How do you accumulate frequent flyer miles

Customers earn points for potential travel deals and other rewards every time they fly. Points can be won depending on the fare class, the distance traveled on that airline or its partners, or the amount charged under FFPs.

Using co-branded credit and debit cards , for example, has earned more points in recent years than flying. Another way to earn points is to spend money at affiliated retail stores, car rental companies, hotels, or other related businesses.

Points may be redeemed for airline tickets, other goods or facilities, or added benefits such as travel class upgrades, access to airport lounges, fast track access, or priority bookings.

The general concept behind the FFP aka airline reward , is that if you invest your money with one airline, you can earn miles or points that can be redeemed for free flights, better seats, or special care.

An airline alliance is an arrangement between two or more airlines to work together. There are three big airline alliances: Star Alliance , SkyTeam , and Oneworld , and most major airlines belong to one of them.

This includes interchangeable miles: you can earn frequent flyer miles on one airline and redeem them on another allied member. These programs are both free and easy to join, and flying is not the only way to earn miles. When booking your first flight, you can sign up online. Then, when purchasing tickets , enter your frequent flyer number to collect loyalty miles or points. Miles usually have a long expiry date so you can accumulate them until you reach the minimum status.

Depending on which airline you fly, you can minimally qualify with just a couple of international round-trip flights. Once you achieve the minimum status, you can start redeeming miles for flights, complimentary upgrades, and perks such as free checked baggage, hot seats, or in-flight Wi-Fi. One of the advantages of FFP is the partnerships they have with various travel-related companies including hotels, car rentals, or retail stores which often offer significant discounts for frequent flyers.

Also, airlines often join with their partners to run special promotions targeted at frequent flyers. And to some extent, it can be very hectic and troublesome. However, over time, airlines have brought in more flexibility for the passengers — both in terms of standard booking policies and their frequent flyer programs.

Below are few airlines which are offering amazing extensions and benefits to their already subscribed FFP members:. Flying the airline is the most basic way to gain miles. In a simplistic example, for every dollar spent on airfare, you could earn 5 miles. There are other options for earning the miles the easy way: airline credit cards, shopping at the airline bonus malls, booking hotels and car rentals that work under your airline, dining rewards programs, or fly partner airlines.

You can even buy miles for cash this is the last resort — handy if you still need a few miles to get your reward. Our Promo Radar collects them all, with daily updates. If collecting frequent flyer points was your favorite pastime before , you may be wondering what to do with them now — when travel restrictions limiting where you can travel.

It is a loyalty scheme run by BIG Rewards that was created to reward members for flying with AirAsia in the first place. You will be earning AirAsia BIG Points which are awarded based on the total expenditure rather than the distance traveled.

Although the Malaysian airline AirAsia is a long way from Australia, its Freedom Flyer Program is in collaboration with a variety of local and international businesses, making earning points from afar easy. Members of the BIG program will gain points in the following ways:. The BIG program does it a little differently in this regard: when it comes to redeeming points, BIG has a fixed point program.

Members can redeem points based on flight hours rather than cost. BIG points can be redeemed for discounts at the majority of the same partner hotels, car rental agencies, and travel operators where they can be earned unfortunately, the majority of these are only available to Malaysians. Tune Hotels, Rocketmiles, Kaligo.

The airline is also well known for its abundance of promotions — you should always make sure to check for the latest ones before booking an AirAsia ticket. The BIG freedom flyer program, which works with a variety of local and international partners, is free, simple to enter, and has a good earning potential.

Also, with the introduction of bot-based live chat , getting help from AirAsia is now much easier and faster. This is why is worth considering AirAsia Credit Card — branded cards issued in partnership with local Asian banks.

Indonesians will enjoy up to Points welcome bonus, no annual fee, and up to 7x faster point earning with AirAsia Credit Card launched in cooperation with PermataBank. Upgrading to an attractive Platinum Visa card will give you even more rewards earning opportunities, and perks like priority check-in, boarding, and baggage collection.

