Now, in a more simpler era, airlines had the very simple policy of giving you one mile earned for every mile you flew. Unfortunately, itineraries like the one I booked above meant that the airline would give away a lot of miles without earning much money. In contrast, (business) travelers who often booked very expensive short-distance (often last-minute) itineraries would not earn very many miles, creating a disincentive against a behavior that is very profitable for the airline.

Consequently, over the past three years, the Big Three airlines (United, Delta, and American) have all made the switch to what is known as revenue-based earning, where the number of award miles earned correlates with the amount of money spent on the ticket, rather than the amount of miles flown. Southwest, JetBlue, Virgin America, and Sun Country have always operated this way, leaving Alaska, Frontier, and Spirit as the only domestic airlines that still award miles based on distance flown rather than money spent (though there is rampant speculation that Alaska may be switching away from this, and redeeming miles and Frontier and Spirit is an exercise in frustration).

With the Big Three airlines, they now award you miles equal to five times the price of your airfare before taxes, assuming you don’t have any status. So for the itinerary I booked recently on United, despite flying 2,705 miles, I would have only earned 535 United award miles:

Considering that domestic one-way awards on United start at 10,000 miles (for trips under 700 miles), this means that I won’t have enough award miles to redeem for a free trip until I’ve spent $2,000 on airfare!

If that sounds like a lot of money to spend in order to book a free flight that often prices for under $100, it is!

The good news is that given United’s membership in the Star Alliance, you can choose to earn miles with any of the 27 airlines in the Star Alliance, or one of their non-alliance partners like Aer Lingus.

And while the other airlines would love to also award miles based on how much you spent on United, for obvious reasons, they do not have that data, nor is United going to provide it to them. So they have no choice but to award miles based on how far you fly. That being said, not all tickets will earn miles at the same rate. And that’s not just whether you’re flying in first, business, or economy – even within economy, not all tickets earn at the same rate.

I’m not going to get into a detailed explanation of airline fare classes given how complex a topic is, but what it comes down to is that airlines sell there tickets in different fare “buckets”. Availability of those buckets varies depending on a number of factors, which is also why the person next do you on your flight may have paid a different amount for the same flight.

Somewhere on your ticket there should be a letter indicating the class; in my case it was “G”:

Thanks to the very helpful website wheretocredit.com, I can now see how many miles I’ll earn on a G fare on United Airlines:

Knowing that my flight is 2,702 miles (which I can see from the “PQM” field above), I know that if I credit to Singapore Airlines, I can earn 100% of those miles flown, or 2,702 miles with Singapore Airlines’ KrisFlyer program. As you can see from the chart, my flight will earn the most miles on Singapore Airlines (as it turns out, almost all United flights will earn 100% on Singapore Airlines).

Of course, that’s not to say you should always credit miles to the program where you will earn the most miles, as intuitive as that may seem. Before deciding where to credit your miles, you should first look at the award chart of the airline you want to earn miles on to see how many miles you would need for an award. In this case with Singapore Airlines’ award chart, I can see that a round-trip flight within the United States (which would be on United) booked through Singapore Airlines is 25,000 miles, or, the same as it would cost if I were booking with United miles:

But that’s not the only thing to consider. You should also think about how easy it is to accrue these miles. In this situation, I know that I can transfer my Starwood Preferred Guest points, Citi ThankYou Points, AMEX Membership Rewards, or Chase Ultimate Rewards to Singapore Airlines if I encounter a situation where I need more miles to book an award. Furthermore, you also should be aware of any taxes and fees that airlines may add on to your ticket – in this case I know that none would be added for a domestic flight on United Airlines, but Singapore Airlines can sometimes add on thousands of dollars in fees for first-class redemptions on Singapore Airlines.

But let’s say instead this flight earned 75% on Singapore Airlines and 100% on Ethiopian Airlines. Given that there is no other way to accrue Ethiopian Airlines miles other than flying Star Alliance airlines, I might still lean toward earning on Singapore Airlines. Furthermore, you should look to see how easy it is to redeem miles in the program you are earning with. While I know that it is relatively easy to redeem Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer miles (it does require a phone call if you aren’t booking on Singapore Airlines itself), I might be a little bit more skeptical about doing something like crediting all of my Delta Airlines flights to Czech Airways; while Czech Airways generally earns the most miles for Delta flights (usually 100%), a brief search for stories about redeeming those miles indicates it’s nearly impossible.

