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.