Can I do anything useful with a small number of soon-to-expire US Air Miles?

score:7

Accepted answer

Unfortunately, Dividend Miles is a "dead-end" program. The WebFlyer Mileage Converter turns up nothing, and even a ruinous Points.com conversion is now impossible. Some of this reflects general cutbacks in frequent flyer programs and some of it reflects the pending merger with American Airlines. Dividend Miles will almost certainly be merged into the much larger AAdvantage program, or into a new successor program, so there is no point to adding new partnerships.

I do advise you, however, to keep the account active until you can redeem from it. If you participate in AAdvantage, these miles will be transferred or converted to that account within the next 12–18 months (if the Delta/Northwest and United/Continental mergers can be cited as precedent). If you don't regularly fly OneWorld and have not been consolidating your miles in another OneWorld program, this could be the one to keep accruing to until you can spend them on something useful.

Any activity in your Dividend Miles account will refresh your activity date, no matter how small. Charging $1 on your DM credit card to earn one mile would be good enough, or getting 6 issues of Cigar Aficionado for 400 miles would be good enough. And there are many ways to earn Dividend Miles without flying (RDMs).

You do not specify how long you have before expiration, but let us assume it is less than the 60 days you should allow for credit from a program partner. Fortunately, you can still buy, gift, or share miles, which will reset your activity counter within a day.

  • Miles to purchase cost $0.035 per mile plus 7.5% tax; the minimum number is 1000, so your minimum spend is $37.63.
  • Miles to share with a friend or family member cost $0.01 per mile 7.5% tax and a $30 processing fee per transaction; the minimum number is 1000, so your minimum spend is $40.75.
  • You can reactivate the account. The fee for doing so is a sliding scale based on the mileage balance: $10 for 1–4,999 miles, $50 for 5,000–19,999 miles, and so on.
  • There is no fee to donate miles. The minimum number to donate is 1000.

If you do not have an AAdvantage account and truly do not foresee ever needing one (e.g. you accrue your OneWorld miles to a different program), it would be reasonable to drain the account by buying magazines and newspapers— or gifting them to a friend, school, library, etc.— or by donating them. But do drain it; there is no point to letting miles expire, as they are then of no use to anyone.

Upvote:4

You don't say how many points you have or what airlines you normally fly with, but...

Firstly, keep in mind that US Airways is likely to merge with American Airlines at some stage in the not to distant future. At that time, the miles for the two programs will merge into one - so if you collect AA miles then these miles would suddenly become useful to you!

Unfortunately US do not appear to let you redeem miles for gift vouchers/etc. They do allow redemption for newspapers and magazines as you say, which is probably your best option if you want to spend them all.

However rather than spending them, there are numerous ways to extend the expiry - which could be a better option if you expect you will ever fly US again, or if you have AA miles to merge them with in the future.

There's basically 3 ways to extend the expiry of the miles - use some, earn some, or pay a fee.

The easy one first - pay a fee. For $9, you can extend your miles for another 18 months. This should show as an option in your account when the miles are within the last few months of their life.

Next, earn some. Earning even a single new mile will extend the life of all of your miles for another 18 months. In addition to the obvious method of flying, there are numerous other ways to earn miles, such as rental cars/hotels, Dividend Dining, or numerous other options. A Google search will find you many other options here - and remember you only as little as one mile and you're good!

Lastly, Spend some. Maybe you don't want 7 years worth of Wired - but buying even 1 years worth will extend the remaining miles for another 18 months. In addition to magazines, you can also get a newspaper subscription, or even donate 1000 miles to charity.

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