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Last month I wrote:
US Airways didn’t announce when its off peak awards to South America will be valid this year, but based on checking their calendars, the off peak dates appear to be March 1-15 and all of May.
US Airways has finally updated the award chart section of its webpage, and I correctly deciphered the dates. Off peak awards between the USA are available between March 1-15 and May 1-31.
This is all such huge news because US Airways off peak awards are the best value in awards. 35k roundtrip from the USA to Rio and 60k roundtrip in a flying bed to Europe, yes please! For a more thorough analysis of off peak awards and their rules, see this milevalue analysis.
Unfortunately, there are still no off peak business class awards loaded to Rio. But the off peak availability in economy class between Charlotte and Rio is pretty good. Here’s May’s availability. The left side shows Charlotte to Rio; the right shows Rio to Charlotte.
This is the key chart because US Airways only flies one route to South America–Charlotte to Rio–and US Airways off peak awards have to be flown on US Airways planes.
US Airways doesn’t have great domestic availability, so from your home airport to Rio, it might be difficult to construct an itinerary completely made up of low level/off peak seats to get in on the 35k miles roundtrip deal.
If you can’t find the itinerary, feel free to use my Award Booking Service like a growing number of savvy travelers are.
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Wow! I’m all over this! I have been waiting to time my next Churn and US Air was one of the cards I will get. Never expected US to have such good redemptions. We fly to Brazil once a year so this would be perfect(as long as I can leave from DFW to CLT! Never flew business, but at 60K that’s a steal! I think I’ll be getting this along with the 2 Hawaiian Air Cards and maybe one more.
Yes, you can go DFW-CLT-GIG as long as you can find low level space DFW-CLT and off peak space CLT-GIG. Unfortunately US Airways hasn’t released any 2013 space to Rio in biz but maybe they will.
What’s the estimated taxes + fees on a round-trip to South America?
$50 US Airways fee + $75 in taxes I would guess = $125 pp
Checking the NA to HI flights in May I don’t see any off peak awards, but I see low level availability. Does this mean that there are no off-peak awards available, or are they just not loaded yet?
There are no off peak awards between North America and Hawaii on US Airways. I think you are misreading the chart, which says you can get off peak awards to Europe or South America from North America OR Hawaii
I would love to take advantage of this if there was a biz class option. I just can’t see myself sitting in US Air economy for 10 hours…..
For the just a few thousand more than a roundtrip coach award, I could for sure!
If you hold a Barclays US Airways card, doesn’t it mean that the 60k r/t biz class ticket can be as low as 55k with the 5k discount?
yes
[…] Their competitors split the continent into Northern and Southern South America for award purposes. (This, in turn, may be a related to the fact that US Airways only has one flight to South America–Charlotte to Rio de Janeiro.) […]
[…] 1 round trip business class trip to North Asia–for example Hong Kong, Japan, or South Korea–with 10,000 miles left over Are there any really good redemptions that I need to be aware of? Scott has written extensively on the sweet spots of the US Airways award chart. In two previous posts, he discussed the South American sweet spots in US Airways’ award chart and how US residents can use open-jaw itineraries to take advantage of some of these sweet spot awards originating in South America. With some creative routing, you can squeeze even more value from your Dividend Miles. You also definitely need to check out the US Airways Off Peak Award Chart to see if there are any solid deals. The chart can be found here at the bottom of the page. As you can see, there are some real bargains, especially in business class to Europe at the beginning of the year. These seats normally go for 100,000 miles, so you are getting a whopping 40% discount by traveling during US Airways’ designated offpeak times. I did some dummy bookings and found that availability was solid. My first experiment was Philadelphia <-> Dublin in business. The blue-green dates represent off peak award availability. As you can see, there are still plenty of dates available in February. I also looked up the Charlotte <-> Frankfurt route. There were off peak awards nearly every day of the week! Last, but certainly not least, I wanted to try a longer route. I did some investigating and found some availability for two passengers from Los Angeles <-> Paris in economy for only 35,000 miles. Unfortunately, business class space at the off peak rate was nonexistent. I don’t want to overstate US Airways off peak availability. It is generally excellent along the transatlantic routes–even now–but US Airways domestic availability is bad. If you don’t live in Philly or Charlotte–US Airways gateways to Europe–you will have to use US domestic flights to take advantage of the off peak awards, which can be a real stumbling block. What about awards to South America? I noticed them on the off peak chart. Scott has written before on the amazing value of US Airways off peak awards to South America. For further reading, check out his posts below: US Airways Off Peak Awards to South America Loaded for 2013 I Was Right about the 2013 US Airways Off Peak Awards to South America […]