The airline is hurting, as evidenced by its new business model, which includes charging an “award processing fee” for free mileage tickets and eliminating bonus miles for elite status travelers.

This comes on top of a recent increase in the applicable coach fares on mileage upgrades to Europe, which had been one of my favorites.

Listen to this one: Cancel an international award booking and you’ll be charged $250 to redeposit the miles, and $25 to $50 to rebook the ticket—that’s after US Airways charged $50 to book the flight in the first place (and another $50 “quick ticketing fee” if you booked inside of 14 days). This is more than many economy class fares to Europe (e.g., $186 round-trip off-season with many carriers). In other words, if you’re an economy class traveler, miles can be worth less than nothing.

What’s next? US Airways could eliminate elite upgrades altogether or jack up the price of mileage awards—it seems like this is inevitable. Whereas United feels pressure to compete with carriers like American, US Airways evidently believes it’s flying solo and doesn’t need to be competitive—with anyone. Seems like the merger with America West wasn’t so hot after all, leading me to wonder (if not predict) how the Delta-Northwest merger will turn out. These are about the least quality-oriented (if full service) carriers in the air.