As I wrote about here (How-to: Book US Airways Flights With British Airways Avios), US Airways officially joined the Oneworld Alliance a few months ago. Joining the ranks of American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, LAN, etc., US Airways is now eligible for bookings with Avios. This opens up lots of opportunities for maximizing short, non-stop flights out of US Airways’ hub cities: Charlotte-CLT, Philadelphia-PHL, Washington-Reagan-DCA and Phoenix-PHX.

First in this series was Charlotte, North Carolina-CLT, then Philadelphia-PHL and Washington-DCA. Now, we’ll look at Phoenix, Arizona. It turns out that just short of the Washington-Reagan hub, Phoenix has only a few international destinations–but, they have Mexico pretty well covered along with a few Canadian cities.

I have compiled this map to help assist in visualizing and then planning just how far a British Airways Avios will take you on US Airways:

Some great values are:

• As with all of these Avios redemptions, just about any Zone 1 city in green is probably a great value at just 9k Avios roundtrip.
• All of the Hawaiian destinations are a great deal at just 25k miles round trip: Kona-KOA, Kahului-OGG, Honolulu-HNL and Kauai Island/Lihue-LIH.
• Cancun-CUN for 20k Avios or Cabo San Lucas-SJD for 15k Avios is a solid deal.

When you’re ready to book, follow this guide: How-to: Book US Airways Flights With British Airways Avios. And, don’t forget that you can transfer American Express Membership Rewards Points to British Airways to book flights with Avios.

BOTTOM LINE: Phoenix’s strong suit seems to be the short hop flights to Mexico and especially the 25k Avios roundtrip flights to Hawaii. Most other carriers will charge you at least 45k miles to Hawaii or 35k miles to Mexico or Canada, making the non-stop US Airways redemptions a great deal.