Virgin America, VAustralia, Virgin Blue offer frequent flyer partnership points

by Melanie Nayer on

I love when family members play well together.

News from the Virgin camp: flyers on any of the carriers three brands – Virgin America, VAustralia and Virgin Blue – will have the option to earn points on any of the three loyalty programs.

“Travelers around the world seek out Virgin airlines for their unrivalled value, brilliant service and innovative amenities, and we’re pleased to partner with Virgin Blue and V Australia to allow our loyal guests to earn Virgin frequent flyer credits wherever they are flying– in the U.S., Asia Pacific or Australia,” said Virgin America President and Chief Executive Officer David Cush, in a press release provided by Virgin America.

Here’s how it works: If you’re a VAustralia or Virgin Blue Velocity member, you can earn points in your Velocity account by flying any of the three carriers. Likewise, if you’re a Virgin America Elevate member, you’ll earn Elevate points when you fly any of the three brands.

Elevate redemption levels will start at 40,000 points for flights on V Australia and 6,000 points for flights on Virgin Blue later this year.

Spirit Airlines credit card comes with three free roundtrip tickets

by Scott Carmichael on

We don’t always cover frequent flier promotions or airline credit card bonus perks – but when we run into generous ones, we’ll always try to share the news.

The newest promo from Spirit Airlines rewards you with three free roundtrip tickets, just for signing up and making one purchase on their card.

Of course, the promotion isn’t as impressive as the recent 100,000 mile bonus British Airways handed out to people who applied for their credit card, but in this economy, snagging free airline tickets can be a pretty rewarding hobby.

The “Free Spirit” credit card also offers priority boarding, priority check-in, first year free, additional bonus miles for balance transfers and a free fare club membership.

To apply for the Free Spirit card, click here and click here for an overview of all award ticket destinations. The free tickets are based on off-peak availability, so please do keep an eye on the fineprint for any other “gotchas” – which is of course applicable to anything an airline offers you.

Are Delta Skymiles worth anything any more?

by Grant Martin on

The ire of Delta Skymiles members continues to grow stronger and more vocal.

To summarize, many loyal Delta passengers are miffed at the recent poor value of the airline’s frequent flyer miles, or Skymiles. It’s true that on the surface the airline claims to offer mileage redemptions for the same price as their competitors — but when one actually goes to search for available tickets, those cheap seats are almost nowhere to be found.

The Cranky Flier sums up the problems pretty well over at his blog, where he simply states:

One thing I’ve found… is that Delta SkyMiles are really not easy to burn and when you do, they end up costing a lot more than on other airlines in terms of miles and dollars. As a loyalty program, SkyMiles is hard for me to love as a non-elite.

One can see from the rocking comment section beneath the post that there is unanimous agreement from the ranks. Want more insight? Head over to the Delta thread on Flyertalk where frustrated passengers have been venting for months.

For Delta’s part they acknowledge the difficulties with their award calendar but don’t seem really interested in finding immediate solutions. Blaming IT integration issues, they hope to have things ironed out by summer.

And until then? Diversify your mileage portfolio.

RELATED: Where did all the bargain fares to Europe go?

Forgetting to earn miles when pre-ordering the iPad

by Amy Chen on

I was amused to read that on Day 1, about 120,000 iPads were sold on “a product that 99.9% of purchasers haven’t touched or for that matter, even seen in person,” CNN reports.

I’m embarrassed, but not for the reason you’d expect. On Day 2, I pre-ordered the 3G version of the iPad, due to start shipping in late April. In my eagerness to get my hands on the tablet, I committed a rookie mistake: I forgot to access the Apple Online Store through United Mileage Plus Mall.

For some reason, online shopping is the one mileage-earning opportunity that I often overlook. I’ve even gone as far as bookmarking the Mileage Plus Mall page in hopes it’ll remind me. But no, I forgot — again.

After buying the 64GB model ($829) and a case ($39), my total came to $945.05 with taxes. I’m kicking myself because had I remembered to log in first with my frequent-flier account, I would’ve earned 945 miles toward my United account. (The Apple Online Store lets you earn one mile per dollar).

If I end up buying a dock for the iPad or a wireless keyboard ($69), I’ll try to remember my own advice. Feel free to remind me.

Sometimes, collecting frequent flyer miles with a credit card pays off

by George Hobica on

Are frequent flyer miles worth collecting anymore? I’ve asked that question elsewhere, and have been advocating the use of credit cards paying up to 5% cash back as a better alternative for many travelers who rack up most of their miles using airline-affiliated credit cards. For many people, now that there are new fees associated with cashing in miles, the answer is no.

Most of us travel domestic economy, and $25,000 spent on a frequent flyer credit card only gets you a domestic coach ticket, assuming you can even find available seats and aren’t paying a fee to cash in the miles at short notice or to redeposit them if you change your mind. That same $25,000 spent on a 5% cash back card gets you $750 which you can spend anyway you wish. You might even be able to find a seat to Hawaii. Try that with your frequent flyer miles.

So do I personally collect miles with a frequent flyer credit card? You bet I do. Recently, I applied for a British Airways Chase Visa card ($75 annual fee), but only because they were awarding 100,000 miles after you charged a paltry $2000 to the card (caveat: sadly, this offer is no longer available). My BA Executive Club account had something like 300 miles in it, so it was time to top it up. I wasn’t planning on going anywhere in particular, but just a few days ago I learned that my Oxford college was having a reunion, and I thought, fun, might as well go.

So I went to spend some miles. What I found at ba.com was pretty shocking. On the day in April that I wanted to fly from New York to London, I had exactly one option: a first class seat for 75,000 miles. And the return didn’t look much better, although there were several business class seats on BA’s new London City Airport to JFK all-business-class flight for 50,000 points. Award seats in economy (not that I was devastated) were sold out in both directions.

Needless to say, I didn’t have enough points, but BA kindly suggested that I buy the outward-bound first class flight with miles plus $285 in cash and $163 in fees and surcharges. Not that my return flight was free either. I got hit with a fuel surcharge plus taxes and fees of $358.

So my “free” flight, including the BA Chase card’s $75 fee, ended up costing me $881. Still, not bad considering that when I checked on Expedia.com, these same flights would have cost over $14,000 had I bought them with cash. Lesson learned: if you play your credit cards right, collecting frequent flyer miles with them can indeed pay off. Just don’t expect to have a lot of seat choice or to get something for nothing.

George Hobica is the founder of Airfarewatchdog™, the most inclusive source of airfare deals that have been researched and verified by experts. Airfarewatchdog compares fares from all airlines and includes the increasing number of airline-site-only and promo code fares.