How to Get the Most Out of Your Frequent Flyer Miles
When you fly on a paid air ticket, you have a choice when it comes to how many and what type of air miles you can earn. Many airlines are members of the alliance and almost all have partnerships with other airlines. In most cases, you can earn miles on a paid flight with the airline you are flying with or with a partner airline. This can seriously increase the number of miles you can earn if you know how to do it right. Here’s how to make sure you’re earning as many miles as possible.
Understanding airline alliances and partnerships
The three major airline alliances are Oneworld, SkyTeam and Star Alliance. If you are flying with an airline that is part of one of these alliances, you will be able to earn miles with another airline that is part of the alliance. For example, if you are flying on a United (Star Alliance member) flight, but you know that Turkish Airlines (another Star Alliance member) has some incredible treats that you want to take advantage of, you can credit that flight to United to Turkish and earn money instead. Turkish Miles&Smiles. .
Some airlines also partner with other airlines that are not part of the same alliance, and you can also credit your flights to these non-alliance partners.
Find the fare code for your flight
To calculate how many miles you can earn per flight, you need to know your flight’s fare code. The fare code is not only economy, business or first class (these are called the fare class ). Rather, a fare code is a single letter designation such as “B”, “M”, or “K”. Your fare code will determine how many miles you earn on your flight.
Finding the fare code can sometimes be a problem. In the best case, your rate code will be included in the confirmation email. If it doesn’t, you have several options. You can visit matrix.itasoftware.com and find your flight. ITA Matrix is not a flight booking system, but a search engine. When you go to the last page, the fare code will be displayed. However, this only works if you are looking for the rate code at the time of booking. There is no guarantee that once booked, seats in the same “fare basket” will be available.
If you forgot to look up the fare code at the time of booking and it’s not in your confirmation email, your best bet is to contact the airline and ask. You can call them or contact the airline via social media (especially Twitter).
Look for your options at wheretocredit.com
Once you know the fare code, it’s time to see how many miles you can earn by traveling with different airlines, wheretocredit.com is the best place to do it: enter the valid airline you’re flying with and the fare code you want get. you searched in the previous step.
Where to Credit will provide you with a table that lists the airlines you can credit this flight to and the number of miles you will earn – usually either as a percentage of total miles flown or miles earned per dollar spent.
Here’s a tip: if you don’t know how many miles your flight is, visit gcmap.com and enter your itinerary. Great Circle Mapper will give you an estimate of the flight distance (which may be slightly different from how the airline calculates the distance). From here you will be able to compare the number of miles you can earn through many different programs.
Other things to consider
- Be mindful of the availability and value of miles. Not all miles are the same and not all miles are easily accessible. While one airline may offer an earning rate that is 30% higher, miles can cost 50% less or are difficult to earn more. You should consider this before deciding which program to lend to.
- Don’t spray too thin. Think about the number of programs you already have miles on – it’s important not to spread yourself across too many programs because miles are worthless until you have enough miles to redeem for rewards.
- Remember that the cheapest flight is not always the cheapest. While you may be able to get a cheaper flight when flying with a particular airline, it’s important to remember that the cheapest flight isn’t always the cheapest once you factor in the value of the miles you’ve earned. This is especially true when considering whether or not to fly as a low cost carrier (LCC), as LCCs do not typically have frequent flyer rewards programs. There are even cases where the net cost of flying business class, including the value of miles earned, can be close to the cost of flying economy class – if you find such an example, treat yourself!