Hello,
I am figuring that since I want to start traveling a lot more that a credit card that offers frequent flier miles might be a good idea. I know I received some miles from my trip to Australia and was thinking about signing up for the card that will give me another 15K miles. I have no debts now and have had credit cards for years without ever carrying even a one month debt on them, so this won't be something that to get miles I am up to my neck in debt or intrest payment because of it.

Anyone use these miles much? have you had good or bad expereinces with them? have you found many draw backs or gotchas to using any particular card/Airline? Are you paying much for the Annual Fee or are you on a free one? Just looking for general uses people have used them for and if you think it is worth it.

SuDZ

very good question....i too have always wondered about how they actually work :thumbup:

Last year, I signed up for a United Miles Visa card because I was planning a trip to Australia, and I already had some United miles and wanted to save money on a ticket. So, I signed up for the card, got my 15,000 miles as part of the sign-up, actually purchased another 25,000 or so and that got me to the 60,000 needed for a round trip ticket from the U.S. to Australia. for about $400 (the cost of the 25,000 miles I purchased). I think I pay an annual fee of $35. I also trave a lot for work and primarily fly United. Now, I put ALL my expenses on this card. Groceries, gas, phone bill, gym bill, etc. I have earned a ton of miles. I had no problem using my miles for Australia - but to date, that is the only time I have used them. I just had to book the ticket a couple of months in advance. More popular routes will be hard to get, and you need to be flexible on what dates and times you will settle for (i.e. easier to get a freq flyer seat on a Tuesday flight than a Saturday). So...if your going to charge a lot on the card, its worth the fee, if your not, you can just get the intro miles and keep it for a year and ditch it. Its not a bad deal. There are other cards where you can earn points to use on any airline. I have never used those. I get frequent flyer perks with United so I stick with them.

LiveFreeorDie,

I started looking into some more of these today like AAdvantage since they allowed you to use Airlines all over the world. The benefit is that some cards I was finding wouldn't do certain countries or what not and this really opened up the oppurtunities. The annual fee however is higher at like $80 bucks or so. However after looking at some of the mileage buying options you can get some decent deals. Right now I am just signed up for a cash rewards card which just gets me like 3% or something back, but just annually and not really getting me much. I think investigating some airline cards might be able to help me travel a bit cheaper some times.

Thanks.

SuDZ

Yeah - if you ever pick an airline card, you need to understand where they fly and what alliances they have. For instance, United is a member of the Star Alliance and so I can use United Miles (and earn them) on flights with a wide variety of airlines. While United has a lot of flights to Asia, they do not really fly to Europe. However, Lufthansa flies to Europe and is a Star Alliance member, so I can take them if I want. I can also use Thai, USAir and a whole slew of other airlines...some obscure, some not. If you go with an airline program, check out who they partner with and read the small print on their websites for using miles with partners. Good luck.

One other note - some people take earning miles to the extreme, and they compute what the average cost of a mile generally is, and they then look for really cheap, long flights where the miles they would earn are at much less than the "market value". For instance, United had a last minute special to various Asian cities. Some as cheap as $250 R/T from the west coast of the U.S. You can earn maybe 12,000 miles for the roundtrip...or more if you have premier status. Many people likely took a roundtrip to say, Hong Kong, and came right back, just to get the miles because the 12,000 miles are worth more than $250. Seems a bit extreme to me, but people do it.

sounds like Punch Drunk Love style thinking...me likes it :)

Yeah something tells me I won't have to aorry about that. I mean going that overboard, but I would love to get a flight that cheap and get to actually take a look around a bit hehe.

SuDZ

AA also allows you to use miles to buy whole vacations or use miles on hotels. BA is flights only, NWA is flights only...

I have all three

I went ahead and got the AAdvantage card. I had some miles from my Aussie trip anyhow nd now am at like 25K miles after signing up for the card. another 50K is all I need and can look at Japan or Africa next year. well that is the hope anyhow.

I do have a b-day coming up and my family did say if I wanted they would do the program where you can gift miles to help me get there a bit. Heck even a few thousand miles closer would be great.

SuDZ

:lol: i dunno why i thought of this....but i just saw you on a flight and while in the air they hand you a parachute and say...well sir, this is as far as your miles will take you

One time I was on a plane and I said to my friend "Last time I was on a plan I wound up needing a parachute", he knowingly knew I was talking about my skydiving trip but the lady on the other side of me just looks panicked and says "This is my first time flying... please tell me that doesn't happen much"

SuDZ

I know a few business people that use a TON of skymiles.

They told me to book your tickets far in advance (6 months or so) because there is a very small number of milles seats on a flight. They go quickly especially for popular destinations and peak season.

I personally have the Delta Skymiles American Express. 50,000 for RT from USA to Europe.

Hope this helps.

foofiter

:cheers: