A Round-Trip to the Caribbean Plus a Free One-Way from 30,000 US Airways Miles Total

I previously wrote about using US Airways Dividend Miles to fly to the Caribbean. With US Airways now being a member of oneworld, US Airways Dividend miles can be redeemed on American Airlines flights as well as its own. American Airlines has a very extensive Caribbean network, which gives us far more options and flexibility to redeem our US Airways miles. In particular, US Airways miles are frequently a better bet than American Airlines miles for Caribbean travel. US Airways’ travel rules allow us a free stopover, whereas American Airlines miles do not. In this post, I am going to fully explain how to leverage the “stopover” rule to stretch your miles as far as you can… into a free one-way trip on a completely separate vacation.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I do earn a commission for approved applications for some credit cards mentioned in this post. I always include the best offer I can find regardless of commission. As always, thank you very much for your support!)

The Cost of Award Tickets to the Caribbean

According to the US Airways Award chart, tickets to the Caribbean will cost

• 35,000 US Airways Dividend miles round-trip in Economy.
• 60,000 US Airways Dividend miles round-trip in Business Class.

If you actually only fly on US Airways operated flights, you get an additional 5,000 mile discount if you hold the  US Airways World MasterCard. That means you can fly to the Caribbean for 30,000 miles round-trip and even get a free stopover along the way.  But what if you don’t want to have a stopover on your Caribbean trip? What if you just want to fly to your favorite vacation island, spend a few days or a week at the beach and return home? Can you still get more from your miles? Yes! In fact, as I mentioned earlier, you can add a free one-way trip onto your itinerary without paying any extra miles.

How to Construct An Itinerary with a Free One-Way Flight

Let’s look at an example. I live in New York and like to visit Grand Cayman. But I also frequently visit the west coast. Let’s say I am in Los Angeles and want to return home. Three months later, I want to fly to Grand Cayman. Logically, I would want to book the following “round-trip” itinerary:

• Outbound: Los Angeles to Grand Cayman with a three month stopover in New York.
• Inbound: Grand Cayman to New York.

Is this a valid itinerary? US Airways allows one stopover or one open-jaw and what do we have here? We have one stopover. That would be in New York on the first leg. We also have one open-jaw as I am starting in Los Angeles and coming back to New York. So that itinerary won’t work. It has one stopover and one open-jaw.

How can we fix it? I don’t want to go to Grand Cayman right away as I do want to take that trip later. But what if, instead of booking a trip that returns to New York, I book instead a trip that return to Los Angeles. So let’s take a look at this itinerary:

• Los Angeles to Grand Cayman with a three month stopover in New York.
• Grand Cayman to Los Angeles with a connection in New York of fewer than 24 hours.

I now only have one stopover (in New York for 3 months) and that’s a completely valid itinerary. On trips between different regions, connections under 24 hours don’t count as stopover. However, since I want to go back to New York, I can just get off the plane at my connection in New York. I don’t need to fly all the way to Los Angeles… even though my ticket is booked to go there. I simply take my luggage, get off the plane when I reach New York and then go home. I just have to make sure I don’t check any luggage or it flies all the way to Los Angeles without me!

Keep in mind this will only work if your free one-way is before your actual trip. You don’t have to take all your flights at the end of your trip and simply finish at your intended destinations. But you cannot miss any segments at the start – or your entire trip will get canceled. That is, I cannot have a flight from Los Angeles to Grand Cayman connecting in New York and miss the segments from Los Angeles to New York at the start. Only at the end.

That’s how we construct the itinerary with a free one-way! The advantage here is that I am still taking a round-trip from North America to the Caribbean and I am still paying 35,000 miles (or 30,000 if I use all US Airways flights and have the US Airways credit card). But now I get a free one-way trip from Los Angeles without paying any extra miles.

Finding Award Space

To be able to book this trip, I need to find low level award space on a combination of US Airways and American Airlines flights. The US Airways website will actually show all the award space. However, if you do want to book an itinerary with a stopover, you won’t be able to do it online. You’ll have to call customer service. Before you do so, you should definitely spend some time finding award availability as the customer service agents don’t tend to be the best at piecing them together. That way, you can just read off the flights you want and have your itinerary booked without hassle.

Let’s go through my example. Say I want to return from Los Angeles this summer and then visit Grand Cayman in the fall. I need to find four things:

1. A flight from Los Angeles to NYC in the summer.
2. A flight from NYC to Grand Cayman.
3. A flight from Grand Cayman to NYC.
4. A flight from NYC to Los Angeles with no more than a 24 hour connection in New York.

Finding a flight from Los Angeles to NYC. I start off by looking for my very first segment. Remember, I need to find low-level award space so I can book the whole thing for 35,000 miles. That means this segment will have to price at 12,500 miles. This is the lowest miles price there is for domestic flights.

I see that there is a flight for 12,500 miles. Since I will be calling US Airways customer service with these, I write these down.

Once you go through the rest of the itinerary and piece together all your flights, you’re ready for the next step… calling customer service.

Booking the Ticket

After finding all your flights, you can now call customer service to book the ticket. When I call, I simply tell the agent I’d like to book a round-trip itinerary to the Caribbean with a stopover and I’ve already found all the flights so, hopefully, this will go smoothly. I then read off my flights one by one and have the agent pull up the space.

Once I am done, I wait for the award to be priced. It should come out to 35,000 miles total. Or 30,000 if you have the US Airways credit card and are only using US Airways flights. I will have to pay any departure taxes and fees as well as a $50 international award processing charge.

Earning US Airways Miles

The easiest way to rack up a quick number of US Airways miles right now is with the US Airways® Premier World MasterCard® . The current offer is 40,000 miles immediately with the first purchase and after paying the $89 annual fee.

New applications for the card will stop being accepted as the two airlines US Airways and American Airlines come closer to completing the merger. With that in mind, it’s probably a good idea to get the card if you don’t already have one as there aren’t very many opportunities to pick up that many miles without a spending requirement.

The card also currently comes with a Companion Certificate where you can fly two additional passengers for $99 eachon tickets booked on US Airways. We’ve definitely gotten some great value from the companion certificate when tickets during holiday travel periods were very expensive.

Summary

• US Airways Dividend Miles can be used to visit the Caribbean by combining US Airways and American Airlines award flights into a single itinerary.
• With any round-trip between different regions, US Airways allows a free stopover along the way. By strategically arranging a stopover and connections, it’s possible to leverage a Caribbean trip into a free one-way before your trip without paying any extra miles.
• Holders of the US Airways® Premier World MasterCard® receive an additional 5,000 mile discount when redeeming awards on US Airways operated flights.