Questions and Answers

Hi Lucky,

For the past 6-8 weeks, US Airways has had ZERO saver award space on any flights where they operate Interational Business (U fare class). This has been verified with aa.com, usairways.com (when you could book awards through it), the AA call center, and Expert Flyer. There is literally not one on any flight now through the end of the schedule. This can be easily checked by looking for a Saaver award to Europe where US Airways is the operating airline on the TATL segment, as you won’t find any. The same is true for US Airways-operated flights to LatAm, Mexico, and the Caribbean, which all utilize the U fare bucket for saver business awards. Flights within the US and Canada do not have this issue.

Living in PHL, my options are to either backtrack hours to DFW/MIA/ORD, drive several hours through NYC to JFK, or pay BA’s outrageous fuel surcharges, none of which I consider acceptable (and BA has very few biz seats available out of PHL in October, probably from demand as US has zero!).

I’ve tried calling and tweeting AA, but the reservations agent can’t do more than ‘well will you look at that’ and the Twitter team doesn’t seem to understand the issue (hard to explain concisely in 140 characters or less!). I’m trying to book my parents in business for their 35 year anniversary, and they are disappointed that they can’t use their AA miles out of PHL in business. What can I do?

@ Ben — Unfortunately not much that can be done. This is what American has been doing for a long time, so only option is to try to find them a flight on a different carrier. Sorry.