‘Mile Runners’ are in it for the long haul

by Libby Zay on

A group of frequent flier hustlers is so obsessed with wracking up miles they are willing to do absurd acts such as flying around the world in 48 hours or going through Detroit five times on a single trip just to earn freebies.

For $320, Randy Petersen accrued a marathon of 35,000 miles for the following flight sequence: YXU-DTW-ATL-SFO-JFK-DTW-ATL-SEA-YVR-MSP-DTW-NRT-LAX-DTW-MSP-YVR-DTW-YXU-DTW-MSP-YVR-DTW-JFK-NRT-ATL-MSP-YVR-MSP-DTW-YXU. That’s a roundtrip flight from London that passes through Detroit, Atlanta, San Francisco, New York, Detroit (again), Atlanta (again), Seattle, Vancouver, Minneapolis, Detroit (third time), Japan, Los Angeles, Detroit (fourth time), London (again), Minneapolis (again), Vancouver (again), Detroit (fourth time), New York (again), Japan (again), Atlanta (third time), Minneapolis (third time), Japan (third time), Minneapolis (third time), Detroit (fifth time) and finally back to London.

Petersen, who co-founded the frequent flyer community MilePoint.com, seems to think the upgrades are worth hours of sitting on planes and in airports. “It’s a ratio of travel time vs. distance flown vs. cost vs. end game,” says Petersen. “A mileage runner for value always wants to accrue miles at a low cost and then redeem at a high cost.”

Is the multiple-leg jog throughout airports around the world worth perks like a priority boarding, access to airport lounges, and maybe a few free tickets? It’s a question Shira Levine examines for Fox News.

Booking award tickets can be frustrating, unless you’re a pro

by Chris Owen on

Collecting reward points is often the easy part of the whole deal while redeeming them can be challenging. If we remember when and where to gather points though, they rack up fast. Still, when it comes to using them, the whole process may seem complicated and we may wonder if we used those points to our best advantage. One way to be sure is by using a professional, someone who lives and breathes the whole process and is passionate about it.

“Booking award tickets can be incredibly frustrating, yet if done correctly, incredibly rewarding” says PointsPros.com, an award travel booking service devoted to helping clients save “time, miles, frustration, and potentially thousands of dollars.”

Ben Schlappig of PointsPros is a college student, travel consultant and avid points collector who also writes the travel blog One Mile At A Time. Spending about a third of his nights in hotels, flying around 300,000 miles and visiting over 40 countries each year, Schlappig’s blog is a treasure chest of travel deals, bargains and shared experiences often not found elsewhere.

“After we analyze the best approach to take for booking your award, we find the award availability, assist you with transferring points as necessary, make the actual award booking, and select the best available seats for you” says PointPro’s easy to navigate website.

Leaving the complicated fee structures to the airlines. PointsPros pricing is simple, $150 for the first passenger on any type of award then $100 for each additional passenger on the same general trip. If they can’t find you a trip matching your specifications, there is no charge.

“Whether you’ve tried to book an award and the airlines have told you there is no availability for your desired trip, or you just want to make the booking process easier, let us put our expertise to work for you. You worked hard to earn those miles, so you shouldn’t have to work hard to redeem them.”

We ran across Ben following up on a story Gadling did about how to free frequent flyer miles by purchasing dollar coins a couple months ago.

“Just last week I came back from a trip from Australia and Singapore and Malaysia all in first class, just on miles,” Florida-based Schlappig says, adding “partly thanks to the dollar coin program.”

Is this service for everyone? Absolutely.

Those who don’t travel all that much can often benefit from having a professional take a look at this side of their travel plans. If the majority of ones travel points on a given airline are racked up buying non-air goods and services, odds are those people can use the help.

Savvy travelers with time on their hands can work through the process on their own. If for no other reason than to save time by having someone else do it, using a award travel booking service can do just that.

Even Road Warriors who sometimes feel like they know more about a particular reward program than the people on the other end of the phone when trying to redeem points can gain from occasionally letting a neutral professional dive in and see what they can do.

Services for booking award tickets like this are not a substitute for a good travel agent or booking travel however we have successfully done it in the past. But wise travelers know considering another element to incorporate into a total travel planning program is worth a look.

Flickr photo by Larry Johnson

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Tom Stuker becomes first frequent flyer to pass 10 million miles, United celebrates

by Grant Martin on

Ryan Bingham exists in real life, and his name is Tom Stuker. Mr. Stuker, an automotive consultant based in Chicago has been flying United for over 20 years, and this Saturday afternoon, somewhere between Los Angeles and Chicago he officially crossed the line over 10 million frequent flyer miles.

To celebrate, the folks at United hosted a private celebration at Chicago’s O’Hare airport, shutting down a section of a C concourse Red Carpet Club for a celebration with Mr. Stuker’s family, United CEO Jeff Smisek, Mileage Plus President Jeff Foland and a few dozen people from the community.

For his part, Tom Stuker doesn’t seem the least bit weary from his 10 million miles of travel. At just under six feet tall and with a steady, affable smile, he emerged from the Los Angeles flight full of energy and to the cheers of scores of waiting media and friends. In the Red Carpet Club he floated around the room mingling with assorted, eager miletalkers and accepting pats on the back from the wayward executive or marketing agent, effortlessly smiling as the media soaked up his glee.