I should also mention that this strategy should only be used by people who are not trying to attain status with a particular airline. In order to do so, you need to be crediting all your flights to the same airline, and then based on how many miles you fly, you may be able to earn status with that airline, even if you don’t earn nearly as many actual redeeemable miles. As someone who rarely pays for a flight though, airline status (which requires paid flights) has never been something I’ve prioritized too much. Furthermore, all of the calculations about miles earned are assuming you don’t have status – if you do have status, then you’ll need to factor in any multipliers when determining miles earned.

Did I miss something? Have a question? Let me know!

Cover image: Marina Bay Sands Hotel in Singapore, courtesy of marinabaysands.com

And now that many people’s 100,000-point Ultimate Rewards bonuses have started to post, I’ve talked to many people who are treating this like some untouchable emergency reserve (no pun intended), only to be used for the absolute best travel experiences, and paying cash for everything else.

The thing is, these 100,000+ points (currently worth $1,500 in travel) are not like putting $1,500 in a savings account, the value of which will grow slowly over time, or an investment account, the value of which will likely grow relatively quickly over time, with the potential for losing value. The value of these 100,000 points will only decrease the longer you hold off on using them.

Why? Because unlike in a savings account, when $1,500 is worth $1,500 no matter whom you bank with, the value of your points is determined by the company issuing them, in this case Chase.

So right now, while each point is worth 1.5 cents when redeemed for travel, Chase could easily decide at any point that they are worth 1.3 cents when redeemed for travel, which would instantly decrease the value of your 100,000 points by $200. If this sounds familiar, it’s because Citi recently made similar changes to its competitor Citi Prestige card, decreasing the value of points redeemed for American Airlines flights from 1.6 cents per point to 1.25 cents per point. Thankfully, they gave almost a year’s advance notice when doing so, but companies are not always as generous when making changes, such as when Alaska Airlines overnight raised the price to redeem MileagePlan miles for first class flights on Emirates.

Furthermore, with Chase announcing that they lost $200 million in profit due to Chase Sapphire Reserve signups, some analysts are already speculating that this is a sign that it is not sustainable for Chase financially.

But furthermore, even if Chase keeps the value of their Ultimate Rewards points for Reserve cardholders at 1.5 cents per point when redeemed for travel, there’s no guarantee that its transfer partners won’t make a change to their chart.

Right now 100,000 points transferred to United could get you four roundtrip nonstop flights between the East Coast and West Coast, at 25,000 per roundtrip flight. But United could suddenly decide to raise that to 35,000 per roundtrip flight, meaning that those 100,000 points wouldn’t even get you three flights anymore. Or maybe United doesn’t change the price of its awards, but rather negotiates a 5:4 transfer ratio instead of 1:1, meaning that 100,000 Ultimate Rewards gets you 80,000 United MileagePlus miles instead of 100,000.

Another popular redemption is transferring to Singapore Airlines for their amazing first-class Suites product, which tend to run for just under 100,000 KrisFlyer miles (which can also be transferred 1:1 from Ultimate Rewards) one-way plus taxes and fees. But it’s also one of the hardest awards to find availability on. And Singapore could also take the route of Air France at any point, deciding to no longer allow award redemptions for their first-class product anymore.

So while I know it’s tempting to save up your points for an “aspirational” flight or redemption (no doubt made popular by all the bloggers talking about such flights), the reality is that by the time you have the chance to use them that way, they might no longer be worth as much (or even be able to be used in that way).

In other words, if you have a chance to use your points (within reason obviously), just use them.

As SFO (San Francisco) has been my primary airport for most of the past 7 years, I figured I would start with United, which is the only of the “Big Three” U.S. airlines (United, American, Delta) to have a hub there.

United generally has one of the better online award travel search engines. You have access to almost all of the Star Alliance airlines, and it’s very easy to use. Furthermore, Star Alliance is the largest of the three major airline alliances, which will allow you award flights to almost (not here) anywhere in the world.

To search, all you need to do is check “Search for award travel” on United.com:

There are two types of economy awards on United: Saver, and Standard. Saver awards cost half as many miles as Standard awards , and are generally how you want to use your miles. If there are no saver awards available for your date and you have some flexibility on dates, check other dates. Standard awards should really only be used if you have no flexibility on dates and you don’t want to pay for the flight, but it’s not a very good use of your miles.

United used to display Standard and Saver awards in separate columns, but now they combine them, always listing Saver award space first. For example, here is an award search from Boston to Kathmandu, with saver award space on a routing that combines Lufthansa and Thai Airways, and Standard award space on a routing that combines United and Air India:

In this situation (aside from the fact that Lufthansa and Thai Airways are far better than United and Air India), you want to choose Saver award. Of course, it’s always important to look at the taxes and fees associated with each award. These are generally either charged by the airports that the flight passes through, or sometimes by the airline under the misleading name of “fuel surcharges.” In some situations in which one award might charge you several hundred dollars in additional taxes and fees to book, it might not be a good idea even if it’s less miles. Of course, in this situation, saving $20 in taxes and fees with the second option isn’t worth the extra 42,500 miles.

