Earn Miles Flying (It's More Complicated Than You Think)

What’s the best way rack up miles for future free travel?  Not surprisingly, it’s to get in a plane and fly.  A few roundtrips coast-to-coast will do more to increase the number of miles in your than nearly anything else.  There are other things you can do to add 10,000+ miles to a frequent flyer account at once, but nothing besides flying will give you consistent and large chunks of miles to build toward that future trip.

Remember that the last post encouraged you to have a goal and keep it?  That thought is going to be important to keep in mind because to get where you want to go, financially it might cost you a little more. 

Stick with a winner.  With whom do you have miles right now?  Whoever it is, try your best to funnel all your future flying with that airline.  If you are, on average, earning 2,000 miles per roundtrip flight toward future travel, it’s going to take a long time to earn a free flight.  But if you earn 2,000 miles on five different airlines you have five different accounts totaling 2,000 miles instead of one account with a total sitting at one-tenth toward your goal.  Stick with a winner and keep building those miles. 

It can be tough, though, and I understand why.  For the sake of responsibility you’ll need to find a financial breaking point and stick to that number.  While the prices of flights change and change often, they generally are fairly competitive with each other.  So, if you want to fly to LA and the airline with which you’ve flown a few times and with which you’ve collected miles offers a flight that costs $35 more than its nearest competitor, spend the extra $35 and continue collecting miles on a single airline.  If you’re a family of five and your target airline is going to cost you $65 more than the cheapest ticket – OK, that doesn’t work.  But if it is a marginal difference, stick with your winner, stick to your goal and look forward to free travel.

A Mile Collector's Warning

Most people have a dream, once-in-a-lifetime trip loosely planned in the back of their head.  Many would like to steal a kiss while their mate stares on at the Eiffel Tower.  Some envision theirselves snorkeling off the Great Barrier Reef.  Others want to just spend a week bumming around Maui and learning to surf or they may want to turn a rocky corner and walk up to the majesty that is Petra.  Whatever your travel dream is – keep it!  With the right planning it can be achieved.  It might take you years to get there, maybe even decades, but your everyday life can help you get there and part of this series will help you understand that.  My warning concerning collecting miles toward that dream is this: please do not lose sight of the bigger goal.  Airlines (somewhat dishonestly) advertise that for a mere 25,000 miles you can earn one free round trip ticket to any commercial airport within the US 48 states.  But why would you waste those miles on that?  

No one secures a free RT ticket to a domestic location for 25,000.  It’s going to cost you 40,000 miles.  It just is.  At 40,000 banked miles you’re almost halfway to that dream trip to London.  However long it took to get the 40,000 miles, double the time and now you’re roughly going to have enough for one free ticket back and forth to a dream location.  Now let’s go back and visit the ticket you were going to buy that was going to cost you 40,000 miles for a trip from Indy to Dallas.  Wait two weeks and the cost to simply buy the ticket is probably going to be affordable and you’ll earn more miles toward your dream goal.  Shoot, in the time it takes to read this blog the price for the ticket might be affordable.  The pricing of flights is never stable.   What I’m saying is, don’t waste your miles on a easily affordable domestic trip.  Are there exceptions to this rule?  Of course.  If you want to go to West Yellowstone in June it might cost you $600+ to do so.  Burn the miles.  What about flying to Telluride in November?  Some airports are super expensive.  Just keep in mind the value that your miles have.  Once they’re gone, they’re gone.  Was Seattle worth all the hard work to burn all those miles?  

Please note, if business travelers stumble upon this blog (which is fairly unlikely), this doesn’t apply to you.  To the woman who’s earning 75,000+ miles per year for her job – spend your miles how you want.  With your schedule you don’t have to wait all that long to achieve that dream trip.  This entry is for the guy like me.  The guy that flies a hanful of times per year but can’t fully see the value his miles have.  Stick with me and this series, and I’ll show you how you can achieve that dream trip.

How I Earned My Miles

Travel for me began as a kid heading back and forth to Daytona Beach with my family on Spring Break vacations.  More non-traditional travel was accomplished rolling around the country in my parent’s full-size van tent camping across the United States.  The Summer I was 8/9 (my birthday is in July) we traveled through nearly every state west of the Mississippi River on a tent-camping trip.  It was a five week vacation and we only spent a handful of nights in a building either at a relative’s home in San Diego or at a conference hotel in Salt Lake City.  Two years later we also tent-camped for three weeks up and down the remaining states my sister and I had not visited east of the Mississippi River, again only staying in a hotel a few nights for a conference.  I open with those facts as a quick disclaimer for why I have earned so few miles, which might seem strange given my next statement: I have earned five long-haul free flights from my frequent flyer miles.