Among the gestures that United made in recognition of his efforts came a single-edition, titanium Global Services membership card, a scale mockup of the upcoming United 787 and a framed certificate stating his achievement. The most impressive gift, however, was Tom Stuker’s name on the side of a Boeing 747 jumbo jet, similar to the achievement that Ryan Bingham received in Up in the Air.

Perhaps most moving was the humility with which Mr. Stuker accepted his praise. His speech, hand written on three pages of wide rule notebook paper, was a reflection on his time with the airline and a heartfelt thank you to all of the staff with whom he had become friends over the years. He spoke of the difficulty during the United bankruptcy and the subsequent merger, moving himself nearly to tears on several occasions, but remaining gracious and optimistic the entire time.

The underlying theme of Mr. Stuker’s speech, however, kept returning: it was not only a milestone for one frequent flyer but rather for the entire airline — years of work building one of the world’s largest airlines, weathering a merger, a rough economy and an ultra competitive market. For everyone in the room there was much to celebrate, and for this one brief afternoon there were smiles on the faces of Jeff Smisek, the ramp workers and the flight attendants alike.

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[Editor’s note: it shall be noted that Tom Stuker flew all of his 10M miles on United while Ryan Bingham from Up in the Air earned his miles in various means — but we still think that the comparison is bang on. Judge away.]

Road test: Expedia’s Rewards Program

by Grant Martin on


Expedia launched a reward program last month in a what might be an effort to recapture some of the market share that they’re slowly losing to the airlines and their respective websites. A spend-based program, users receive points in direct proportion to the amount of money that they spend on the site. Those points are earned in addition to any points earned from the airline, hotel or car rental that the user books and can be spent on either hotel or airline discounts.

Occasionally the site also offers points specials as well, incentivizing users to book particular hotels or packages for double or triple points. Currently, for example, users can earn double points by using their Mastercard for purchases.

Since the program is spend-based, the reward is directly based on the number of dollars that you spend on the travel, so the real value is based on which price points Expedia sets their rewards at. Currently, the travel agency offers discounts on either airline or hotel bookings, with direct airfare booked in the former case and a hotel coupon offered in the latter.

So how valuable are the points? Gadling Labs collected some baseline data for a few flights out of Chicago. Off the shelf, a ticket to Detroit from June 24-26 should cost about $200, while the Expedia Rewards Program bills 20,000 points. That’s $20,000 in booked travel in exchange for a $200 ticket — or a 1% return. Not so great compared to the 2-3% earned from a rewards credit card, but on top of another reward it’s not a bad deal.

Hotel rewards are earned on a sliding scale and come in the form of a coupon. For 3500 points ($3500 in direct spend) the user earns a $25 hotel reward card (or a 0.7% kickback) . On the opposite end of the spectrum, 50,000 points earn a $1,000 certificate (2%). It looks like high end hotel bookings might be the better reward — but that makes sense, since you’re going to be dumping a fatter stack of cash into the Expedia coffers — you should be rewarded.

But who is going to spend the requisite cash to get even the lowest level of rewards? $3500 is a lot to spend on travel, even over two or three years, and a family or casual traveler weighed down with everyday life and a dozen other rewards program is surely going to lose the Expedia Rewards Program in the noise.

It seems that the best fit for the program is for the high volume traveler or the travel agent. One who books tens of thousands of dollars on a corporate card and who can quietly reap the rewards on the side. For those people, making the quick change from the Amex booking engine to Expedia takes only a click, and over three or four months the rewards can really pay off. But for the rest of us common travelers, it’s probably best to stick with the direct bookings (and protections) of the direct airline websites.

Earn free frequent flyer miles by purchasing dollar coins

by Grant Martin on

Rewards credit cards are a great way to earn a few percent cash back or frequent flyer miles for everyday purchases, but they’re geared against the consumer’s rate of purchase — the more you spend, the more rewards you earn.

Intrinsically this concept conflicts with the budget traveler. Sure, 2 miles for every dollar spent would be great, but few people spend enough money each month to make the miles worthwhile. If one spends 300 dollars and earns 600 miles per month, for example, it would take 41 months to save enough for a free flight on most airlines.

But a few savvy consumers have learned to game the system, all courtesy of the US mint. On their website, the mint advertises free shipping for over $500 in purchases of presidential $1 coins — at cost. This means that a user can show up at their online store, purchase $1000 worth of dollar coins on their rewards card and have them shipped to their front door for free. A quick walk to the bank puts that money back into circulation (hopefully for the payment of one’s credit card bill) and the user emerges a few miles richer. At that point, the user can repeat the cycle.

Sounds like a cash advance, right? Sort of, but mileage hounds have found that the neither the credit cards nor the IRS view it in that way, so they’re still buying dollar coins and reaping the rewards.

As to any impact on one’s credit score or the value of carrying 20lb boxes to the bank every day, the jury is still out, but for those with time and a bit of financial flexibility it seems like a great trick to earn miles.

You can read more details and extensive discussion over at Flyertalk and Milepoint.