March 31st is the Oneworld join date for US Airways, and it’s already Monday in the UK. You can now book flights on US Airways with Avios on britishairways.com
US Airways has hubs in Charlotte, Philadelphia, Phoenix, and Washington DC (DCA/National). They also run some shuttle routes to/from Boston and New York/LaGuardia.
Avios has a distance-per-segment based award chart – you pay for each flight based on the length of each segments. For example:
- Flights between 0-650 miles cost 4,500 Avios.
- Flights between 650 miles-1150 miles cost 7,500 Avios
- Flights between 1,151 miles-2,000 miles cost 10,000 Avios
- Flights between 2,001-3,000 miles one-way cost 12,500 Avios.
So far, only domestic routes seem to be bookable; I’m sure US Airways’ international flights to Europe will show up on British Airways’ site soon.
Here are some samples:
One of the best uses for people on the west coast is for trips to Hawaii, since a one-way is just 12,500 Avios. The addition of US Airways introduces Phoenix as a new gateway city, and I’m happy to report that Phoenix to Honolulu shows up as 12,500 Avios + $2.50 in Economy.
US Airways codes their front cabin as “First Class,” so domestic First class segments cost 3 times as many Avios (similar for using Avios on American and Alaska Airlines). For short flights, that’s not really an issue.
The exception is for transcontinental flights to Europe, where the front cabin is sold as “Business Class,” so those cabins cost only 2 times as much as a coach redemption. However, I’ve tried searching for transatlantic flights on US Airways and they don’t yet show up on British Airways’ website (but they do on American Airlines’ site).
There is one funny bug I found on British Airways’ site, which is that the logo for Royal Jordanian pops up for certain US Airways itineraries. I don’t think RJ flies from Philadelphia to Phoenix :P.
This is one of the things people were looking forward to as US Airways joins OneWorld. Short flights can often be prohibitively expensive, but British Airways charges for flights based on their length, so now that both are in the same alliance, you can use British Airways Avios to fly short US Airways routes that weren’t otherwise served by partners American and Alaska Airlines.
Avios are an incredibly easy currency to accumulate, as they have a Chase-branded credit card and are transfer partners with American Express Membership Rewards, Chase Ultimate Rewards, and Starwood Preferred Guest.
