Gadling’s guide to topping off your frequent flyer account

by Grant Martin on

After 17 long years of flying America’s skies, you’ve done it. You’ve almost saved up enough frequent flyer miles for a free ticket to anywhere you want to go in the United States. Nice work. Most people who remember to put their frequent flyer number into the box before departure forget about their miles and let them expire.

But you’re just a couple of miles short. And you really really want to go see Aunt Ximena in Palm Springs over Labor Day. Distressed, you check the airline website and see that you can buy two thousand miles for sixty bucks. And you’re so excited about In-n-Out and Aunt Ximena’s Uruguyan Barbeque that you’re just about to cough it up. But you shouldn’t.

Hold on fellow passenger! There are ways to accrue those miles without wasting money straight from your pocketbook. At the very least you can use your money practically and earn the miles on the side. Here are a few great ways to do that.

  • Check the website for promotions. Several carriers host small promos for new program members to indoctronate educate newbies on the advantages of their specific product. These change every so often, so it’s helpful to go back and make sure that you’ve qualified for all of your excitement.
  • Go shopping. Many airline programs have deals with an online (or in air) mall that let you purchase goods from a regular retailer (GAP, Home Depot, etc) and earn miles per each dollar spent. So if you needed to buy dog food for Fido or flowers for your mother anyway, you can get 5 miles / dollar online at petsmart or 10 miles / dollar at FTD.com. Not all of them mark up goods either — most gateways go directly to the vendor website.
  • Go out to eat. Sites like Dining for Miles let you enroll your favorite credit card or visa/MC debit card in a program that earns miles per dollar spent at a restaurant. You can peruse about to see if any of the restaurants are near you, then next time you’re out to lunch with co-workers, pick up the bill and take cash from everyone else.
  • Transfer miles from another program. Points.com gives you a pretty serious shaft when transferring miles among programs (I equate them to the TravelEx money exchange in the airport), but they’re good if you’re in a pinch and haven’t got a ton of spare cash. There are too many participants to list them all, so check the website and see if your favorite points program is listed.
  • Take some surveys. Several online sites let you accrue points by taking surveys that you can cash in for miles. E-rewards has worked well for me a few times, although I no longer have the time to take their somewhat elaborate surveys.
  • Get a credit card. This is a little more risk-involved, but if you were prepared to get some plastic anyway, it might be worth looking into a signature or platinum card that gives you 25k miles or a free ticket upon enrollment. You’ll have to pay an annual fee of course, but that should be significantly less than a round trip ticket.
  • Beg. Yes, airlines do give away coupons for free miles that do (illegally) get circulated around the internet. If you’re ready to live a life of sin, check ebay, flyertalk or your local craigslist for people giving away or selling miles. Don’t tell them I sent you though.
  • Go on a mileage run. I know it sounds crazy, but if you need a few extra miles, it may be cost effective to actually fly somewhere just to reap the miles from the trip. Check out Gadling’s Guide to Mileage Running for more info on that.

Finally, the best thing to remember is to be patient. Award availability does dry up pretty quickly and I’ll admit, if you’ve found an itinerary that works, you want to book it as soon as possible. But you don’t need to do anything brash to get tickets before the end of the day. Have some juice, think about your options and find a good workaround. Your miles and your pocketbook will thank you.

MSNBC’s Chris Elliot judges you and your Platinum Card

by Grant Martin on

One of our favorite airline columnists over at MSNBC.com and from Elliott.org published an interesting article today on the separation between coach and first class called “Frequent Criers: Elite Fliers are Ruining Air Travel”. In it, he points to the increasingly childlike behavior among top tier passengers that has recently been giving first class passengers a bad name — and asks whether this is a function of the passengers themselves or the airlines catering to an unbalanced class of service.

As an elite member myself, I have thought about this topic several times and part of it is true — Elliott points out a variety of instances in which first class passengers have acted unruly and entitled. But I don’t think that it’s limited exclusively to first class passengers — in fact, there are idiots in all classes of service and modes of transportation.

It doesn’t take much effort to be an obnoxious jerk when you’re in cramped quarters and have been traveling all day. In the same way that the taxi cuts you off when you’re merging into traffic or the guy on the stairs walks down the left side instead of the right side, some people just don’t make common courtesy a high priority. Yeah, it sucks. But it’s okay. They’re in the minority that think differently, but we’ll get over it and we’ll continue to do the nice, right thing.

There are good frequent fliers out there. I’m sure Chris Elliott flies all over the world and like myself and many frequent travelers on Gadling is professional and courteous. Don’t lose faith, fellow passenger — first and coach passengers are all stuck in this aluminum tube together. We can’t let articles like this tear us apart.

Gadling’s tips for frequent flyer miles

by Grant Martin on

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!

More free miles: Northwest elite members get 50% bonus

by Grant Martin on

Perhaps as a result of some of the recent increased marketing (read: fare sales) lately or perhaps because of the pending mergers and passengers switching carriers, several airlines have been pitching to frequent fliers in an attempt to retain their business. I posted earlier on double miles promotions on Delta and American, two classic examples of the pitches.

Northwest just launched a similar promotion: now, any elite member who purchases and travels on a flight before August 31 is eligible for a 50% bonus on their earned miles. Real quick, since I know you guys hate numbers, you’ll thus now earn the following miles for a sample Detroit – Los Angeles leg:

Silver Elite: 1980 base miles + 990 Silver Elite miles + 990 bonus miles = 3960 miles
Gold Elite: 1980 base miles + 1980 Gold Elite miles + 990 bonus miles = 4950 miles
Platinum Elite = 1980 base miles + 2475 Platinum Elite miles + 990 bonus miles = 5445 miles.

So on a roundtrip you could be earning as much as 11,000 miles, or about 2/5 of a free domestic ticket. Neat huh? Of course you have to be an elite member to reap any of these benefits, which means you have to fly at least 25k miles a year anyway. So the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Sound like any tax plans you’ve seen recently?

Check out Northwest’s promo page if you want to participate.

United Airlines abolishes minimums to mileage earning

by Grant Martin on

The day of airline corner cutting is upon us. United Airlines just announced that they reduced the minimum miles that you can earn on a flight to the actual flown distance. Let me explain:

Until now, most fares that you booked that were under 500 miles as the crow flies were automatically rounded up to earn 500 miles for each flight. The perk was created to award the poor saps who have to fly short distances frequently over the course of a year — for example, if you had to fly from Detroit to Chicago and back every week for work, its only about 250 miles one way or 500 round trip. Rounding up though, you would get 1000 miles/trip, meaning every 25 itineraries you would be able to redeem an award for a 25,000 mile ticket.

Similarly, if you’re connecting from Flint – Detroit – Chicago, you would get 500 + 500 miles.

But under these new rules, you would only earn miles as for the exact distance you flew. So on the first Detroit-Chicago itinerary you would get 250 miles one way and on the second route you would get 40 + 250. Cool huh?

United is the first legacy carrier to break rank and start scooping into its mileage program. I wouldn’t be surprised if the rest of the carriers slowly fell, much as they all did with the extra bag policy.

Expect mileage accrual to change July 1. Between now and then you can check out United’s new policy here and weep at the loss of another great frequent flying perk.

Credit for the ironic picture of the day goes to Jason McHuff on Flickr.