American, US Air Programs to Merge This Weekend

After 20 years working in the travel industry, and 15 years writing about it, Tim Winship knows a thing or two about travel. Follow him on Twitter @twinship.

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Where the merger of AAdvantage and US Airways’ Dividend Miles programs is concerned, American has proceeded in accord with the venerable marketing adage, “Under-promise and over-deliver.”

Originally, American committed to consolidating the two programs “sometime in the 2nd quarter of 2015.” That left them three months of wiggle room. Then, in early March, the target date was narrowed down to “next month,” which would be sometime in April.

But today, an email update from AAdvantage pinned down the start date to a single day: “On March 28, we’ll begin moving Dividend Miles members into the AAdvantage program. This transition to a single loyalty program will take several days.”

So there it is. If all goes as planned, the conversion could be complete by April 1.

In the few remaining days, there are a few steps that affected travelers can take to get the most, and suffer the least, from the transition:

Match accounts. That means ensuring that the member information (name, address, etc.) in both accounts is identical. Doing so maximizes the odds that accounts will merge automatically.
Sign up for the US Airways credit card to earn the 50,000-mile sign-up bonus, which will convert to AAdvantage miles with the merger. After the merger, only the Citi-issued AAdvantage cards will be available to new cardholders.
Redeem miles according to Dividend Miles rules, which allow stopovers. (It’s assumed that current AAdvantage rules, which no longer permit stopovers, will govern the new program.)

Having dispensed with the above, travelers with accounts in both airlines’ programs can rest assured that they’ve done everything possible to get the most out of this one-time event.

The final step is checking, post-consolidation, to confirm that miles, status, and contact information from both accounts have been completely and accurately merged into a single account. Put that on your calendar for April 1.

Reader Reality Check

Are you prepared?

This article originally appeared on FrequentFlier.com.

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