AAdvantage and US Airways programs combining in the next few weeks

One Mile at a Time covers off the newly announced integration dates of American Airlines AAdvantage and US Airways Dividend Miles, with the merger timed to happen in the first two weeks of April.

The programs are known mostly around these parts for their often lucrative miles purchase promotions. Once the programs are combined, all your miles will be consolidated into a single AAdvantage account.

There are two things you should know, and prepare to act on, if you have miles in either program.

1. Dividend Miles redemptions will end before the integration period, so redeem now if there’s a US Airways redemption you’re after. There are US Airways awards which are better value than the same redemption with American, so get those in ASAP
2. Link your accounts to ease the consolidation process. This needs to be done my March 20th. You can do this by logging into either program and following the prompts. I found it was necessary to set by birth date in both systems to get the match working correctly.

That’s it. AAdvantage is a great program for redemption value, if you can earn any quantity of AAdvantage miles (not so simple through travel or credit cards here in Australia), so I’m looking forward to one less program to think about!