Jumpstart your US Airways elite status with Double Miles

by Grant Martin on

Tired of hearing about all of this “elite status” stuff and ready to give it a try? US Airways just started a double elite miles promotion that should help you find your way.

Between now and March 31st, any flight that you take on US Airways, US Airways Express and US Airways Shuttle will earn you double Dividend Miles, meaning that it will only take 12.5 – 50k miles to reach some sort of elite status. Sure, you might not be able to get them all in before the end of the month, but one quick trip to Europe will get you 2/3 of the way to Silver status. Oh, and you’ll be in Europe too.

Just make sure you don’t book flights on another Star Alliance member and expect to get double elite miles. This promo only applies to flights taken on US metal, so you unfortunately have to spend time on their aircraft to earn.

Also make sure to sign up before you book your flights, else your earnings don’t count. You can check out the details and sign up here.

Merge your Delta and Northwest frequent flyer accounts — get 500 miles

by Grant Martin on

In this week’s chapter of “Merger Mania, Delta Devours Northwest,” lots of changes have happened to each respective frequent flyer program.

To merge the two programs, small changes in mileage earning, spending and transfer have been implemented, largely to make Northwest’s program emulate Delta. System Wide Upgrades, a feature that many Northwest flyers briefly enjoyed, will now be translated to Medallion Upgrades, a weaker, less useful tool. Northwest Platinum flyers will now earn fewer bonus miles as well; their earnings will be reduced from 125% to 100%.

The most abhorrent change to the programs, however, is the addition of an extra “reward tier” on mileage tickets. As billed, this change is supposed to provide “more flexibility” by charging more miles and providing extra seats when searching for rewards. But in actuality, it’s just another way to gouge passengers.

Think of it this way. Last year, if you wanted to fly from Atlanta to New York there were 10 options to fly for 25k miles. This year, there are 20 options to fly at 30 – 35k miles and 2 options to fly at 25k miles. And those latter flights? Only good on Wednesday redeyes on a 12 seat propeller plane.

It’s not that egregious, but you get the picture.

The (scant) good news is that we now have better, fluid access between both accounts. As of last week, passengers from each program can log in, link accounts and swap miles, which means if you have orphaned miles in either account, you can move them over. Yes, you can move elite miles as well.

You can link the accounts by going under Worldperks | Manage My Account | Link Accounts and Transfer Miles. Once you link them up, you’ll get 500 bonus miles.

If you want to read more about the details of the mergers, a good resource is Flyertalk.

A new tool for finding award tickets

by Grant Martin on

Like me, if you’ve ever accrued more than 25,000 frequent flyer miles you know how terrible it can be redeeming them for an award ticket. It seems like 95% of the time, the ideal flight that you want is completely sold out and that the next available flight for you is on a Wednesday. In February. On a tiny airplane with 17 layovers.

What many people don’t know though is that mileage award availability is a fluid system — seats open up and close overnight based upon how many people are booked and the amount of time before the flight. So to stay on top of whether or not seats are available for your particular itinerary, you really have to check every day (if not more frequently) to see if anything has changed.

This can be time consuming and difficult, and until now, only by calling or checking the web every day or subscribing to expensive software like expertflyer.com could you check availability.

Enter Yapta.com. The search engine known for refunding the value of your ticket if the price went down recently announced that they would be hosting award availability from several carriers carriers on their site. They’ve also included a tool that automatically notifies you if seats open up on your ideal flights. Brilliant.

For now the service is only available on Alaska, Continental, Delta, United and US Airways, but if demand turns out to be as strong as I predict, it could expand soon. Log onto Yapta.com and give it a try.

More free miles for Delta passengers

by Grant Martin on

If you’re a member of the Delta mileage program, this year has been good to you. From double miles promotions to generous partner rewards to easy status

Their latest promotion gives members up to 150% bonus on activity (on and off the ground) through year’s end. Rewards are tiered as such:

  • Earn 0-5k miles, get a 50% bonus
  • Earn 5-10k miles, get a 100% bonus
  • Earn 10k or more miles, get a 150% bonus

So you could fly to Europe once (8000 miles) then, say, fly a transcon (4000 miles) and bang, you’ve got 12,000 miles plus a 18,000 bonus, or 30k miles, more than a free domestic ticket. That’s downright generous.

Why would you do this? Conspiracy theorists among the Northwest crowd (who will soon be assimilated into the Delta ranks) claim that this is some sort of underhanded way to sleight the NW crowd and make the DL frequent flyers stronger.

Personally, I think that Delta have figured out that miles are starting to turn into a profit maker. With inherent fuel surcharges and checked bag fees on every itinerary, no flight is free anymore and the airline will still make a few dollars. And all of the time that we spend earning miles and digging around for nearly impossible-to-find award tickets? More time indoctrinating ourselves with the Delta brand. Is that worth a seat on a plane that isn’t even full? You bet.

Whose miles are worth what where?

by Grant Martin on

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.