The problem with United’s online award search:

As I mentioned earlier, United shows most, but not all Star Alliance flights. In particular, there are two airlines that get left out. The first, Shenzhen Airlines, is an airline that you or I will likely never fly unless we live in southern China. The second, Singapore Airlines, is generally considered one of the best airlines in the world, and connects major cities all over the world to Singapore. You do not want to miss a chance to fly Singapore Airlines for free.

While All Nippon Airways (ANA) is generally considered to have the best search engine for Star Alliance availability (in terms of yielding the most results), it’s also extremely difficult to use, and I wouldn’t recommend it for beginners. Instead, to make sure you’re not missing out on Singapore Airlines award space, I would recommend using the search engine for Aeroplan, the loyalty program of Air Canada. (Note that you will need to create a frequent flyer account with Aeroplan first before you can search).

Here’s an example of United’s award search engine showing no nonstop flights between Hanoi and Singapore:

While this itinerary isn’t terrible, it still is frustrating to not fly nonstop between two cities that are so close to each other. But here’s Air Canada’s search engine showing that there is indeed a nonstop flight on that date on Singapore Airlines:

You don’t have to worry about the 20,000 miles displayed next to the award; since you are booking it with your United miles, you’ll use the United rate for one-way travel in Southeast Asia (17,500 miles). You just have to call up the United MileagePlus service center and have them book the award for you.

“OK, but I don’t plan on flying anywhere near Singapore, so can’t I just search United?”

In theory, yes, but given that Singapore Airlines operates five fifth freedom routes (which is when an airline from one country transports passengers between two other countries), it’s often still important to check.

For example, if you were to use United’s award search engine to look for flights from Houston to Moscow, you would see that the fastest way to get there with your miles is by flying United from Houston to Frankfurt, then making a connecting flight to Moscow on Lufthansa:

However, by searching on Air Canada, you’ll see that you can fly nonstop from Houston to Moscow on Singapore Airlines:

Singapore Airlines offers the following fifth freedom flights: (flights that depart the US and go to a country that’s not Singapore)

New York (JFK) to Frankfurt (FRA)

San Francisco (SFO) to Hong Kong (HKG)

San Francisco (SFO) to Seoul (ICN)

Los Angeles (LAX) to Tokyo (NRT)

Houston (IAH) to Moscow (DME)

So if you think there’s a chance that one of those flights might be of use to you on your trip, it’s worth going beyond the United search engine to look for Singapore Airlines award space.

Pro tip: People often use “nonstop” and “direct” interchangeably when describing flights. They are NOT the same thing. A nonstop flight is just what it sounds like – it flies from one city to the other without stopping at any cities in between. A direct flight may stop at a city in between, but and then continue on using the same aircraft and flight number. For example, Singapore Airlines Flight 1 is considered a direct flight from San Francisco to Singapore, even though it stops at Hong Kong on the way. Either the San Francisco to Hong Kong leg or Hong Kong to Singapore leg would be considered nonstop, but not together. In other words, all nonstop flights are direct flights, but not all direct flights are nonstop flights.

Before reading this page, I highly recommend you read my page on Airline Alliances and Partnerships, as it will make much of the below easier to understand.

For a while, I thought frequent flyer programs were only for business travelers and never bothered to sign up and earn miles. However, given the plethora of ways to supplement frequent flyer accounts with additional miles (which I’ll get to later), not choosing to earn miles on paid flights is like throwing away free money. That being said, most frequent flyer programs will take away your miles if you go a certain amount of time (usually 18 months) without any activity, though this often can be eliminated with a co-branded credit card with that airline.

Where and how to credit flights

As I’ve mentioned before, while frequent-flyer programs were designed to reward loyalty to a particular airline, you almost always have multiple options when deciding how you’re going to earn miles from a paid flight.

If the airline you’re flying belongs to one of the three major alliances, you can choose to earn miles on any airline in that alliance. However, you can also choose to earn miles on airlines that that airline partners with, whether or not it’s in that alliance.

This is an incredibly valuable resource for figuring out where to credit your flights.

