Explain to me how this whole "frequent flyer" thing works...

Factual Questions
1

So I’ve traveled a lot this year for business, and oftentimes the institution sponsoring my trip makes the accommodations, or my school does. A colleague mentioned how she earns enough mileage to take a free trip somewhere exotic each year and I said, “I gotta get in on that action.”

So I have frequent flyer accounts with JetBlue, Southwest, and American. I don’t always fly those airlines, though. And I have not been diligent in submitting my number when flights are booked.

Here are my questions:
[ol]
[li]Can I retroactively have my frequent flyer miles applied to trips I already took? If so, how far back can I go?[/li][li]Can I use frequent flyer accounts from, say Southwest, on an American flight? How do I do that?[/li][li]Do people usually say “I only fly [insert airline]” so they don’t have to deal with exchanging different mile programs?[/li][li]Should I get an airline miles credit card? I hate messing with new credit cards. I quite like what I have now (Amazon).[/li][/ol]

2

  1. Yes, as long as you signed up for the FF plan before you took the flight. You can even sign up at the gate 20 minutes before they board, but if you sign up after the flight, that flight isn’t eligible. Every airline has different rules about how long you have to to get credit for the flight.

  2. Can’t do that in general. The whole idea is to get you to fly their airline, so honoring another airline’s FF miles defeats the purpose.

  3. If your employer is paying for your flights, they may allow you to have a “preferred airline” in your travel profile, but IME no employer is going to book you on a $1200 flight when another airline offers a $400 alternative.

3

Here are my best answers to your questions:
[ol][]Generally, yes. Here is American’s form to request mileage that you weren’t credited for at the time you took them. You’ll need the flight information, and you can go back a year. I would expect that Southwest and JetBlue have similar procedures.[]Generally, no. Various airlines have partnerships that allow miles flown on one to be credited to the other’s frequent flier accounts. Here’s American’s list of partner airlines; looks like JetBlue is on them but Southwest isn’t.[]I don’t fly often enough to make a big difference, but yes, all other things being equal I’ll fly on Delta or United (or their partners) because I have frequent flier accounts with them.[]Can’t help you here. I hate messing with new credit cards too.[/ol]

4

I believe some airlines will let you claim points for a little while back, but not years.

Not in general. Some airlines have common points programs (e.g. AirFrance and KLM have FlyingBlue points in common).

I don’t. I don’t know anyone who does, but that may just be my circle. In principle that might be a good strategy for some people. Certainly the point of the programs is to engender a sense of “brand loyalty” in an industry where people just go for lowest cost.

I fly a reasonable amount, but don’t have a specific airline card. My primary card gives points that can be exchanged for points on certain airlines, but I usually just exchange them for cash instead. I know some cards (like Delta’s) give you a free checked bag, which is a big deal for some people, but not enough for me to want to switch.

5

  1. Each program has their own rules, but generally if you were a member of the FF program at the time of the flight, you can request credit up to a year later. You may need things like your ticket and seat number.

  2. Some airlines are part of programs that allow you to use miles for airlines within that association. So you could use American miles on any of these airlines within the oneworld alliance, but not on others. I believe you can only use Southwest miles on Southwest.

  3. Yes, it’s common for people to only use one or two airlines (or rather, one or two alliances) for this reason. It’s not exactly easy to collect a good number of miles if you fly Southwest, American, and United interchangeably, since miles cannot transfer between those three airlines. Keep in mind that you can get some miles for rental cars and hotels with your FF membership, so some people only like to fly United, stay at Hiltons, and drive Hertz rental cars (or whatever).

  4. I don’t find airlines credit cards to be a huge advantage. If you charge $10,000 a year on your airline miles card, that’s still barely half (or maybe less, depending on if you get double or triple miles for certain purchases, like airline tickets) of what you need for a round-trip ticket.

6

  1. Yes, if you were a member of the FF program when you took that flight, most airlines will allow you to claim credit for it after the fact.

  2. Generally not. Some airlines which are part of international alliances (Star Alliance, SkyTeam, et al) may let you use miles to book tickets on partner airlines. Southwest is not in any alliance. Most of the big international carriers are.

  3. Yes. I fly for work a lot and will always take Delta if possible because I have an FF account with them. I made silver status last year. :cool:

  4. I got Delta’s AmEx for the sole purpose of buying airline tickets for the double points. The interest rate is absurd, but I never carry a balance, and my company reimburses me for the tickets. Whether this is worth it for you will depend on your specific requirements.

