agents who forgot this rule, provided you were willing to go all the way to GUM or SPN you suddenly had Asia awards for a third of the price.
In the few months before US left *A seemed to be the best period for booking them – agents were very relaxed on the rules and let you literally cherry-pick your own random itinerary jaunting around Asia however you wanted. Rather than a ‘I’ll take whatever I can get’ situation it became a ‘who can book the most ridiculous itinerary’ challenge. I ended up booking 4 GUM trips but the best was definitely:
I flew SYD-BKK-HKG (TG F stopover)-TPE-GUM (BR J dest)-NRT (UA J)-ICN (OZ F)-HKG (TG J)-BKK-SYD (TG F) in Nov last year, for 40k booked first call in less than 20 minutes.
My mourning is not today with USDM vanishing completely, it was much more when they left *A. Moving into a much smaller alliance meant much less availability and routing options and they simultaneously greatly reduced Gum MPM and were much stricter on the rules. What was an incredible offer now became a real struggle.
I was fairly late to the USDM party but still booked 6 USDM trips in about 2 years. I will really miss this program but its been dying a slow death ever since they announced the merger anyway.
My best redemption bookings were:
SFO-LHR(overnight)-MAD(12 hour layover to visit the city)-PMI(1 week destination)-FRA(overnight)-HKG-NRT(2 week stopover)-LAX-SFO. Mostly in First (BA, CX, JL). No BA fuel surcharge. 125k miles + $200
SFO-LAX-HKG-KUL-AKL(destination)-KUL(20 hour layover)-HKG(5 day stopover)-KIX(22 hour layover)-LAX-SFO. All in business, 110k miles + $200
I miss the Grand Slam. Not only was it a great way to get miles for cheap, but it was actually kind of fun. Beyond the initial credit card signup bonus, their periodic 15k for $500 in spend each month for 3 months was also nice.
All these promotions really took off after America West / Doug Parker grabbed USAir from the bankruptcy court. A lot of industry people don't like the guy, but let's face it, Parker has twice now grabbed DOA airlines and brought them back from the dead. And in the case of the old USAir, we are talking about an airline that was withing weeks of having its assets physically seized.
My favorite was our trip to Australia last year booked prior to US leaving Star Alliance but travel was when they were in OneWorld. EWR-LAX (UA F), LAX-ICN (OZ F - right when Asiana started flying its brand new A380 with an overnight in ICN), ICN-BKK (TG J), BKK-SYD (TG F), SYD-BKK (TG F - stopover in Bangkok), BKK-MUC (TG F - arriving early evening in Munich and the connecting flight was not until early afternoon the next day so we had a chance to have late dinner in Munich and walk around Munich the next morning), and finally MUC-EWR (LH F). All of this for only 140K. I thought the agent would give me a hard time with this routing. Actually, she actually had to put me on hold for a few minutes because she said that she needs to check with her supervisor because my routing appears to be round-the-world. But in the end, I was only charged for a roundtrip to South Pacific for 140K.
Going waaayy back (to when Lucky probably hadn't been born yet), US Airways offered a single award with 3 round trips to Europe for 60,000 miles total (yes, it was in Economy, but at 20,000 miles per passenger who's complaining?). And, back in those days, you could redeposit unused awards with no fee.
OF COURSE Bali is in North Asia. It's north of Australia, isn't it???
US's Grand Slam promos were what really got me started as a serious points and miles collector. They put premium class travel within fairly easy reach. Trackitback was the best ever, though. I bought so many of those darn things. I probably still have a few in the back of my desk drawer! Oh, BTW, the reward for returning a TIB-tagged item? Can you guess? ......... CORRECT! More TIB stickers. Seriously.
I've booked a number of outstanding USDM awards, but the best had to have been:
SFO-YVR-MUC(stopover/open jaw)//ZRH-AMS-BKK-TPE(dest)-SFO all in biz for 90k miles for 2 pax.
Took a couple calls and a graveyard shift supervisor who didn't normally book these awards to get the open jaw + stopover combo to fly. Got a good laugh out of "So you're flying Brussels Airlines from Taipei to San Francisco..."
God, will I miss Dividend Miles.
My favorite award redemptions were:
1) GRU - LHR (BA - no fuel surcharges as the flight originated in Brazil) // LHR - HKG (CX) // HKG - MNL (CX) // MNL - SYD (QF) // SYD - DXB (QF) // DXB - LHR (QF) // LHR - MAD (BA) // MAD - GRU (IB) ---> all in J for 120k miles (after 12 calls)
2) SYD - KUL (MH) // KUL - NRT (MH) // NRT - GUM (JL) // GUM - NRT (JL) // NRT - SYD (JL) ---> all in J for 30k miles (after 1 call! Now, 30,000 miles for 30 hours worth of flying, including 3 long hauls, are you kidding me? Best program ever!)
The thing is, I only got to know DM a year ago or so. It was still amazing.
RIP Dividend Miles. You were the best. Thanks for letting me explore the world.
I still have two working 50k links below if anyone needs them:
Well I never had those fancy redemptions. But it worked well for me last year when I took my girlfriend to Paris and Prague (from Shanghai) in business.
And earlier this year I took my parents to Europe on TK/CA business. And the best of the story? Somehow that agent didn't manage to deduct any miles from my account. Therefore the three of us literarlly flew from China to Europe and back in business, for a total of 0 miles (I did pay tax...).