QuickOverview

By Scott Mandeville of Infiniti Enterprise.

Once you’ve joined a frequent flyer program, you want to earn as many miles as possible. If you fly a lot is should all be equal, but it’s not. There are many tips and tricks that can earn you many more miles over the course of a year.

Flying

Well it’s a frequent flyer program so earning miles by flying should be obvious. Remember that frequent flyer programs are loyalty reward programs, to help identify an airline’s best customers and to give them preferential treatment. An open secret in the travel world is not all passengers are created equal. If you fly infrequently you wonder why you end up in a middle seat in row 42, it’s because the best seats are reserved for the airline’s elite members. Elite level members of frequent flyer programs get bonuses of 25 to 125% of the miles they would ordinarily earn when traveling. There are all sorts of other bonuses like reduced rates to join their clubs, free upgrades, and the like. Elite level passengers will also get preferential rebooking on cancelled flights.

So how do you get to elite status? In this case by no other way than flying. There are many other ways to earn miles as we will see later but the only way you can reach elite is by flying. The exact requirements will vary from airline to airline but for most of the larger carriers you will have to fly 25,000 miles to reach the first tier. That may seem like a lot of miles, but in fact it’s about 5 cross-country trips in the US a year or 2 trips from the west coast to Europe a year. If you usually fly shorter distances most carriers have a provision for their passengers to reach elite status by flying so many segments in a year. In most cases it’s 30 segments. A segment is defined as a boarding, so if you fly cross country and stop and make a connection you’ve flown 2 segments.

In fact many business travelers fly more than enough miles to earn elite status than actually earn it. So what are some of the common mistakes? If you don’t book your own travel it’s important to make your airline preferences known to your travel agent whether that’s an outside agent or an in house travel department. Otherwise you will likely always be but on either the nonstop flight or the least expensive flight. Sometimes that works in your favor, some times it doesn’t. Often there may be dozens of different fares within a few dollars of each other, the differences being the departure fees at the connecting point. So you might find the lowest fare of $379 on a carrier you’d rather not fly and a fare of $382 on your preferred carrier. Even the most draconian of travel departments should let you pay the small difference to fly the carrier of your choice.

As for nonstop flights, that’s a matter of preference. I personally don’t mind making a connection so that I can fly my preferred carrier, but some people don’t like the hassle. If you insist on flying nonstop it’s quite possible that you could go to five different cities and end up on five different airlines unless you live in a major hub city like Chicago or Dallas. The difference between a nonstop flight and a connection is usually only one to two hours, so you need to decide if your time or the miles are more important. I live on the west coast so I lose a day traveling east no matter which way I go, so for me it makes very little difference to me if I arrive at my destination at 5PM or 7. Another small benefit of connecting is you usually earn a few more miles and always earn more segments.

Bonus Miles: Airlines often offer bonus miles if certain traveling criteria are met. The most generous are double or even triple miles but these system wide offers are infrequent and usually only occur after a significant problem like a strike. But most airlines have more limited promotions going all the time. It’s a good idea to subscribe to your frequent flyer program’s newsletter on line and to check their website often before you travel. Promotions are done for all sorts of reasons. They can be to introduce new routes, or to promote travel in off peak seasons or to try to get passengers to travel on routes from an airline’s less frequent destinations. Some examples include 30,000 bonus miles for 3 flights to Europe in a specific time period or double miles between a new city pair for an airline. It pays to pay attention to the bonus offers. It’s also a good reason to choose a carrier that isn’t the dominant carrier at your airport. Often airlines with a smaller presence offer frequent promotions to attract more travelers. The most important point about these bonus offers is you nearly always have to sign up for them in advance. It’s usually easy, either on the airline’s website or using and 800 number.

Using the Airlines Travel Partners: Most airlines partner with other airlines to offer a variety of perks. There are several large alliances One World, Star Alliance and Sky Team to name a few. In many ways this gives you an opportunity to earn even more miles to more destinations but you need to be careful of the rules. Each airline sets the rules for how miles are earned so while one carrier may give miles on any fare the other may give reduced or no miles. Make sure you know the rules before you book. Some ways around this are to book the code share flight. Often airlines in alliances sell each others flights using their own flight number. For example if you book American Airlines to Australia the flight is actually operated by Qantas. The code share flight is subject to the mileage rules of the airline that issued the ticket, not the airline you are actually flying on. The other important thing to do is to find out which fares earn miles and which don’t. Sometimes paying a small difference can make the difference between earning miles and not. On a trip to Europe one winter the lowest fare on a partner airline of my preferred program was $400 from the West Coast. When I checked the website of my frequent flyer program I saw that it didn’t qualify for mileage. I looked to see which classes of service did. I discovered by paying only $40 more I could earn mileage. So in this case paying a $40 difference earned me 22,000 miles. (11,000 for flying and 11,000 more for my elite status) That’s a pretty good bargain since it’s nearly enough miles to earn a free domestic ticket.

Booking online: Most programs will give you a bonus for booking your flights on their website. It so dramatically reduces their cost of operation they want to encourage people to use their websites. If you can get the same fare from the website it can be a good alternative but on complex bookings, especially international ones often the website won’t give you the best fares.

Other Ways to Earn Miles

As frequent flyer programs have grown airlines have added more and more ways to earn miles. You can now earn miles for nearly everything you do. There are some people that hardly travel at all but still earn a lot of miles.

Credit Cards: Credit cards are probably one of the best ways to earn extra miles. Most people have credit cards anyway, so they can earn miles making purchases they would make anyway. Most airlines put some limits on the number of miles earned in a year and the miles don’t qualify for elite status. You just need to decide if the cards fees and interest rates are a good value for you. Typically you earn one mile for every dollar you spend and most have a bonus for signing up.

Hotels and Rental Car Companies: If you travel a lot you may want to look at the loyalty programs for these companies separately as you may earn better rewards directly from their travel program. If you tend to stay in one hotel chain all the time this is particularly the case. If you stay in many different chains depending on convenience or price then getting miles through your frequent flyer program can be a good idea. Most airlines will require you to fly to the hotel on their airline to qualify for miles. For me it’s too hard to keep track and too many of my stays don’t qualify for miles so I keep a separate membership for hotels.

Other Purchases: You can write a book on the other ways to earn miles, mortgages, flowers, magazines, investment accounts, dining out, the list goes on and on. The way you have to evaluate any of the offers is: Is this a good deal even if I didn’t earn miles. If it is go for it, but most times I find I’m paying a significant premium to earn the miles. It’s definitely a case of caveat emptor.

Keeping Track: When you earn miles it’s a good idea to check to make sure that they have been posted to your account. All the airlines allow you to view your miles on line so this is quick and easy. In most cases the miles for flights will appear within a week of your travel. The airline will tell you how long you have to wait before making a claim. Most of the time the miles will come through automatically. There are a few cases when they may not and that’s when you should be particularly diligent to make sure you get miles. Sometimes if the original flight you were on was cancelled and you were rebooked on another flight, it’s possible that your frequent flyer number didn’t come over to the new record the agent created. If this happens you can usually apply for a credit right on line. You will need the ticket number which will be on your receipt. In the explanation tell them what flight you were originally booked on and what flight you actually traveled on. Most airlines will give you credit in less than a week. If you ever have an instance where you were rebooked onto another airline you will always have to do this. Most airlines will give you a credit if they rebooked you because of a cancellation. In the explanation say that you were rebooked on an “Involuntary Reroute” and tell them what flight you were originally booked on and what airline and flight you actually traveled on.

With these tips I hope you can go out and earn lots of miles to visit those exotic destinations you’ve always wanted to see!