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.
Is that it? Nah. I could spend a half hour talking about each of these bullets and probably bore you to tears. What’s critical to learn from these points is the value of your miles. Always make sure that you have a frequent flyer number and always make sure that it’s in the system before you travel. They accrue faster than you think!