Now, a long-haul is not earning 25,000 miles over time and hopping on a plane in Indianapolis and heading up to New York City for a weekend.  No, no.  I have earned three free flights round trip into Europe from the Midwest and two to Hawaii.  I did all this while only having about 50,000 miles in my lifetime mileage account with Delta (and then Northwest).  A typical coach-class round trip flight to Europe on Delta will cost you 90,000 miles.  So how was I able to earn five free long hauls on less than 50,000 miles?

That’s what this series will cover.  How I Earned My Miles will detail the difference between Elite Qualifying Miles and just good ol’ regular miles you see on television commercials and E-mail marketing pieces.  More importantly, I hope to show you avenues to earn miles that you may have not considered before.   Topics covered and inroads to earn miles will include flying (it’s more complicated than you’d think), credit cards, consumer habits, promotions and more.  I’ll open the series with a warning about collecting miles, a discussion of value of your earned miles and a plea for you to create a long haul goal for your miles earned.  I hope you enjoy the series and get to learn a thing or two that put you one step closer to that dream trip to China, Paris, Maui or wherever your little traveling heart desires. 

IODC August -- Rioja and Tapas!

The last meeting of the IODC was a record-setter!  We had twenty people join us at Brugges Braserie in Broad Ripple this month!  We had so many people that we were not all able to sit together.  Somewhat with that in mind – and always letting the members make the final suggestions on the country to celebrate next – August’s meeting of the Indy Offshore Dining Club will celebrate Spain at BARcelona Tapas in downtown Indianapolis on August 9^th at 7:00pm.  

For those unfamiliar, a BARcelona is a tapas-style restaurant serving small plates of food.  There are maybe somewhere near 100 items on the menu, all very Spanish and the majority of which seem to have a focus on ‘jamon’ (ham).  Ham is celebrated in a big, big way in Spain.  

My wife and I just returned from a trip to Spain last month and we can attest that the tapas bars are popular and everywhere.  It genuinely did seem how the majority of food was ordered and served where we visited.

This should be one of the most affordable IODC meetings yet.  Don’t care to spend a lot of money?  Get a glass of water and a single tapa.  You’re going to get a small plate of food with three or four bites worth of food for only three or four bucks.  There’s certainly a strong sense of casualness at a tapas bar that lends to only eating a small amount of food if that’s all you care to do.  This is not a place where you wait for everyone to get their food to eat.  You can’t.  With so many items on the menu being prepared in small quantities, some items come out of the kitchen right away and others take longer.  But that’s part of what makes it so much fun and lends to the sense of a casual gathering of friends.   And while I’ve been using the phrase “tapas bar” it is definitely a place where being 21 is not necessary.  “Tapas bar” is just the term coined for small-plates-style dining.

I hope you can join us for a glass of rioja and a tapa or two.  If you do plan on joining please RSVP on the Facebook event page of send a note to DrakeTotallyTravels [at] Gmail.com.  There is a small room at BARcelona Tapas that  I hope we can use for our group.  Parking right next to the restaurant is sometimes difficult to find, but if you drive on Delaware north or New York Street (Past Mass Ave) you should find street parking.  See you all there!

Why We Hate The French

Truthfully, I know nothing of the French.  I’ve visited Paris four times in my life, but I’ve never been further from that city’s center than Disneland Parc, which is only about 45 minutes outside of the city by train.  (Plus, Disneyland Parc basically feels like I’m back inside the United States.)  But, there was at least one French dude on this past visit that had me boiling and feeling in tune with mulleted, Skoal-dipping Americans who ‘hate the French’ but have likely never visited France, met a French person or even left the country (or may be county) in their life.  

My wife and I recently celebrated our first anniversary on a European vacation.  We started in Paris, the city of lights and love.  Paris is – even after the awful experience I’m about to unfold for you – one of my favorite cities on the planet.  Joining them in that league, by the way, are Barcelona (new to the list), DC, Indy and New York – not in any particular order.  I’m fortunate in that I’ve learned enough words in French that I’m able to begin conversations in French that end in English out of a kindness shown to me from my dialoguing partner.  I think that helps and has kept me from having the cliché experience of dealing with the snobby, French jerk caricatured by so many Americans.  Not so the case on Saturday morning, though.

