I’ve never been a member of any of the frequent flier programs because, well, I don’t fly all that much, and…okay, I never thought about it, really.
But a couple of friends recently told me that I should, and so when I bought my tickets for an upcoming trip, I signed up for Continental’s frequent flier program. Whoopee. Continental says that when I complete my trip, I will have six thousand and something something miles on my account.
So…what does that mean? How many trips like this will I have to take to get a free flight to California to visit my parents? Can I get an upgrade to first class? What the heck is the point of this program, exactly?
I poked around their website, but it’s all in some corporate code about getting points and gaining Silver Elite and Platinum Elite membership, whatever the hell that means.
I primarily fly American Airlines, so I am enrolled in their miles program, AAdvantage. We get the LEAST amount of miles from flights we take. We have several credit cards that link to our AAdvantage accounts (both personal and business cards) and get at least 1 mile per dollar spent, and sometimes as much as 3 miles per dollar spent. That’s how we get the majority of our miles. Using actual flown miles only would take forever and be pretty worthless for us.
I fly nearly every week for my job and belong to many frequent flyer programs.
(I would prefer to always fly the same airline in order to build a big bank of miles, however, certain airlines sort-of ‘own’ certain routes and cities. So I have to fly the airline that is most convenient to where I am going, whoever that is. Consequently, I have a small pile of points with many airlines.)
Something to be aware of - even though the chart for your airline might say it’s only 25,000 points/miles for a free ticket, it rarely works out that way. In all of my years of flying and using points/miles to purchase tickets I have never been able to get the ticket for that base amount. There are the blackout dates around holidays, which I am inevitably flying on, which mean you have to use the ‘rule buster’ amount to get the ticket (usually twice the base number). Also, the airlines usually have a limited number of seats on any flight which can be purchased with points/miles. Inevitably I encounter this scenario, again you can use the ‘rule buster’ amount to get the ticket if you really want it. So, if you are starting to build up points/miles with the plan of taking a free flight to see mom once you build up 25,000 be forewarned, it might not work out that way.
Not to sound snarky, but if you aren’t a frequent flier, then there is really no point in joining a frequent flier program.
I used to travel a decent amount for work, and I have a FF account with all the major airlines. However, due to scheduling times and so forth, I dont concentrate all travel on one airline - basically same reasons that icarus mentioned for not flying on the same airline.
So, as a result, I have a US Airways credit card - ALL purchases go on that, personal and business expensable. Over the 8+ years I’ve been at my current job, I’ve accrued enough points for my wife and I to go on our honeymoon to Hawaii (from Boston), as well as fly first class (outgoing, but not return) to California this past summer.
Unlike Icarus’s experience - I’ve found that when I book a reward ticket using the points, I haven’t had any issue at all - no running into black out dates, or running out of reward seats, or whatever. In fact, when we went to CA, the reason we went first class was because the cost of coach and first class, in terms of points required, was the same! Probably had to do with the fact we left on a Wednesday night though.
Anyhow - many times the miles have expiration dates - and even if they dont, if you dont travel all that much - then you’re probably not missing much. Plus, I’ve found that the cost of airfare is dwarfed by the cost of hotel stays. For THAT I definately concentrate on a single reward program.
It’s worthwhile if you spend money, whether or not you fly a lot. I get most of my miles from my credit cards. Every so often we take a big trip for free. Last year four of us flew to England first class for free.
That doesn’t sound snarky, it sounds logical. It’s why I never had one in the first place - I generally fly two or three times a year, and I always just go with what’s cheapest, regardless of the airline.
That isn’t necessarily true, especially if your trips tend to be long ones and/or if you can get miles via credit card bonuses, etc. I fly more or less as often as you do, and have enough miles for a free domestic ticket on United and on American. I’m saving them up for now, hoping that I will eventually have enough for a free international ticket. I’d already have enough on United, except that they came in VERY handy once - when my grandfather died. Cost to purchase ticket to NY for his funeral: $0. Cost if I’d had to buy a ticket in cash on less than 24 hours’ notice: over $600.
It’s free to join the program, so why not do it? You aren’t losing anything.
Good point- we also have Marriott Rewards points (about a million, seriously). Using both our business and personal credit cards, we are able to fly a family of four on at least 2 round trips every year (or one if we want to fly business instead of coach), and spend at least two weeks on a Marriott property.