7

I’ve never retroactively claimed frequently flier miles. As a consultant, I’ve had periods where I’ve traveled quite extensively (I recently cashed in on FF miles from 2007-2008 to cover a business class trip to Hawaii at no cost, with enough left over to do it again). My approach (and the approach most road warriors take) is to have an account on every darned airline you might travel on.

That said, my current and most-recent-former employer insist that you book travel through their corporate travel plan and put it on their credit card (unless you can demonstrate that you can get a significantly cheaper rate). In that scenario, sometimes you can still have your miles credited, and other times not (depends on the agreement).

In regard to the miles credit cards, yes, they can come in handy. But they usually involve annual fees or higher interest rates (no free lunch). I try to use my Continental (now United) card for things that I know I’ll pay off within the grace period, so that they only get their annual fee out of me ($75 or so). I don’t love the card, but it helps me accumulate points.

8

Keep in mind that collectively, travelers have accumulated trillions of frequent flyer miles; far more than will ever be used. Meanwhile, airlines have reduced the number of flights and the number of seats that are available for use by FF members. They’ve also increased the number of miles needed for free tickets and even added fees when fliers attempt to fly using their miles. So don’t go too nuts trying to accumulate miles.

9

Re: credit cards, you can often get sign-up deals with a large amount of points (usually enough for a ticket or two) and the annual fee waived for the first year. The points usually kick in after you’ve charged and paid off a certain amount. You keep the points after canceling the card, so the only cost is the time to sign up, the time to cancel, and the points you would have earned using a different CC.

10

Generally speaking, unless you travel well over 100,000 miles per year, you should pick an airline program that suits you best and, whenever possible, stay loyal to that program. This way you earn status with the airline which can get you such things as additional miles, free checked bags, upgrades to first class, and priority boarding.

In a similar vein, be sure to pick a perfered hotel chain and rental car company can sign-up with their loyalty programs as well. You can earn free stays, free rentals, complimentary upgrades, and a host of other benefits.

In my case, I have mid-tier status with United Airlines and Hertz, and top-tier status with Hilton.

As to the ease of using points/miles, I rarely have an issue using them because I plan my reward travel a year out, as that is how far ahead of time you can make reservations. For example, in 2011, I flew my wife, my two kids, and myself to Hawai’i for summer vacation, and both my plane tickets and hotel were payed-for in June 2010 with miles/points.

I hope this helps!

11

That is the only way I do it. It is hard to spend enough on a card in a reasonable time to get enough points for a ticket but easy to get them if you sign up for the best card deals with bonus miles. I have gotten 5 free round trip tickets that way in the past year alone and used one of them to go to Hawaii for free. You just dump the card after you use the free tickets and then get another one with a similar offer and repeat as much as you want.

If you want to use your points on any airline, I recommend the American Express Blue card. It is a top rated card by any measure, doesn’t have an annual fee, and gives you points that translate directly cash that you can use on any airline or other travel expenses like hotels. I got $400 worth just for signing up and charging a bunch of stuff on it in the first three months. I am going to keep that one because you can just build really flexible points indefinitely at no cost.

For airline cards, Southwest is one of the best ones available. They normally give you one free ticket for signing up but I got two during a promotion so watch for those. There is an annual fee but they give most most that back to you every year in equivalent points. The biggest value is that you can use the points on any flight with no restrictions plus you don’t have to pay to check bags. It is hard to use many other airlines’ points because they have so few seats available for redemption.

12

frequent flyer and fly buys schemes are a loyalty program designed for customer retention. The aim is to get you to choose the airline, supermarket, credit card that supposedly gives you rewards when in practice you get 9/10’s of jack sheiss back from any of them. They’re basically a scam.

Far better off shopping for the best deal on whatever you purchase and save the money rather than being sucked into loyalty programs.

13

Of course it is designed for customer retention, that’s why they are called loyalty programs, but why do you call them a scam? I get very real and immediate benefits everytime I fly (get an free exit row seat at booking, possibility of upgrade, priority security lines, priority boarding, free checked bags). That’s not even including reward travel. Granted, reward travel can be tricky to book, but if you book far enough out and/or are flexible with your travel it shouldn’t be a problem.

Where’s the scam?

14

My free upgrades to business class on both domestic and international flights just this year would have cost easily thousands of dollars – probably more than ten grand. There’s no amount of discount fare shopping that could hold a candle to that. And that doesn’t even count the free airline tickets I’ve gotten over the 12 months, which easily are a couple thousand dollars’ worth.

