Airline mileage programs

[Chuckanut]

This news in todays WSJ got me thinking about using up my meager points and doing nothing but cash back rewards.

American Airlines will soon re --ward travelers for booking trips only when they do so through American itself or its preferred channels.

Starting in July, travelers will only receive Loyalty Points and AAdvantage miles for airfare if they book directly with American or one of its partners, or with a preferred travel agency. Otherwise, travelers won’t receive points or miles for their flights. Other methods of earning rewards with American, such as spending on co-branded credit cards, won’t be affected by this change.

I have a gift certificate on Delta with a few hundred dollars on it. And about 60,000 points in my mileage account with Delta. I dropped their CC years ago when I started flying more on Alaska.

 

[Out of Steam]

Especially since retiring, I don't fly often enough to bother with frequent flyer miles.

I do get an occasional free hotel night from Marriott or Holiday Inn/IHG.

 

[Lorenzo]

Living in Delta's hub, I have long been beholden to them. They flew everywhere imaginable, and for many years I was able to earn decent status with them. This year, big changes in their FF program means I am no longer going to be able to earn any useful level of status. Even one or two international trips and a Caribbean trip each year isn't enough now to get to the spending threshold.

A silver lining in Delta's FF program tightening is that my wife and I no longer feel beholden to Delta. We're flying for the first time on SAS for this year's Europe trip, because it was less expensive than Delta and there is no status incentive for us to fly on Delta anymore. It's actually quite a liberating feeling.

As you mentioned, @Chuckanut, a cash-back card probably makes the most sense.

 

[OldConch]

Flew to Auckland earlier this year using Alaska miles and home from Sydney using AA miles. Flew inter-Australia flights on Virgin Australia using United miles 3 times on that trip. Sitting on the balcony of my AirBnB overlooking the Douro River in Porto this afternoon. Got here using points transferred to Turkish Airlines. Flying on points from Porto to Amsterdam and then on to Birmingham on KLM booked with Virgin Atlantic points. LHR back home to Seattle on British Airways booked with Cathay Pacific miles. We have 5 more roundtrip trips in the next 12 months booked mostly with various points/miles currencies.

We book directly with airlines or their partners almost 100% of the time so this news isn't so bad for us.

I can definitely see the allure of cash back cards but until we're finished traveling it's points and miles all the way.

 

[brett]

We have flown around the world on reward points. That was then. Now, the reward plans are terrible. Our point balances lasted for a few years into retirment. Seats and point cost kept getting worse.

We cancelled our premium airline points credit cards. What used to be worth 3-5 cents a point became 1 cent or less a point.

Our airline loyalty is with price, routing, schedule. We do have preferences, especially on international routes, and will pay a premium for them depending on the amount of the premium

 

[Gotadimple]

Cash back would be nice, but don't you need to hold their credit card to do that? I have both Alaska and Delta and I earn in other ways besides booking air through them. Alaska is still my favorite as I can apply points to reduce airfare. Delta I haven't travelled on in years but do earn points when using Lyft.

 

[OldShooter]

The days when reward miles were worth much are long gone. Every year every airline has reduced the value of not only new miles but already-earned miles. Now the miles are nearly worthless. Anyone with the option of cashing out should probably do it.

Now the game is "miles" earned via credit card purchases. I don't even know if my USBank Visa is connected to an airline. And I don't care. I just cash them out every once in a while. Airlines are enemies of consumers, as the current ruckus about hidden fees illustrates.

 

[euro]

After years of dodging expiration dates for my (roughly 1 million) AA miles, I tried to donate them to charity but few charities know how to handle this and I ended up finally missing an expiration date and losing the entire stash! What a drag, but alas, I'm pretty much done with air travel, so not that big a loss to me.

 

[HawkeyeNFO]

It's so easy to sign up for a credit card and get miles. I rarely pay for plane tickets anymore. I find American to be very generous. They have so many different credit cards, that between my wife and I we could have a dozen or so cards if we wanted, each with about 60,000 miles bonus. These cards prevent you from paying baggage fees too. Then consider that miles from British Airways, Iberian, and Aer Lingus can also be used for American flights, and they each have their own credit cards too. That said, I don't really expect to accrue many miles by actually flying these days.

 

[Montecfo]

I'm AA lifetime AAdvantage gold. It is nice. Most of our points travel these days is on domestic American booked using British Airways Avios.

Still get a lot of value that way. And still get premium seats, free checked bags etc.

