Cale Ramaker's Blog

A few minutes ago I got an e-mail from US Airways. I don't have but a few thousand miles in their Dividend Miles program. Thank God! US Airways is now adding a $25 "Award Redemption Processing" fee to all award tickets. Wanna go to Hawaii? The fee is $50 per award ticket. 

So there is now officially no longer a free ticket on US Airways. American Airlines initiated a somewhat similar move a few weeks back but American kept it's highest elite frequent fliers exempt; US Airways isn't. If I were a frequent flier of US Airways who flew tens of thousands of miles a year with them, I'd be irate! 

I just hope to heck that Northwest Airlines, or it's eventual successor Delta, doesn't try the same thing. I've got a pile of miles with Northwest as I've flown them nearly exclusively over the past ten years. To this point Northwest has been very good at keeping a very frequent flier like me exempt from its fees. But US Airways is proving it doesn't care how many miles you've flown with them - your free ticket is no longer free.