15

Southwest frequent flyer miles can be used on AirTran as well, and vice-versa. Not an alliance; Southwest bought AirTran and is in the long, slow process of merging, but the frequent-flyer part of the merge has been done for a while.

16

Whether collecting frequent flyer miles is worth it or not really depends on what kind of flyer you are. If you are truly a frequent flyer, which generally means you fly at least 25,000 miles a year, then they are worthwhile. That’s the level of flying at which one starts to get the perks: upgrades, early boarding, better seats, etc. Also, that’s when you start to have the miles accumulated that you need to get free tickets regularly.

If you don’t fly that much then it the programs aren’t worth it. You don’t get any of the perks, and you don’t accumulate miles fast enough to use them on free tickets before they expire.

17

Sure, but frequent fliers like myself aren’t being “scammed” like that other poster alleged.

18

No, they are absolutely not a scam if you use them the right way. You can turn the tables on credit card companies very easily if you take them up on their offer for tickets, never carry a monthly balance, and actually use the the perks. I have a friend who is an absolute super black belt in getting free things from all airlines, hotels, and every other vacation perk for little to no cost.

He travels year-round for free but spends a lot of time getting the best offers. I told him to just feed me the absolute best of the best offers so I could see if it really works. I promise you it does with minimal effort. I went to Hawaii for a week for free with free drinks the whole plane ride over, a free hotel room and special treatment just for filling out a form and charging normal household expenses to a card for a month. I went to the Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut for a night with a free comped luxury suite plus I won $800 at the tables but the room was free no matter what. We are going to Las Vegas absolutely free except for airport parking in January. I still have three plane tickets left after that.

You can play those deals hard and win every time if know what you are doing. The credit card companies want to suck into high interest rates in the long-term so just chew and screw then cancel and beat them at their own game. It is an amazing deal as long as you play it the right way.

19

Yeah, but just watch that your credit score doesn’t take a hit as you get new cards and dump them. I think that may be a knock on your score.

20

Moderate FF here (usually a little over 100 segments a year).

Yes; most frequent flyers try to stick to one airline because that’s how you rise up the status rank for a given year, and only on that airline will you see the benefit of being a FF.

The FF miles programs are largely loyalty programs for a specific airlines. Some CCs give you airline ticket credits for any airline, but that’s really just a way of them giving yo something that looks more valuable than it is, and you will be restricted to flights/fares they are willing to provide… You will see far fewer benefits if you collect mileage from many different airlines. Most actual frequent flyers are more concerned with their status rank (it’s literally called that) than the free flights that cashing in miles gets you. However for a true FF, those miles can purchase expensive tickets. For example, I’ve cashed in 160,000 miles for a $29,000 international first class ticket.

In general (and not including Southwest, which doesn’t have a First Class), the major benefit for most true FFs is seating (and SW does have some advantageous seating; just not First Class). As you progress up the loyalty rank you typically get:

  1. More free upgrades from Coach to Business to First. (Most domestic flights are only two class.)
  2. Higher boarding status. Get on the plane before others. Good for making sure your bin space is still open. Useless for anything else other than feeling grand.
  3. Better selection of Coach seats; Exit rows or seats with more legroom.
  4. Free luggage
  5. Free alcohol and snacks, even in Coach
  6. Special phone number for flight assistance, including rebookings
  7. Priority rank for requests such as standby flights or seat changes
  8. Discounts on airport club memberships
  9. Priority seat selection and boarding for traveling companion
  10. Security lines and airport check-in specific for those with high status.

All of this makes my flying simple and convenient, but that wouldn’t be the case for anyone not flying often enough to get to the top status. I seldom take more than a minute or two to get through security at any airport with TSA Pre; seldom more than 10 minutes anywhere. I almost automatically get upgraded to First. But the flip side is that I have to be a bulk buyer of a single airline to get that. In my mind you either want to fly all the time and get high status on one airline, or fly almost never and avoid the irritations of the airport life.

Each FF program has its nuances. At AA, the highest level (Executive Platinum) gets you 8 upgrades even on overseas flights. That’s huge, comfort and dollar-wise.

If you don’t actually fly frequently (say, at least 30 trips/year), then a FF program is pretty much just a mileage program that accumulates year over year until you have enough for a free flight. I don’t think saving mileage for a domestic free flight is really worth much, but it’s not negligible.

If you want free flights, I think Southwest has the best deal. As a rule of thumb, focus on a single airline. For any CC offers, or other “points” programs, just calculate out a dollar value for what they are giving you and decide if it’s worth it for you. In general it’s not, but YMMV. Literally.