We work the system like maniacs.
One piece of advice- don’t hoard miles/points. When you reach a reward level, use it. Better safe than sorry (oh sorry, we’re bankrupt/purchased, your miles are no good now).
I did in December. I used my AAdvantage account and the 25K bonus miles I got for signing up for a credit card. I left (or was supposed to leave if it weren’t so foggy that the original flight got canceled) on December 27th and flew back on December 31st. Total cost for me was $10 - I checked when I originally booked and if I’d paid, the same trip would have cost me $450.
I have, quite often. However, only when I’m very flexible about either my dates or my destination, or when I use them for unpopular routes.
For example, I have used 25,000 miles many times for tickets from San Francisco to Montreal. That’s often one of the most expensive North American routes to buy, but frequent flier tickets are usually available if you’re a little bit flexible.
Another time I used 50,000 miles (the cheapest amount) for a ticket from San Francisco to Amsterdam. That time I needed to fly on specific dates, but I could accept any destination in Europe. Amsterdam happened to be the only one available.
Northwest used to have a recurring program where you could use “Cash + Miles” to buy tickets. Three years running I got $134 tickets + 10,000 miles to go skiing in Banff (I believe you could also get $212+5,000 miles). Big budget helper! Since you are in the Detroit area, which is a Northwest hub, and Northwest’s miles also do not expire, it might make sense to be in their program. My pal Phatlewt also has the NWA credit card and gets miles through that.
Note: with Northwest being bought by Delta I don’t know what programs will be in force. BUT Cash+miles was a popular program that ran at least 3 times a year for at least 5 years.
Even if the program does not go away, there is a steady inflationary process of erosion in what your miles are worth. All the carriers have, in the past years, steadily upped the amount of miles you need for rewards. They’ve done this both by simply changing the redemption charts, and by lowering the ratio of “standard” (i.e., 25k domestic) vis a vis “anytime” (double the points) reward seats. For instance, your Continental program theoretically allows you to apply (lots of) those miles to get a first class ticket to Australia on Qantas. Once upon a time that might have been a realistic scenario, but now my impression is you’d have to be hovering by the phone at 12:01, 330 days out, to have a remote chance of getting one of the couple of seats that are even eligible for that in theory.
For those of you who travel a lot or are interested in miles/points, there’s an online community called FlyerTalk. Here’s the link: http://www.flyertalk.com/
The forums will often have links to special promos and ways to build up or use miles most effectively.
You can also link your frequent flyer program with other things (like restaurants, for example). Scana (my gas company) is linked to my Delta program, so that every month, even if I don’t fly, I accumulate at least some miles, which means they’ll never expire.
I’m trying to work around increasing my American Airlines miles, too, since now I don’t live in an area where it is a major airline (I live close to Atlanta now). So far, not so lucky, as their dining program has no restaurants in the place where I live.
I fly a lot, and they all kind of suck at the moment, at least in respect to how they used to be. Delta (so I assume also Northwest) now charges you to redeem your frequent flier miles, which seems a bit oxymoronic. Last summer I flew to Washington DC and was able to find a regular ticket for less than the $180 that Delta wanted to charge me to redeem my FF miles for the flight. I don’t know whether the other carriers have followed suit. I hoped to then use my Delta miles to upgrade an economy flight to business class this past week (USA to Germany) but the base economy class seat I would have had to buy to upgrade cost almost as much as a business class seat in the first place ($3200) vs the $450 flight I got on USAirways.
The major airlines have worked to make it nigh on impossible to book upgrades and free flights and can be tricky. I’m sure there are still some things that they’re good for, but I now choose my flights best on who seems to be doing the best job at the moment. Recently for me this has been Continental, and I’m sure Southwest is still good.
The one bright spot may be that Continental has just left their FF partnership with Delta and Northwest and joined Star Alliance, which includes United, US Airways, Lufthansa, British Airways, Thai Airways, Air Canada, etc. It’s a fairly large group so one can hope that they might be able to find something available on one of them and you can receive FF points on all.
Oh, and to add one last moan, on my USAirways flight to Germany they charged for drinks and I think also for food, although my brain is a bit foggy right now and I might be misremembering the food bit. Got switched to a Lufthansa flight on the way back and that was much better.