AAdvantage and Dividend Miles Scheduled To Combine This Weekend

Things are starting to really move along with the merger between American Airlines and US Airways, and now some of the bigger starting to come together.

Here are the high-level details you need to know now:

• 11:59pm on March 25th is your last chance to ticket US Airways awards prior to the merge of the two programs.  There are a few sweet spots in the US Airways program that you might want to take advantage of.  Even held reservations will need to be ticketed prior to the deadline or they’ll go away.
• Mileage balances will start being combined on March 28th.  This may result in an increase in your status level if your combined EQM balance between the two airlines qualifies you for higher status.
• Any leftover Chairmans Preferred electronic upgrades are no longer valid after 11:59pm on March 27th.  Use them or lose them.

View From the Wing has more scoop after a detailed chat with Suzanne Rubin.  Here’s some more detail you may be interested in:

• The actual process will take hours, not days.  AAdvantage will be sending out e-mails when your Dividend Miles account is merged with/into your AAdvantage account.   As a precautionary step, take screen shots of your account balances with both programs prior to the 28th.
• Because of the sheer size of the effort, folks with just a Dividend Miles account will transfer first, followed by those who have already matched their Dividend Miles and AAdvantage accounts.
• They’ll be shutting down access to your AAdvantage account for a brief period of time on the 28th.  Don’t be scared!

Once the 28th arrives, the new upgrades procedures I’ve written about previously will kick in.

This means domestic upgrades on flights of 500 miles or less will be complimentary for all elite members, where they used to require one “sticker”, or 500-mile upgrade certificate.  The same upgrade priority will apply.

The 500-mile upgrade process will continue for elites except for Executive Platinum members.

It’s important to note that codeshare flights will still be an issue for those trying to clear upgrades.  It’s unclear to me when US Airways will stop selling airline tickets, but for the foreseeable future, it still makes the most sense to buy flights operated by US Airways directly from them and American Airlines flights from AA.  This gives you the best chance to clear upgrades ahead of time, whereas codeshare flights will have to wait until you get to the airport.  And, in some cases where you have mixed flights on an itinerary (say, a US Airways codeshare followed by an American-operated flight all on an American ticket), you may not be able to clear upgrades for any flights until you’re at the airport.

US Airways members will get an initial stipend of 500-mile upgrades in their account once the merge happens this weekend.  That will be based on the number of US Airways EQMs earned in 2014.

Most Important News?

No impending changes to the award chart or program structure.  That doesn’t come as a huge surprise, but it’s always nice to hear.

I’ve been an American Airlines fan and loyal customer for as long as I can recall.  I think they’ve done a solid job with the merger so far, doing their best to over-deliver on promises.  The schedule has been slow and steady, and we’re starting to get into the dicier issues.  I have no doubt there will be glitches when they merge the approximately 100 million accounts between the two airlines.  But, I’m confident they’ll make those glitches right.  From there, we’ll start looking forward to when they merge the reservations systems and truly become one airline, an area where previous mergers have failed miserably (yup, talking about you, United).

The post AAdvantage and Dividend Miles Scheduled To Combine This Weekend was published first on Pizza In Motion.

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