 

[OldConch]

You can also use AA miles on their partners. We've used them on Japan Airlines and Qatar Airlines.

 

[Romer]

Traveled a lot for work so I am a lifetime Gold United member. No check bag fee, always in economy plus. Priority boarding

We also have the United card and use the card for everything. It pays for Global Express/TSA Precheck and every 5 years I get a second United card to pay for the wife's Global Express, collect 50-80K bonus miles and then cancel before the year is up. The card also gives us two united Club passes which covers one trip a year and is worth the cost of the annual membership to the card.

We have been saving miles/points for two business class seats to Australia as the current cost is $12K. Think we are about there now or before the year is out.

T he lifetime benefits are what drives thee United Loyalty. Otherwise I would just shop around more. We are flying Iceland Air to Iceland in August, it was much less money and for Business Class to boot.

 

[fosterscik]

It's true that it's hard to get status with airline credit cards, but we're keeping our AA and Delta credit cards. They cost us ~$100/year to maintain but the free checked bags they provide easily covers their costs. If they remove that perk I'll close those accounts. I rarely charge anything to them (not even flights on their airlines - those go on cash back cards). We mostly use a Chase sapphire reserve card. While it's expensive the travel insurance, lounge access and no-fee primary car insurance benefits make it worthwhile for us.

 

[Sojourner]

It's so easy to sign up for a credit card and get miles.

That said, I don't really expect to accrue many miles by actually flying these days.

+1
Trying to earn lots of miles based on CC spending or actually purchasing tickets and flying often with an airline is, IMHO, a fool's errand. The redemption/rewards rates these days are much lower than what you'd get by simply putting all your spending on a 2% cash back card. The only effective way to earn airline rewards miles is by applying for new CCs with big sign-up bonuses from time to time, and then canceling those cards once you've spent enough to earn the sign-up bonus. A good example of such a card would be the Citi / AAdvantage Platinum Select card which has a 75,000 AA miles bonus when you spend $3,500 within the first six months, and there is no annual fee.

 

[foxfirev5]

DW just cancelled her Delta AMEX card after the 50% increase in annual fees. Airline miles are a joke and the only reason we kept the card was for the free baggage feature. Now that we're down to one big trip a year the benefit has gone away.

 

[explanade]

I don't think this is anything new necessarily.

For at least the past 5 years, FF programs now make you earn points in addition to dollars to get status.

These points are pretty much based on the fares you pay and you can only get points by booking directly.

The other wrinkle is that some credit cards give you bonus points for booking directly with an airline instead of going through something like Expedia.

And these aren't airline-branded cards either but things like Amex Gold, which gives you 3X points for booking directly.

But they keep raising the miles or points required to get frequent flyer awards so at some point, more and more people are going to decide that FF programs aren't worth it.

Supposedly business travel still hasn't returned to pre-pandemic levels. That is, businesses aren't booking as many business-class tickets for their employees to travel for company business.

Business travel, especially on premium tickets, have driven a lot of FF programs. Usually the people who earn the most miles and points are those flying on OPM or Other People's Money, i.e. their employer.

 

[Drake3287]

Yep, these Airline Reward programs are almost a dinosaur these days with the exception of those few that fly a lot on business. Rewards are almost non existent now compared to years ago and getting slashed almost routinely. I also stopped using my United Mileage Plus Card and loyalty to United. I fly who's ever cheapest these days other than with Spirt who I'd never use.

And like most people, I switched my credit card to a cash reward card that easily pays me $2,500. a year in cash. I can buy a lot of airline tickets each year for that kind of money.

 

[upupandaway]

You want to know what is really frustrating? United and many others are going to a system that is not just completed flights but a combination of min flight segments and min spend for their tiers. I fly every other week to the east coast from Midwest. Hub to Hub. My flight segments are very high but because I do very little big ticket international flight I barely make gold on United. There are also maximums that you can earn from credit card spend for tier qualifying points. They are very low. I have the United Club card because my company reimburses the ridiculous $550 annual fee so that is the only thing that helps a bit. For all this complaining I will fly my family to Japan next year for a couple bucks in fees so it is what it is.

 

[Koolau]

The days when reward miles were worth much are long gone. Every year every airline has reduced the value of not only new miles but already-earned miles. Now the miles are nearly worthless. Anyone with the option of cashing out should probably do it.

Now the game is "miles" earned via credit card purchases. I don't even know if my USBank Visa is connected to an airline. And I don't care. I just cash them out every once in a while. Airlines are enemies of consumers, as the current ruckus about hidden fees illustrates.

