American Express Rewards is one of the best reward programs out there. The flexibility and variety of rewards available is out of this world. I have in the past redeemed Membership Rewards for Macy’s Gift cards (in a convoluted way, though) and for hotel stays. Just last week I redeemed them for airline tickets. The tickets for my flight were pretty steep and reward availability for Saver Rewards (you know the advertised 25,000 mile round trip awards) were unavailable. I did not want to shell out the chase, so I …

As I posted a short while ago, I was able to book four Business Class award tickets to India for my family and I. This took up 480,000 miles redeemed! While it was painful to see the miles get deducted from my account, I am really looking forward to enjoying the flat bed seats and the meals in business class. I am pretty sure I am spoiling my family and they will always want to travel only in business or first class from now on. Economy is so painful, right? …

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 …

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 …

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 …

The Economics of Airline Miles: Part V – Is it all really worth it?
The ‘Economics of Airline Miles’ started off as a single article I was writing on the topic of the ‘Value of Airline Miles’ to us, the travelers. It grew and evolved and took on a life of its own. It is now a five part series, with this being its fifth and concluding installment. I would like to thank all my readers for the interest and the feedback that helped set the direction of this series …

Here we go again – Starting a New Year of earning Miles and Status:

If you are like me, you logged in to your primary mileage account, the one you have Elite Status on, on Jan. 1st and saw a big fat Zero in your Status Miles (EQM) total. For almost every airline in the world, that was the case. There are a few exceptions – some airlines like BMI have a rolling 12-month window over which they award and reset their status miles. This gives every passenger his or her …

In continuation to my ever popular post on 10 Reasons why Starwood is the Best Loyalty Program, here are 10 more reasons:

Ability to book Airline Award tickets even when award inventory is not available. Airlines treat tickets booked via Starwood as revenue tickets and not award tickets.
Earn airline miles on award tickets booked via Starwood. As I mentioned above, airlines treat these as regular revenue tickets.
Ability to book one-way airline award tickets.
They did not raise their redemption rates like Hilton did in 2010!

Award hotel stays are actually free! There are …

Why do I have to pay for my ‘Free’ Award Ticket?
One unique feature about the Free awards airlines give is that they are not really ‘Free’. While Hotels give absolutely free stays when they give awards, airlines charge you when redeeming Airline Miles.

The cost of redeeming miles should be taken into consideration when one is planning to redeem miles for free awards.
Here are a few:
Taxes:
Yes, Uncle Sam and all the other uncles, aunts and second cousins twice removed, who represent governments all around the world; want their cut when you …

In the first three parts of this series on the Economics of Airline Miles I discussed: The Value of Airline Miles (Part I), The Value of Elite Status (Part II) and How to Maximize Airline Miles Earnings (Part III). In this fourth part of this ongoing series, I will go into the topic of how to effectively redeem your airline miles. Once you have earned all the miles by focussing your earnings, the eventual goal is to redeem these miles for rewards and awards from the airlines.
Remember, at the end …