Now, I realize that this can be a lot to wrap one’s head around. An easy strategy is to just credit your all flights to United, American, or Delta. However, while all the airlines used to operate on the relatively uncomplicated idea that you earn one mile for every mile you fly, the big three airlines in the U.S. (United, American, and Delta) have all recently switched to what’s known as revenue-based earning, where the amount of miles you earn for a flight correlates with how much money you spent on the flight. (American was the last holdout, but this change is set to take effect on March 21, 2016). This obviously rewards business travelers and people who spend a lot of money with an airline, but hurts people who find great deals. For example, in the past, if you were lucky enough to find a $500 roundtrip flight from San Francisco to Shanghai on United, then you would earn around 12,000 miles for that flight, the actual amount you flew. Now, unless you have elite status with United, you’ll earn five times the cost of your flight regardless of distance, meaning that a $500 roundtrip flight from San Francisco to Shanghai will earn you the same amount of miles (2,500) as a $500 roundtrip flight from San Francisco to Dallas.

The good news is that many other airlines still award miles based on distance flown. However this is often subject to the fare class that you book in. In short, a fare class refers to different pricing tiers at which an airline sells its tickets. A more in-depth explanation can be found here. However, for beginners, the important part isn’t knowing what your fare class means, but rather just the letter.

For example, the following round-trip flight to Shanghai from San Francisco on United is in fare class K (which means it’s a discounted economy ticket):

If I choose to earn United miles on this (and I don’t have any elite status with United), I’ll earn 6,280 miles, as they award you miles equals to five times the fare. Given that I’m actually flying over 12,000 miles though, there may be another option for earning more miles with another Star Alliance airline.

In particular, Singapore Airlines is often a favorite for United travelers since United changed their earning structure, given that Singapore Airlines will award 100% of miles flown for almost all fare classes (except N, the absolute lowest, heavily-discounted fare class). So if I were to enter my Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer number (the name of their frequent flyer program) when making this reservation, I would earn over 12,000 miles on Singapore Airlines. Of course, how valuable 12,000 KrisFlyer miles are on Singapore Airlines and what you can do with them is also another factor to consider (in particular, they are known for levying very high taxes and fees on award redemptions), but that’s for another post. Recently, I’ve been crediting my paid United flights (which I actually got for free with the use of my American Express cards) to Air Canada’s Aeroplan program, as I already had existing miles with them.

Below is how one would select the frequent flyer program when making a United reservation online; most airlines offer a similar interface.

Help, I forgot to enter a frequent flyer number (or entered the wrong number) when making a reservation! 

While it’s always best to enter your frequent flyer number when making a reservation, sometimes you will forget (or sometimes if you make a reservation while already logged into your frequent flyer account, it will automatically associate that frequent flyer account with your reservation.

The good news is that you don’t have to decide before your flight where you’re going to credit your miles (though it’s a good idea to do so). Depending on the airline, you usually have up until 3-6 months until after the flight to request mileage credit for the flight you took provided that you were a member of the frequent flyer program before you took the flight (and given that frequent flyer memberships are free, there’s no reason to not sign up for as many as make sense. Some will even send you a cool membership card in the mail). For example, if I want to credit my Emirates flight from Cape Town to Boston with Alaska Airlines (for reasons which I’ll get into later), I can request credit as long as I was a member of Alaska Airline’s Mileage Plan program before I took the flight. However, this can often be a very time consuming process which is better handled before the flight. Usually, you can input or change your frequent flyer number by logging on to your reservation online in advance, though if not, you can always ask the check-in agent when you get to the airport.

As I mentioned, at a later point I’ll get into a post about when it makes sense to credit to different frequent flyer programs, but this is more intended as a how-to. In short, learn which airlines you can credit your flight to (either via alliances or partnerships), learn the fare class of your flight, and then check the earning requirements of the eligible frequent flyer programs.

Pro tip: If you tend to fly America and Delta a lot (but aren’t trying to get elite status with either), I strongly recommend crediting them both to Alaska Airlines, as 50,000 Alaska Mileage  Plan miles will get you a lot further (like a one-way award flight to South Africa on Emirates from the US!) than having 25,000 miles with American and 25,000 miles with Delta.

Still not sure how this works? Feel free to e-mail me or post in the comments below.

When I tell people I book most of my flights using frequent flyer miles, they often wonder how many flights I had to take (pay for) to earn all those miles. And, with the exception of a few, the answer is often “none.” That’s because thanks to Americans’ awful financial management habits, American credit card companies have been able to offer outstanding signup bonuses on a wide variety of credit cards which has made it very easy to accrue frequent flyer miles without setting foot on an airplane.

But this and the subsequent post is going to stick to how to earn miles when you’re actually flying, which can be especially useful for business travelers whose flights are being paid for on the company dime, but also for those times when it just makes more sense to pay for a flight than redeem miles.

