BootsnAll Travel Community

I haven't purchased a ticket for personal use in years, yet I still fly everywhere using frequent flyer miles. I do travel for work and always choose my preferred carrier, plus I purchase my own tickets for work (reimbursed later by the company) using my airline credit card to get double miles. Every purchase I make, both personal and work, is on my airline credit card, thus I earn 1 mile for every dollar charged - and I do mean EVERY purchase, even a cup of coffee goes on the card.

My work-related expenses average a couple thousand a month, plus all personal grocery shopping, gas, etc, and work-related travel miles gets me several int'l tickets a year.

Now if I could just get my wife to quit using all my miles, I might actually get to take a vacation.

I have a bank debit card that gives me miles, but was disappointed to see I only have 6k or so after 2 years.

which airlines are you guys flying with? i know i probably shouldn't sign up for another credit card but.. meh. actually i think i'll apply for a mileage plus card now.

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which airlines are you guys flying with?

Now its Continental because they go everywhere I need to go for work and where I want to go for travel. Years ago it was United, but they dropped most of their South America destinations so I had to change. Also did a couple years with American because I was commuting to Honduras for a year using Taca, an American partner (built up a few hundred thousand points that year!).

It's really just personal pref, but I've found Continental has a younger fleet, still serves real food, and has good strategic partnerships with other airlines.

I have over 130,000 miles on Alaska, mostly from paying for so much with my credit card. And that is after deducting 50,000 for two tickets RT to Miami! Those who do not utilize such cards and like to travel are robbing themselves.

Untypical, where do you work? Your job sounds amazing! I have known for a while that I need a job that requires me to travel, because I won't be able to do enough in my spare time with my spare money

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Those who do not utilize such cards and like to travel are robbing themselves.

Truer words have never been spoken.

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Untypical, where do you work?

I'm based in the SF bay area (house, family, corporate HQ) but travel everywhere. I'm currently in Guam doing an assessment on contamination left by the US military during WWII.

I'm earning over 28,000 miles for this trip, including air miles, ticket fee, hotel points, food, etc. Thats enough for one RT anywhere in the US and almost enough for South America.

sigh.. unfortunately, the new job i have, which i happen to love (and not planning to leave for a while), doesn't come with any travel. and with the small amount of bills and big purchases i need to make, it's unlikely that i'll be building up that kind of FF-mileage at a satsifactory rate. that's been the main reason why i haven't bothered signing up for those cards. that, and i'm 21 and have enough credit cards.. lol. but regardless, i suppose it doesn't hurt to earn little by little as you go along.. unless some of them expire by the time you've reached an amount that you can actually use! that's probably something i should look into later.

There are cards you can get that don't have any fee, and you earn miles towards a bunch of different airlines. I can't remember what company it is with, but it is out there (my brother has this one).

I have a Mileage Plus Visa...I was doing alot of travel for work, and kept it mostly on United because I had built enough loyalty points. Now I try to keep my travel with them because I am at a level where I earn double points for all my flights, so my miles really add up. I pay a fee, but I put pretty much ALL my purchases on the card. I rarely use cash. Merchants may not always like it, but oh well. You would be surprised how much those "little" purchases add up to. Also, they often have bonus point periods, or ways if you shop through their merchants, you get more points. All these little things truly do add up.

FWIW, United has a double mile promo going on right now. American Airlines too I think.

The trip I'm on now:
SFO-BKK 16022 miles R/T
*gold bonus(fly over 50K/year) 16022
promo bonus 16022

Total= 48066 miles

ONE trip, and almost enough FF miles for a future trip to Europe or So. America.

Anyone who likes to travel must learn to play this game.

Ooo, I need to check out that United promo - that's where I'm banking all my miles...

Anywho, one of my board members (I work for a travel-industry non-profit) has a fabulous retirement plan. He's been banking all his FF miles FOREVER. His goal is to have 1 million miles by the time he retires (soon) so he can fly for free for his whole retirement. His theory is a couple hundred bucks on a flight now, while he has income, is no big deal compared to have those miles to use when he's on a fixed income... now he's just praying the airline doesn't go bankrupt!!

But another spin on that would be to go with a CC that has "universal" points that can be used on many different airlines. Usually there's a small fee for redeeming points, but what's $50 for a flight to Africa, even on a fixed income!?

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Originally posted by Tracy Ann:
Ooo, I need to check out that United promo - that's where I'm banking all my miles...

That one is over now unfortunately. But there are always others here:
http://www.united.com/page/article/0,6722,1252,00.html

For earning miles on flights, I'd say pick one airline & stick with it, then pick a "second" airline to use when your "main" carrier's fares/schedules won't work. Otherwise, you end up with small clumps of miles in a bunch of airlines that won't get you anywhere (sure, you can convert one airline's miles to another at places like points.com, but you always loose a bunch of miles in the transaction).

Sign up with that airline's dining program, like idine or something, where you earn miles for eating/drinking at places you'd normally eat/drink anyways. I was really surprised at how many miles could be racked up on coffee, beer, etc.

Get yourself to an "elite" level in your airline's FF program, even if it's the bottom tier one. It's a lot easier to do than most think, and you'll get bonus miles for each flight...so you earn 20,000 miles for flying to London rather than 10,000.

A topic dear to my heart! Almost all my Latin American adventures have been taken with tickets I got through AAadvantage. It's been tough the past few years because it seemed like you couldn't get any economy seats with miles. However if any of ya'll have AA miles, check them right now. I signed up with Points.com because I was getting frustrated and planned on swapping them in for credit with Amazon. Well, I got a pop-up telling me that I could swap 30K miles to go to Mexico City, so I started looking around. After the past few years of no tickets being available for the economy (40-60K miles), I still can't believe that they've released a ton of economy seats to Latin American. I just bought a RT ticket to Rio for 40,000 miles and a $71 processing fee! This is normally either 100,000 miles (which I wasn't close to having) or $1300, so my best ff mile purchase ever. Anyhow, if you have AA miles, go check any routes you might be daydreaming about!

dammit! i'm f*cking pissed off. i finally heard back from united and they wouldn't give me the 10k FF miles for graduating because i wasn't enrolled in 'college plus' at the time, even though i was enrolled in 'mileage plus'. HMPH! i wish i knew about this before-- my parents signed me up for mileage plus when i was a kid and i never bothered doing my own research on the programs. DAMMIT!