In my last post I wrote about earning a minimum of 500 miles for flights taken. This prompted a question from a reader – what is this minimum miles you speak of? Well, here is the answer.
Airlines award miles for flights based on the miles flown. For flights that are very short – less than 500 miles, most airlines award at least 500 miles. This is known as minimum miles award. Different airlines have different rules as to when they would award these minimum miles. Some airlines give them to …

I have to fly US Airways every once in a while. Going in and out of Charlotte (CLT), which I do every so often, forces one to do so. One of my peeves with US Airways (amongst several others), is that when earning miles on United, I would not earn a 500 minimum miles. Dulles (IAD) to Charlotte is 321 miles. United stopped giving the 500 minimum to even it’s Elites a few years ago and only awards the actual miles earned. Continental, on the other hand always gave the …

BMI, the one and only UK based Star Alliance member has been acquired by British Airways. BMI has had a tumultuous couple of years. They were first bought by Lufthansa, which bode well for those of us who love Star Alliance, but Lufthansa did not integrate it into it’s suite of airlines (they own Austrian and Swiss) and decided to sell BMI off to IAG, the group that owns British Airways and Iberia.
This is good news for British Airways, as they get additional coveted Heathrow slots and also get some …

Several airlines allow booking one-way award trips. If they do, always search for your award trip as both a round trip or as two one-way trips. The miles needed for booking usually adds up to be the same. At the most, if there is a booking fee, you may have to pay that twice. There are multiple reasons to do this:
Seat availability:
Surprising as it may seem, I have in some cases found availability when I have searched for a one-way award trip that did not show up for a round …

The BoardingArea.com homepage stopped updating for some time over the last couple of days. If you are like me, you probably go to the homepage to see what all the wonderful bloggers at BoardingArea are writing, instead of visiting their individual blogs. It is a wonderful single page view of all the people who matter in the Airline Mile and Hotel Point Blogoshpere. When it came back up yesterday, it of course picked up in real time and all the wonderful posts for two days were missed. I had been …

Getting a 1099 for Airline miles has been beaten to death across all Airline Blogs and forums and several news outlets, earlier this year, including this blog. Newsweek’s Christopher Elliott just woke up from his deep slumber yesterday to stumble upon this topic on a what must be a slow news day. Not only is he writing so very late, he got it all wrong and is giving totally wrong advise based on his clueless interpretation of the facts.
Flaw #1: Anyone who read the blogs and news articles when this …

I just saw this thread on FlyerTalk. The couple in question here started the year with 0 miles/points and has accumulated 670,000 points – without flying a mile! They applied for multiple credit cards between them to collect these points. The subject of the thread seems to suggest that the poster did it single-handedly, but it was between him and his wife. Impressive none the less.
Here is the list of cards they collected:

75k AA Citi Card
75K AA Citi Business Amex
75K AA Citi Visa (Wife)
75K AA Citi Amex (Wife)
50K Southwest Premier
50K …

United and Continental have finally merged. As I pointed out in an earlier post, united.com and continental.com, the websites also merged over to the new site this past weekend. The new site is based on the original continental.com. In fact, most of the operational ascpects of the new United are based on Continental. They are using Continentals operating license, using Continentals reservation system, etc. Looks like all that’s left of United is the name, the headquarters and Economy+ seats (which is not a bad thing to keep at all).
In this …

United and Continental are taking the next big step in their merger this weekend – moving to a new common website. From what I have seen and heard, the new website will be based on the existing continental.com site. I personally liked the Continental site better than United’s. There is a reason United’s site was referred to as .bomb.
As with every big software release, nothing will go wrong… and if you believe that, I have some great deals on houses in Nevada for you. To make sure the transition goes …

If you want to get on any sort of waiting list for your flight – whether it is for an upgrade or to get a seat if the flight is not assigning you one, it is best to check-in online and check-in as early as possible. In the US every airline lets you do an online check-in 24 hours in advance of the flight.
Key point to note here is that it is 24 hours in advance of your first segment. If you have a connection, you can check in to …