The Airline world is made up of three alliances:

Star Alliance
SkyTeam
OneWorld

Understanding the alliances and the airlines that make them up, and which airlines do not participate in an alliance, is key to maximizing miles and status. What alliances allow you to do is pick one airline per alliance and earn miles on that one airline’s frequent flier program no matter which airline in the alliance you fly. That way you can maximize miles. Airlines not only give redeemable miles but also status miles across alliance partners, so this also maximizes Elite …

Focus all your Airline Mile earnings – from all sources (flying, credit card, surveys, etc.) – on one airline or no more than one airline per Alliance. The thinking here is pretty simple and straightforward. If you do not do this, you end up diluting your miles earned and also potentially lose your ability to get to a higher Elite Level in one airline. 25,000 miles earned with one airline’s program is worth much more than 10,000 miles spread out over 5 or even 12,500 over two. If you have …

Here at UnRoadWarrior we are always looking for ways to better serve our readers. Our mission is to provide the best information and expertise on Airline Miles and Hotel Points to the un-roadwarriors. Travellers, who are not experts, don’t have the knowledge and certainly don’t have the time to search thru hundreds of forum threads, blog posts and news articles to get the latest and greatest information. We do that for you, while also providing you with the expert advise from our writers.
To further focus our efforts in 2012 (we …

In honor of the soon to come 2012, here is my list of Top 12 Articles of 2011. (See list of Top 11 Article of 2010). This list is based on traffic to their pages. I have excluded article that were posted in 2010 (The post – Air India switches to all non-stop routes to North America was the 3rd most read article and Boeing 747 Piano Bar article was the 6th most read article in 2011, despite both being written in 2010!). I also excluded all articles related to …

In Part I of this post I went over the process I use and recommend for planning out an year of earning and maximizing Airline Miles. (The very same process can be applied for Hotel Points too). In that post I showed how I came upon my ‘gap’ – miles that I had to work for; those that were not in my planned travel or covered by my usual travel run rate. This is where the work is and requires creative efforts to get to your goals.
As I maintained before, …

If you have earned status miles (EQM) in 2011 in both your United and Continental accounts, you need to act fast and link the two accounts. United is working on combining the programs in the first quarter of 2012. In the meanwhile, if you have earned miles in both accounts, linking them will allow you to:

Transfer miles from one to the other. If you don’t do this, United will transfer all your miles to the final combined account (but they still need to know that you have two accounts – …

That gives me some great benefits, such as free unlimited domestic upgrades, Exit row seats when I do not get upgraded, automatic Economy+ for when I don’t get the exit row, free checked bags and most importantly, Star Gold level on Star Alliance, for all my non-United travel. … My Balance: 50,970 – 5,000 = 45,970 Make a list of all other sources that earn you miles and see how many will come in for sure.

There is a huge debate going on in the travel blogosphere about the value of miles. I don’t want to incite it further but am just sharing my view, which I guess many others would share. As always YVMV (your views may vary).
Almost as a principle, I always redeem in coach. I have never ever redeemed or bought business class tickets. Would I never redeem for J or F? I don’t know. I may do it for my honeymoon. I can redeem miles for my parents’ trip across the continent. …

These come for me in two favors: one where I never even knew I could have earned extra miles (or extra EQM) till it was too late and second where I did what I needed to do to earn the miles, but the miles never posted and I lost track, till it was too late. … I use a spreadsheet to track all activity that has taken place which I think should earn miles – eating out, filling out surveys, customer service events, signing up for promos, etc.

Daraius Dubash writes the Airline Mile blog Million Mile Secrets where he shares his secrets of how he has earned and redeemed Millions of Miles. He also has a series where he interviews other Airline Miles junkies and experts. He just published his interview with me. I really enjoyed answering some great questions he asked. Check it out…
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