For all of us who are mileage junkies, getting the best value for the hard earned miles/points is of premium importance. I am of that camp too. But, when it comes to spending money, I work much harder to make a living than I do to earn miles. So, when I posted my recent article describing how to redeem American Express Membership Rewards points for airline tickets, the backlash I got was surprising. I gave my own example of how I redeemed 35,000 Membership Rewards Points for a $350 airline …

As I have blogged before, I have accumulated over a million miles over the years. I have collected these miles by flying, with credit cards and lots of free miles from various sources. I actually have never flown more than 60,000 miles in a any year (I am the ‘unroadwarrior’, after all). Most years I barely fly 35,000 to 40,000 in a typical year. Accumulating these miles took several years. So, redeeming 480,000 of them in just one go was painful.

I redeemed the miles for four seats in business class …

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 …

Airlines are going thru tough times and interesting times. (Boy, did I resist starting this post with – It was the best of times, it was the worst of times). The global economic slowdown has hurt airlines; they have an ageing fleet (at least all the older carriers do); they have an ageing staff looking to retire, that too with benefits; and they have liabilities that are beginning to exceed their revenues and the margins required to fulfill them afloat. On the other hand, we have become a truly global …

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, …

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. …

A few years ago (four to be precise) my wife got one of them American Express Cards that gave her 50,000 Membership Rewards points just for signing up and spending $1,000 in a few months. When the year was up and the annual fee of over a hundred dollars was due, she decided it was not worth it to keep the card. As we all know vey well, Membership Rewards points would be been reduced to nil when she canceled the card. So we decided to transfer them out. Not …