Frequent Flyer Accounts Explained
Because I can't keep having the same conversation with my bestie
As with tax deductions, day trading, and American health insurance, frequent flyer programs are made to be confusing to discourage their use. The easiest way to think of this system is for every mile you fly, you get a point. You can then turn in your points to receive flights or hotels. It’s Chuck E. Cheese and you’re a six year old with a stack of Skee-Ball tickets. Are you going to walk out of there with your pockets stuffed with meaningless currency? No. You’re going to make Charles Entertainment Cheese pay up and give you the stuffed unicorn you covet. We will likewise be making increasingly miserly airlines give you your due. It’s the only way I can ever fly first class, which I regret to announce, is indeed worth the hype.
Key things to know about frequent flyer accounts:
Accrual - Miles are awarded to the person who travels on the ticket, not the person who paid for the ticket. You should therefore always have your flights attached to an account. You are throwing away money otherwise. Many airlines now also credit your miles not only for how far you’ve flown, but for how costly your ticket was. If you buy a basic economy flight on Delta, you forfeit any mileage accrual for that itinerary. It’s a stupid and cheap loophole. If you are lucky enough to have an employer, scholarship, or sugar daddy pay for your flights, have them book at least standard economy.
Expiration - Some US carriers award miles that never expire vs most global carriers which expire after a year or two of inactivity. If you travel infrequently, it may be worth it to you to prioritize flying with United, Delta, Alaska, or JetBlue, where your points are evergreen.
Earning miles from home - You can keep accounts active and passively earn miles without needing to fly. The easiest way to do this is through using an airline credit card, which will typically give you 1-2 miles per $1 spent and a bonus sign on when you open your account. Keep an eye out for card recommendations in a later post. For those who don’t want to or are unable to open a card, I have ways to bypass expiration dates in the pipeline for this month.
Now that we have the baseline established, the heart and soul of maximizing your miles is by leveraging the alliances.
There are three major airline alliances: Star Alliance, Oneworld, and SkyTeam.
When you fly with an airline that is part of an alliance, you can choose to have your miles credited towards any of its partners. This allows you to play at the aforementioned rat arcade and then tell Chuck “thanks for the tickets, please convert them into Dave & Buster's points because they have better prizes.”
The key strategy to getting free flights is to have one account in each alliance where you are pooling all of your miles. This should be the airline that has regular departures from your home airport and travels widely. If you are based in the US, your airlines should probably be United (Star Alliance), American (Oneworld), and Delta (SkyTeam). You should continue to travel on convenient routes and book the cheapest flights available no matter what the airline, but you should have all of those miles being funneled into one of these three accounts.
I just flew from Oaxaca, Mexico to Guatemala City. I live in Mexico and so I travel with Aeromexico quite a bit. They are a great airline with good service. They are also very regional, and so if I were to keep my miles for flying with Aeromexico in their rewards program, my redemption would be limited to where they travel as an airline. There are some exceptions to this, but we need to stay focused. Aeromexico, however, is in SkyTeam with Delta. Because they are homies, no matter which one of them I am flying with, I am always having those miles added to my Delta account.
Why?
Having 3,800 miles in an Aeromexico account, 5,000 in a Delta account, and 2,400 in an AirFrance account is not enough for me to buy a flight within any of these airlines’ rewards programs. If I live in Mexico, what are the odds I’ll be flying AirFrance again anytime soon? Those miles will probably expire and I’ll get nothing in exchange for the money I spent accruing them. If I instead had all of these miles dumped into Delta from the beginning, I would now have 11,200 miles in that account, which is enough to buy a flight from Portland to Boston to visit my grandparents as they have been requesting.
Your homework: Pick one airline from each of the three alliances and set up a frequent flyer account. It’s free and takes just a few minutes. I will know if you haven’t done this and I will haunt you until your dying breath 🔪
Your enduring homework: GET MILEAGE CREDIT. You can add your frequent flier account when you are booking your flight, checking into your flight, or after taking your flight (as long as you had an account open at time of travel). In my example above, when checking into my Aeromexico flight, I am selecting Delta from the frequent flyer account dropdown and adding in my account number.
That’s it! You are ready! Fly off, sweet chickadees, and enjoy this magnificent world!