Yeah, I know there are websites that will track it for me all in one place – I have accounts with points.com and gomilies.com , but they just don’t seem to be right or enough. … Staying at a hotel (duh, again, but this can become complex if one earns hotel points, airline miles or hotel points AND airline miles) Credit cards eMiles.com eRewards.com MyPoints.com TopGuest Car rentals (for rental rewards or airline miles) Other sundry events, like filling out a survey, earning miles as compensation for a customer service event, etc.

Chase Freedom is one of my favorite cards especially in 3rdquarter when they have 5% cashback on travel related purchases up to $1500.
I had written earlier about a 20K signup bonus Ultimate Rewards (UR) points for the Chase Freedom card. Recently they have been sending out a targeted offer for 30K UR points. If you have applied for the card in the last 3 months, it might be worthwhile asking them to bump the bonus on the card to 30K. The promo offer code is D1R.

Ultimate Rewards points are transferrable …

What’s with all the mega bonuses that Credit Cards doling out? They seem to be handing out tens of thousands of miles to new customers like drunken sailors on shore leave in Jamaica or a Fed Chairman trying to revive a country’s economy. Here are some examples of recent offers:

British Airways – 100,000 miles
Capital One Venture Card – upto 100,000 points
American Express Membership Rewards card – 50,000 points

In this article, I will explore two areas – one, why are companies doing this? And two, what does it mean for us, …

If you haven’t already taken advantage of this offer, hurry. Chase is offering 100K miles to new applicants for the British Airways Visa Credit Card. However, the offer ends May 5th at 11:59PM. That’s only a few more hours!

The Points Guy has outlined an extensive primer on using British Airways miles. Do check that out if you are still dilly-dallying. This offer is probably one of the best that we have seen this year.

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The Economics of Airline Miles – Part 6
Continuing in my series on the Economics of Airline Miles, I bring to you an article on the depreciation or loss of value of Airline Miles.
Just like money, airline miles depreciate. Depreciation can occur due to multiple factors. This article goes into multiple factors that cause this depreciation and their impact on us, the travelers.
Issue more miles:
When the US Federal Reserve prints more money and puts it in the market, it reduces the value of all the dollars that are already in …

Booking complex award itineraries, made up of multiple cities and multiple connecting flights can be very painful. I just booked such a trip myself. When I started out I had no idea how cumbersome and time consuming it would be. I really thought I had it easy. After all, I had enough miles on all three Airline Alliances to redeem for the award trip. So I thought I would have multiple options to choose from. Instead it turned out to be a major time drain and resulted in a complex …

British Airways is one of the few airlines that is notorious for having extremely low ‘earn rates’ for their discounted economy fares. I highlighted this in my article Fast Track to Elite Status. I actually earned 25% of actual miles flown as both redeemable miles (RDM) and Elite Status Miles (EQM) on an 15,000 mile round trip. This had made British Airways one of my least favorite airlines to fly. Now, don’t get me wrong, they are not alone. There are many airlines that even give zero miles for some …

So, whether I am looking for cheap flights to Alicante (ALC) for an exotic vacation to Spain or to Charlotte, NC (CLT) for a day trip for work, my first preference is to fly on United and if they do not fly there (like to Alicante), pick another Star Alliance carrier (Spanair flies to ALC) or if no Star Alliance carrier goes there, pick another United partner. … Have one Primary airline, which is a part of a Global Airline If I had to pay a nominal fee or tax to consolidate accounts, I would do it (or pray for a merger.

One of the eternal dilemma’s faced by travelers is choosing between a low cost flight ticket and sacrificing the miles that one loses by buying that ticket, or buying higher fare tickets that will earn the full miles. Yes, you don’t always earn one mile for every mile flown.
Airlines sell tickets in different fare buckets. In the case of some airlines all fare buckets do not earn 100% miles. In fact, some fare buckets may earn no miles at all.
Cheap Fare buckets:
All airlines sell airline tickets in different fare buckets. …

As I was updating the spreadsheet I use to track my miles over the weekend, I happened to glance down at the bottom row, where I show a grand total of all my miles. It said 1,001,238. Cool! I wish it was bank balance that read that, but miles balance is a good start. I am no way anywhere near hard core road-warriors who travel over a million miles in a year (I am an UN-road-warrior, remember). Gary from View from the Wing just wrote a blog post about the …