Alliances

There are three main airline alliances in the world: Star Alliance, Oneworld (or oneworld), and SkyTeam. Conveniently, there are also three “legacy carriers” remaining in the US: United, American, and Delta. Each of these belongs to a different alliance: United to Star Alliance, American to Oneworld, and Delta to SkyTeam.

So, what is an alliance? Despite certain airlines’ attempts to seemingly do so (like Emirates), no one airline can fly you everywhere you need to go. This is a result of practicality, cost, legal obstacles, and a number of other factors. Rather than make it so you have to separately book each leg of a flight that is on a different carrier, airlines have formed alliances, meaning that if I want to book a ticket that involves flights on more than one airline, I can still book it as one ticket, provided that they are in the same alliance or partner with each other. And consequently, I can earn miles in one loyalty program from paid flights on another airline, provided that they are in the same alliance or partner with each other.

For example, if I wanted to fly from San Francisco to Tehran (a flight that US airlines legally currently can’t offer even if they wanted to), I could fly United from San Francisco to Frankfurt, then Lufthansa from Frankfurt to Tehran. I can still earn United miles for my flight on Lufthansa since they’re also part of Star Alliance. I can then use those United miles I earned to book a flight (or series of flights) on any Star Alliance airline.

The question of which alliance is the best is one of heated debate (which I’ll probably explore at a later point), though Star Alliance has the highest number of airlines and the most destinations. To be honest, it really depends where you want to travel, as some alliances are better in certain regions. For example, Star Alliance is very useful in Africa, given that it has three member airlines, whereas Oneworld has none. On the other hand, Oneworld is very useful in South America, with two member airlines as well as a plethora of flights from American Airlines’ hub in Miami.

This Wikipedia page provides a more concise overview than any travel blog I’ve seen.

Airline partners

The whole alliance thing sounds easy enough, right? Three US airlines, three global alliances. Well, it would be if every major airline fell into one of the three alliances. The problem is, many airlines do not belong to an alliance. This can happen for a number of reasons, sometimes airlines determine that they can be more profitable by staying independent of an alliance, other times, an alliance may determine an airline does not meet certain standards required for admission into an alliance.

Instead, they’ll form a partnership with airlines that they consider important to their flight destinations (often with airlines that serve the country they fly to). For example, Emirates and JetBlue have a partnership so that people flying into one of the major US cities from Dubai on Emirates can smoothly continue their flight to a smaller US city not served by Emirates (for example if I wanted to fly from Dubai to Charleston, South Carolina, I could fly Emirates from Dubai to Boston, then JetBlue from Boston to Charleston all on one itinerary). As a result, if I primarily fly domestic and don’t anticipate flying Emirates for a while, I could choose to earn JetBlue TrueBlue points for my Emirates flight (or earn Emirates Skywards for the JetBlue flight if I anticipate it being more important to fly Emirates again). Always check the individual airlines’ rules first before making any decisions however, as some may choose you to earn miles on partner flights but not redeem miles on partner flights (or vice versa). This is indeed the case with the Emirates-JetBlue partnership, as you can NOT use JetBlue miles to book Emirates award flights.

The Emirates-JetBlue partnership is an easier example however, because neither of those airlines are affiliated with an alliance. Where it can get complicated is when you have partnerships involving one airline in an alliance and one airline not in an alliance. A good example is Alaska Airlines. Alaska has partnerships with both American and Delta (among other airlines), even though they are in rival alliances. So, what does this mean?

Can you earn Alaska Airlines miles on American Airlines flights? Yes

Can you earn Alaska Airlines miles on Delta Airlines flights? Yes

Can you earn Delta Airlines SkyTeam miles on Alaska Airlines flights? Yes

Can you earn American Airlines AAdvantage miles on Alaska Airlines flights? Yes

Can you redeem Alaska Airlines miles for American Airlines award flights? Yes

Can you redeem Alaska Airlines miles for Delta Airlines award flights? Yes

Can you redeem Delta Airlines SkyTeam miles for Alaska Airlines award flights? Yes

Can you redeem American Airlines SkyTeam miles for Alaska Airlines award flights? Yes

Can you redeem Alaska Airlines miles for Oneworld award flights? NO. It doesn’t matter that Alaska Airlines partners with an airline (American) that is a member of the Oneworld alliance.

Can you redeem Alaska Airlines miles for Skyteam award flights? NO. It doesn’t matter that Alaska Airlines partners with an airline (Delta) that is a member of the Skyteam alliance.

Easy enough?

The bottom line: Whenever you have a paid flight, take time to learn about what frequent flyer programs you can earn miles for, and which will make the most sense for you given your future travel plans.