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Gadling's tips for frequent flyer miles
I talk about frequent flier miles pretty often on Gadling, mostly because I think that many people under utilize and underestimate the power of their miles. The fact of the matter is, airline miles are a useful tool that can save you a ton of money if used properly. The key is to know when and how to use them. Here are a few quick tips:- You can accrue miles towards a different program on your flight. All domestic legacy carriers subscribe to alliances, and you can enjoy unilateral benefits among them. The three big alliances are Star, Skyteam and Oneworld. Star Alliance hosts carriers such as United, US Airways and Ted, Skyteam has Delta, Continental and Northwest and American Airlines' Oneworld's team members are largely overseas. So suppose you're trying to accrue miles on United to get to a domestic reward, 25,000 miles. If you're flying on US Airways next week, you can put your United frequent flier number into US Airways' system and your miles go to your United account.
- Keeping all of your miles in one places makes it easier to redeem awards faster and to achieve elite status over one calendar year. It's kind of like keeping all of your savings in one account – you get higher interest (or in this case, rewards).
- Always make sure that your frequent flyer number is in the system when you book your ticket. In addition to being another cross reference for which you can find your ticket, it's much easier to put the number in during booking versus at the gate or even retroactively. Bear in mind, however, that you can get your miles after you fly. As long as you had an account at the time you flew, you can usually fax your boarding passes in to get miles accounted for. Check with your carrier to find that number.
- Mileage rewards are best used on expensive tickets. Many people use miles sloppily in place of an inexpensive short-haul ticket. But with the flexibility of a reward ticket, you can travel anywhere the ticket dictates for your miles at any time. Compare the market value of two tickets for example: Winter to Paris from
New York versus the 4th of July. On a good February day, one can find a ticket into the City of Lights for 400$. Over the 4th of July weekend, it's about 1500$. But the reward tickets are the same price: 50k miles. Granted, availability of miles rewards will be a little tighter over summer months, but you can be flexible. I'm still finding 4oJ tickets between Detroit and Paris, and it's just over a month away. So if you travel with any reasonable frequency, it just doesn't make sense to blow 25k on a random weekend between Detroit and New York if the ticket price is 200$ anyway. Wait for the price to go up on your itinerary or an emergency to crop up before you blow your miles – then strike when the time is right.
- Mileage rewards are refundable. Any flight you book with frequent flier miles is refundable, and depending on your level of status with an airline, rebook fees can be as little as free (or as much as around 100$ or so). So if you decide you want to leave a week early or late and there is availability? Call up the airline and switch it. If you want to stay later? Make the change. Compare this to a "fully refundable" fare that you would need to purchase if you wanted this flexibility with a regular ticket. You could easily spend 1500$ on a ticket that would be 200$ in economy.
- Stopovers are permitted on many mileage awards. Suppose you want to fly from Washington DC to Japan but need to stop in Hawaii on the way for a wedding (this actually happened to a friend of mine recently). Booking three legs is ridiculously expensive. But fare rules for mileage tickets between DC and Tokyo (NRT) stipulate that one can take a free stopover on any itinerary. In this instance, the airline of choice had availability from WAS-HNL-NRT-WAS, so a three legged ticket was booked for 60k miles, versus the 4000$ that would have been spent on the open-market ticket.
- If your account stays active, miles don't expire. This doesn't mean that you have to fly either. Depending on your miles program you can do as little as buy flowers, earn 40 miles and keep your account active for another calendar year.
- You can buy tickets for other people with your miles. Even if you aren't traveling in the near term, you probably have friends that are. If you're short on cash (or just want to extort your friends), you can always book a ticket for them and take favors in return.
Filed under: Airlines, Transportation, Savvy Traveler
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
john May 28th 2008 10:37AM
Question:
If I have accounts with two allied airlines and miles with each, can I combine them? I have a few United and US Airways miles, can I consolidate them or should I have just gone with one or the other?
Nick Hawkins May 28th 2008 10:46AM
John, you're stuck with miles in the separate buckets.
Grant, good article. This should be highlighted. You should also probably mention that credit cards are ok for getting miles, and your best bet is to get the Starwood American Express card for US cardholders.
Grant.Martin May 29th 2008 11:22PM
Another post altogether, I agree. Not really great with credit cards though, what are the pros of the SPG AmEx?
Bobby May 28th 2008 11:45AM
Always looks out for promotions as well.
For Canucks, you can transfer RBC Avion points to BA Executive Club points for 150% its absolute value until May 30th.
This is amazing considering a ticket to Far East Asia is 100,000 points with RBC and only 50,000 with BA. An awesome deal already...but with the promotion, a mere 33,333 is enough!
If you're going to miss the deadline, no hurry. They run this promotion like twice a year.
Matthew Firestone May 29th 2008 11:05PM
Greetings from Big in Japan!
In light of rising fuel costs and economic shortcomings, what are the chances that airlines will soon re-adjust their frequent flier miles programs? I mean, considering you get one mile for every dollar you spend on several major credit cards, shouldn't inflation figure into the equation at some point??
Just wondering as you seem to be the world's leading expert on this sort of thing!
Grant.Martin May 29th 2008 11:21PM
High. Your answer is too long to put in a brief post, so I'll write up an article about it.
In a nutshell, they may not be able to take away your miles, proper, but they can make them worth a lot, lot less. That's what most people are worried about right now.
kanpai!
Garth Jun 1st 2008 4:35AM
I was in love with my Delta AMEX for a long time because I got miles for flying, miles for buying the ticket with my AMEX, and then miles for dollars when using AMEX, and Grant is right wait until the tickets is expensive. I just used some miles to buy my mom a ticket to come visit us in the Czech Republic which retailed for $1500. It costs me 100,000 miles (round trip) and $56 for a booking fee.
Then I applied for the Citi PremierePass Mastercard which is even better because you can use the points, Thank You points, on Expedia.com with no black out dates. If you have a Citibank account you can link that too and gain points faster.
The nice thing about these programs is that you don't have to use them for just travel, you can buy stuff. Not a bad way to get a new computer, a LCD TV, or a gift certificate to Home Depot.
Jen Boes Jun 6th 2008 10:29AM
Hi - I booked two round trip tickets on United from Boston to Kauai using my frequent flyer miles with US Air back in December 2007 for a trip in October 2008. I checked my reservation today, and United has changed my arrival city from Kauai to Maui. Are they permitted to do this? I am having a lot of difficulty getting it changed back through US Air.