It began when Delta changed our Friday afternoon flight into Europe on Wednesday.  Katie and I were flying on awards tickets.  We were scheduled to connect in Montreal where we would switch to an Air France flight to Paris.  Scheduled landing was 5:55am.  Yuck!  I never wanted to land that early, but it was an awards ticket during the height of travel season.  I had few options with the miles we had.  However, as mentioned earlier, our flight was changed to land approximately 7:35am instead of 5:55am.  I learned of the flight change from Delta while at Disney World on a vacation immediately proceeding this one.  Actually, I was in the airport when I got the E-mail.  So, I went to a Delta customer care desk and asked if I could possibly change my flight since a change had been made to our flight.  I let the not-so-happy woman behind the counter know that with the flight change it was unlikely my wife and I were going to make our reservations for the lift at the Eiffel Tower.  Since it was unlikely I was curious if she could route me from IND instead of flying out of Cincy (which was the only city where we could originate to Europe with the miles I had accumulated).   She obliged and we landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport a little before 8:00am – definitely missing our reservations for the lift at the Eiffel Tower.  

When my wife and I finally did make it to the Eiffel Tower, we tried using our pre-paid tickets to get to the top.  A woman told us in fairly well put together English, “It is too late.”  I kindly informed her of the flight change and that I had no power over the occurrence of the day.  She turned to someone else, a dude, who went into full snobby, French douche-mode.  His hands went up and he said, “There’s nothing we can do.  You missed it.”  I shared, what I thought was a smart argument, that the Eiffel Tower had my money, and me, just at a different time than expected.  Were they to really keep my money right there in front of me?  

Le Douche.  They would.

That dude was the prototypical French dick.  The kind of guy we Americans stereotype as ‘French’ incorrectly.  But his attitude lived up to every bit of the characterization.  I instantly hated all people and things French. 

We tried at the Eiffel Tower office to explain our claim, but a woman basically explained that there was nothing they could do.  I could maybe write for a refund, but no promises.  I did write for the refund and a prompt, froggy reply came the next day telling me that refunds would not be permitted.

My wife and I had just spent four days in Disney World, were home for about 12 hours, and then left for ten days in Europe.  We were exhausted.  There was no way we were waiting in a several-hours-long line to pay to go to the top after we had already paid to go to the top.

I get it, I honestly do.  If everyone missed their reserved time and tried to use the lift whenever they desired, it would defeat the purpose of paying to skip the line.  That said, the message could be delivered in a nicer manner.  Something I’m confident that jerk at the reservations line will never learn. 

A Warning For Disney World Car Rentals

Yeah, the whole car rental experience actually ended quite sour.  My wife and I awoke between 3:00am and 3:30am for our flight back home from Disney World.  I was on approximately 90 minutes worth of sleep due to my love of Disney theme parks.  I thought about fueling up near the hotel and then just topping off when I got close to the airport.  The airport is about 20 miles away from the Kissimmee ‘Maingate’ area, so I was going to burn approximately a gallon of fuel; an amount that was likely to be noticeable upon return.  I didn’t want to make two stops so I decided even though it was likely more expensive to fuel up near the airport, it was worth the money to save on time and be certain we were checked-in and ready for our flight.

I could not have been more wrong. 

Fuel near our hotel was $3.45 a gallon.  At the two Suncoast Energy, price-fixing gas stations near the airport: $5.79.  That was for the cheap stuff.  It was a nearly 68% increase over market rate.  And both gas stations were priced at the same number.  At best, the pricing of fuel there could be described as silly and immoral.  In truth, it’s just flat out gouging of the tourists that provide the area jobs.  

This may seem whiny, but I feel someone from Thrifty should have warned us about the gas prices near the airport.  There’s no way they couldn’t know.  It wouldn’t be that difficult to pass along that the two closest gas stations near the airport are known to price-gouge their customers and Thirfty suggests that you fill up away from the airport and only top-off at the gas stations closest to the airport.  (With the reminder that the tank must be retuned full.)  This should be mentioned only after (of course) the client refuses the Thrifty-tank option where Thrifty charges their customers for a full tank of fuel no matter how full the tank is at a price approximately 15% more than market rate.  In hindsight, that would have been a much better option.  

I was also disappointed in the podcasts to which I am a giddy subscriber.  I’ve never heard Lou Mongello, the boys over at WDW Today or Ricky Brigante speak about price gouging near the airport, but a quick Google search this morning revealed that I’m definitely not the only person who has experienced price gouging from this company.  Posts on RipoffReport.com are the first entries to popup on Google when searching the company.  Brigante’s operation has a ‘Tip of the Week’ segment and I’ll definitely be writing in concerning this ordeal.

This much I can assure you: I’ll never experience that problem again with a car rental.  I will give myself enough time to fuel up at a reasonable rate and top-off as I approach the airport.  If I would like to seek some revenge against Suncoast Energy, I might top-off in this manner.)  

ToSuncoast Energy, You have taught me well.  I’ll only get burned once, though.