Yeah, I prefer cash back rather than miles. I've always found the mileage reward palns to be a rip off for the most part. We don't fly enough to really earn much before they change the rules again but YMMV.

 

[pacergal]

We have an Alaska Air visa, racked up a bunch of points as we have not traveled much the past few years. Booked a cruise this fall and the air tickets for DH and I were $22 plus miles. Still have a ton of miles and DH and I are starting tp travel again.

 

[tulak]

I went the opposite direction this year and got a Delta Amex Reserve. It gets me
halfway to silver status, which is enough for picking seats without paying.

I have a few loyalty cards and they all pay for their yearly fee with the added bonus of getting status which has nice perks. For example, the Marriott CC gives me room upgrades, club access, and free breakfast. The latter two save me money, since I don’t have to go out for food/drinks.

I don’t do any of this for miles, since I agree miles are a bad value. I find it’s the other perks that are more valuable.

 

[OldConch]

I went the opposite direction this year and got a Delta Amex Reserve. It gets me
halfway to silver status, which is enough for picking seats without paying.

I have a few loyalty cards and they all pay for their yearly fee with the added bonus of getting status which has nice perks. For example, the Marriott CC gives me room upgrades, club access, and free breakfast. The latter two save me money, since I don’t have to go out for food/drinks.

I don’t do any of this for miles, since I agree miles are a bad value. I find it’s the other perks that are more valuable.

DW and I each have a Delta Reserve card. The annual fee increased to $650 but they added an easy to use $200 Delta Stays (hotel) credit and they changed the language so that annual companion passes can now be used to Alaska, Hawaii, Mexico, and the Caribbean. They're keeper cards for us.

We've got quite a few co-branded loyalty cards that we pay annual fees for. One of the best is the Amex Hilton Aspire which has a $550 annual fee. You currently get a free night certificate and 160,000 Hilton points after you pay the annual fee and spend $6k in the first 6 months. The card gives you diamond status, $400 in Hilton credits, $200 in airline credits, Clear credit, and a free night certificate each year. We used the free night at the Waldorf in Cabo last year. Another keeper card.

DW and I each got a Capital One Venture X when they had 100,000 point bonuses and $200 AirBnB credit. The annual fee is $395 but they offer an easy to use $300 travel credit and 10,000 points each year on renewal. The cards offer good lounge access, CDW coverage on rental cars, and Global Entry/Pre-check credit. They earn 2x on all purchases and most importantly points can be transferred to a bunch of airlines and hotels. Another keeper card. Got the Venture cards as well for another 75k each. Probably not keeper cards.

I would agree that ongoing spending on most cards to earn miles may be a bad value compared to cash back. That doesn't mean MILES are a bad value. A couple of examples:

Flew to Japan in October from our home airport to Narita in business class for 60,000 AA miles.

Transferred our Cap One miles to Turkish airlines and booked 8 business class flights from Seattle through Istanbul for 45,0000 miles each. That's crazy value.

Our retirement budget doesn't include travel in the front of the plane but we do and it's not because we spend money on cash-back cards.

 

[LateToFIRE]

DW and I are fond of accumulating AMEX points. We can transfer them to various airline FF programs, as needed, or use them for a wide range of other purposes - hotels, car rental, shopping, etc.

 

[Surewhitey]

DW likes (and understands) the AA system. She's always looking for another card (1 for each of us) for their miles. She really does well with them & her travels for w*rk. We're about to fly into Frankfurt and out of Munich (flexible one ways) in a week & our last year's trip, r/t to Madrid, are just a couple of perks...

I personally don't play the game. I'm a 2% Fidelity guy and Chase Sapphire bonus points for cash (2 for both) are nice every 4 years or so. Also business Ink is decent.

Interestingly, AT&T just offered a $5 discount for using a debit card or bank to auto pay. Guess they're tired of paying fees too.

 

[athena53]

AA lifetime Gold here, too, so I gravitate to them for Coach domestic. For long-haul Business, I select whatever fits my schedule and price preferences. You get the same perks anyway.

I did have enough miles to get a LHR round trip in Business Class in September and my overnights at LHR will be on Hilton points.

I’ve finally started with the credit card churn game-two Hilton cards and AA’s Executive MasterCard. I make the minimum spend for the bonus, preferably with that brand, and after that use it ONLY on that brand and go back to Fidelity and Costco Visas. Unfortunately I may have to renew the AA MC. Grandkids like the lounge at ORD. My fault for spoiling them.