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US Airways and American Airlines have merged since the publication of this post so it is no longer valid.
This post is part of a four-part series. In Part 1, we looked at the mechanics of the US Airways program. In Part 2, we looked at its award chart and rules to find valuable awards. In Part 3, we’ll value specific Dividend Miles awards. In Part 4, I’ll put a number on one Dividend Mile.
Now that we’ve looked at the rules of the Dividend Miles program, and we’ve looked at the chart to find some valuable awards, we’re going to value specific awards. As always, to value awards, we need four things:
- the lesser of the price of paying cash and your subjective value of the award
- taxes and fees paid
- miles needed to book
- miles foregone by not buying a cash ticket
Because the very first datum we need is the lesser of the price the award would cost to buy with cash and its subjective value to you, there is a subjective component to valuing awards. So these are my values for these awards. Follow along with the steps in this post to value your own awards to find your own value for Dividend Miles.
1. Make a list of awards you’ve booked, awards you plan to book, and dream awards. Include all classes you would consider flying. My list is below. First class is F, Business class is B, and Economy class is E. (Envoy is business class.) I’ve put a B even when the award includes domestic first class on a two-cabin plane because those awards still price in business class. Stopovers are represented by a double slash. (//)
LAX-FRA//FRA-ARN, ARN-FRA-LAX (B) LA to Frankfurt (stopover) to Stockholm, returning to LA
LAX-IAH//IAH-LOS, LOS-IAH-LAX (B) LA to Houston (stopover) to Lagos, Nigeria, returning to LA
LAX-SYD-MEL, MEL-SYD//SYD-LAX (B) LA to Melbourne, returning Melbourne to Sydney (stopover) to LA
LAX-PHL-MAD, CDG-PHL-LAX (B, off peak) LA to Madrid, returning Paris to LA
LAX-CLT-GIG r/t (E, off peak) LA to Rio de Janeiro roundtrip
LAX-NRT//NRT-HKG, HKG-NRT-LAX (B) LA to Tokyo (stopover) to Hong Kong, returning Hong Kong to LA
2. Price the awards on united.com. Sign into your Mileage Plus account, use the award search, and find the awards you’ve written down. Note how many dollars in taxes and fees you would be charged to book that award. Then add the award booking fee US Airways charges ($25 within US/Canada, $35 to Mexico or the Caribbean, $50 to Hawaii or internationally.) To figure out how many miles US Air will charge, see its charts. For my awards, the prices are
LAX-FRA//FRA-ARN, ARN-FRA-LAX (B) 100k miles and $129.5
LAX-IAH//IAH-LOS, LOS-IAH-LAX (B) 110k miles and $145
LAX-SYD-MEL, MEL-SYD//SYD-LAX (B) 110k miles and $152.8
LAX-PHL-MAD, CDG-PHL-LAX (B, off peak) 60k miles and $92.4
LAX-CLT-GIG r/t (E, off peak) 35k miles and $111
LAX-NRT//NRT-HKG, HKG-NRT-LAX (B) 90k miles and $107.1
3. Price all the itineraries on kayak.com. Search the same dates. Find the cheapest flight with a comparable routing regardless of airline. If the award itinerary includes a stopover as most of my international itineraries do, search as two different itineraries on kayak.com. Write down the prices of the itineraries and also your subjective value of the itineraries. As usual, we’ll be using the lesser of the price and my subjective value. (What am I talking about? “Subjective value”? See this post.) Below is the lesser of the price and subjective value for my itineraries. In all cases, my subjective value was lower than the price, which will always be the case when I’m flying internationally in a premium cabin.
This is how I construct my subjective values. I start with my value of a coach trip from my origin to my destination.
Then, if applicable, I add in how much extra I would pay for flying in the premium cabin that my award is in, of course factoring in the specific airline and seats that my routing will use.
Then if applicable, I add in the value of the en route stopover. If the stopover is in the US, I decide how much I would value a trip from LA to that city. I add the value of a separate roundtrip to the US-stopover city to the sum from above. Why? The stopover is saving me a separate entire roundtrip to the stopover city.
If the stopover is abroad, I only add in how much extra it would cost me to get from my destination to the stopover city. In Europe this is usually a pretty small amount because of its budget carriers.
LAX-FRA//FRA-ARN, ARN-FRA-LAX (B) $2,200
LAX-IAH//IAH-LOS, LOS-IAH-LAX (B) $2,300
LAX-SYD-MEL, MEL-SYD//SYD-LAX (B) $2,650
LAX-PHL-MAD, CDG-PHL-LAX (B, off peak) $1,800 (would be higher if I didn’t have to go during winter!)
LAX-CLT-GIG r/t (E, off peak) $1,200
LAX-NRT//NRT-HKG, HKG-NRT-LAX (B) $2,100
4. Figure out how many miles you’re foregoing on gcmap.com. Use the Great Circle Mapper to figure out the distance of your routing. Add in any multiplier for the status you have on the US Airways. This tells you how many miles you’re foregoing by using an award instead of cash for the ticket, and that’s a key component in figuring out the value of the award. I’ll skip listing this for my flights.
5. Plug the four values in the milevalue.com calculator! If you don’t quite understand how to use it, read this post.
- LAX-PHL-MAD, CDG-PHL-LAX (B, off peak) 2.36 cpm
- LAX-CLT-GIG r/t (E, off peak) 2.24 cpm
- LAX-SYD-MEL, MEL-SYD//SYD-LAX (B) 1.98 cpm
- LAX-NRT//NRT-HKG, HKG-NRT-LAX (B) 1.91 cpm
- LAX-FRA//FRA-ARN, ARN-FRA-LAX (B) 1.83 cpm
- LAX-IAH//IAH-LOS, LOS-IAH-LAX (B) 1.71 cpm
7. Put a single number on the value of a Dividend Mile. To do this, we’ll have to use our list of award values from above and make adjustments based on the other characteristics of the Dividend Miles program we talked about in Part 1. We’ll do that in Part 4, the final installment of the series.
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