Frequent Flying
November 12th, 2009, 4:32pm by Mike
The other day on Twitter we got into a quick discussion about Frequent Flier miles. This is something I’ve been getting into over the past year, and it’s kinda fun. Unfortunately, I’m finding that even if you’re earning lots of miles, it’s gotten to the point where the time to take a trip is more difficult to come by than the money — and when FF redemption tickets are getting harder and harder to schedule, it means I probably won’t be taking too many trips with miles anytime soon.
Anyway, read on if you want to know what I’ve learned.
Basically, there are two reasons to try to play the FF miles game (other than for the fun of it): free travel and preferential treatment. Concentrating on either will get you both, but focusing on one or the other will get you that one faster. The key difference is that miles for free travel can be earned any number of ways (flights, hotel stays, shopping, straight purchasing of miles, credit card promos, etc), while miles for status (EQMs – elite qualifying miles) can generally only be earned by flying.
For about a year, I’ve been focused on the “preferential treatment” side of the game. I wanted to get status for a couple of reasons: (1) It’s nicer to wait for planes in airline lounges with free food/drinks than at the gate; (2) priority boarding matters if you’re carrying on bags all the time and want overhead space; (3) I’d like to get some free upgrades every once in a while. Also, status waives baggage fees — I hate checking bags, but nice to have it free if you can. Basically, with the general decline in airline service over the past many years, it would be nice to be treated like an actual person when I fly.
So with the help of some web sites (mostly FlyerTalk and Frugal Travel Guy), I made a plan. There are 3 main airline alliances: Star Alliance, oneworld, and SkyTeam. The idea is to pick one and stick with it. I chose Star, because it’s easy for me to fly USAirways, United, or Lufthansa from Boston to pretty much anywhere I want to go (and now, Continental is also part of the Star Alliance, too). These alliances allow you to earn and redeem miles across multiple airlines within the alliance — so when I fly United, I could give my USAirways FF number and earn EQMs on USAirways instead of United. Makes it much easier to consolidate miles.
At the time I started, Frugal Travel Guy calculated that British Midlands Airlines (bmi) Diamond Club was the best value FF program, and looked like the easiest path to Star Alliance Gold, and they have a very important advantage over the American carriers. Star policy is such that if you’re flying outside your home carrier’s country, you can use the Star Gold lounges — which means that when I’m flying domestically here in the US, I’m “international” for Star purposes, so on all domestic flights I can get into the USAirways Club, United’s Red Carpet Club, and now, I presume, the Continental President’s Club. So I signed up and got started. Since then, I’ve only flown Star flights, and I’ve been pretty diligent about making sure miles get posted. It helped a lot to be flying for work, and that for transatlantic flights, we can fly business, and those C-class tickets get an additional 50% mileage bonus.
This week I finally made it to Star Gold! So for the next year, I’ll get all the goodies — mainly, lounge access and priority boarding. If I ever fly BMI, I’ll get some other nice perks, but since they don’t even fly to Boston, there’s little chance that will happen. And in the process, I’ve earned over 70k miles that I can redeem on other Star Alliance airlines. I’m not sure, but I don’t think you can combine miles (e.g., I can’t add these to my 40k Continental miles to book a 110k mile trip).
And the latest buzz in the FF miles sphere is applying for this Chase British Airways credit card: 50k miles on signup, 50k more if you spend $2000 over the first 3 months. Since 50k is enough for a transatlantic flight (an 100k is enough for going business class), we’re each applying for one! Note the $75 annual fee, but it still comes out great for us.