The FrugalTravelGuy, a man that spends far more time in airplanes and is a member of far more frequent flyer programs than myself, recently spent some time musing about airline miles and what they’re now worth. With carriers making it more difficult to spend miles across the board, it’s becoming an increasingly valid question — nobody wants to get pinched out of their miles nor wants them to expire out from under them.
What Rick has done is taken a personal look at many of the airlines and ranked their quality as far as value of the current mile. Things like how many miles it takes to get status, book a ticket or redeem other goodies played into the equation and the results are fairly interesting.
His best value frequent flyer mile program? BMI’s mileage program. Who? British Midland Airways is based in the UK and has limited long haul service into the United States. More importantly, they’re also a member of Star Alliance, which means you can be a member of their program and earn miles flying domestically on United or US Airways.
Benefits of BMI’s program include 58k top tier elite qualification (versus 75k for most domestic carriers), access to airport lounges and other generous earnings.
FrugalTravelGuy’s top Domestic program? American Airlines‘ AAdvantage program. You can bore into the details in his article, but for now we’ll round out his top domestic carriers list:
2. United
3. Continental
4. Deltwest
5. US Airways
Note, his list isn’t compresensive across all carriers or nations and you do have to admit that he is one man compiling a lot of data so can be biased. But his arguments are largely on point and his reflections well thought out.
If you’re interested in entering the mileage game or making your miles last, give the article a read.