Its main advantage for frequent AirAsia flyers is the removal of processing fees when purchasing a flight ticket from the airline. On top of that, you get a discount on pre-booked meals and baggage fees. Unfortunately, at the moment BigPay is only available for Malesian citizens. Agoda is one of the best places to book accommodation in Asia. Unfortunately, the Agoda best price guarantee does not apply here.

Even if the hotel rates may be different, this still may be a good way to collect some extra BIG Points. The frequent flyer program for Air New Zealand is known as the Airpoints and it can be joined without any charge. Due to the opportunity to receive Airpoints Dollars APD with credit cards, Air New Zealand and Star Alliance flights, as well as its other partners such as hotels, car rentals, and retail outlets, it is quite relevant to the Australian travelers.

This means the amount of points you receive is proportional to the cost of the flight, and the pace at which you will regain them also depends on the amount you spend unless you stumble upon one of ANZ special deals. With these airlines, you would go to the frequent flyer program site, log in, and search for flights. You can also typically call the airline to book a flight with miles over the phone. However, there are airlines that charge an additional fee for this.

If that's the case, it's better to book online and save the money. Another way to use your miles is to upgrade an existing cash ticket if you booked a ticket using miles, you can generally only upgrade on the day of the flight at the airport. When this option is available, you should be able to upgrade your seat with miles online.

The process varies by airline, but there's typically a "Manage Reservation" link you can use. You can also call the airline. There may be an additional fee to upgrade your seat. Upgrade availability can also be scarce, so it's not something you can rely on. The value you get from your frequent flyer miles can vary dramatically depending on how you use them.

If you're starting from scratch, here's a quick summary of what you can do to pay for your flights with miles:. Those are just a few reasons why our experts rate this card as a top pick to help get control of your debt. Read The Ascent's full review for free and apply in just 2 minutes. Lyle is a writer specializing in credit cards, travel rewards programs, and banking.

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If you travel often or would like to travel more, earning frequent flyer miles can help you cut costs and enjoy extra perks such as lounge access, free checked bags and priority boarding.

Frequent flyer miles are miles you earn toward free flights with an airline or its participating partners. As your mileage balance grows over time, the goal is to accumulate enough miles for free flights and additional benefits.

You can earn airline miles in many ways, including booking flights or spending money with a travel credit card that offers rewards in the form of miles. For all my hotel and car rental bookings, I booked directly with the brand and either earned miles with their rewards program or the airline directly. Each option was possible with any of the bookings I made.

For the examples here, I can show how to earn miles based on the type of booking with either hotels or car rentals. In terms of car rentals, I deposited airline rewards directly. In addition to my airline rewards program memberships, I am also a member of a variety of hotel rewards programs.

In this case, I infrequently stay at Best Western properties. In the past year, I stayed at a Best Western and earned about 2, points in their program, bringing my total rewards account to 5, points. Since several years had passed in between Best Western stays, reaching 5, points created an opportunity for a crucial decision for me.

I now had enough miles to transfer these points to an airline rewards program. In this case, I wanted to transfer my points to my MileagePlus account. The conversion was 5, points equals 1, miles. The redemption ratio to earn more MileagePlus miles is the same ratio for the cost of these miles had I chosen to fly with United Airlines, too. When evaluating the transfer from my hotel rewards account to my frequent flyer account, I consider this as a cost to earn more frequent flyer miles.

Still, remember, in this instance, no actual money is being exchanged to execute this transfer. Rather, I am comparing the cost of the rewards from Best Western versus a similar amount earned directly from United Airlines. However, these transfer opportunities are worthwhile to investigate.

To the contrary, in some cases they may expire, or you might need to spend more money to reach a high enough level to redeem them. Hotel brands do offer the opportunity to earn airline miles directly in lieu of earning rewards with the hotel brand.

Therefore, in some cases, one option of earning airline rewards with hotels may be no better than the other. Friends and family have booked through Southwest Airlines and JetBlue Airways as well as their in-house, JetBlue Vacations to earn airline miles from hotel stays.

Southwest Airlines mostly offers ratio for dollars-to-miles. This example uses the popular option of bonus points for booking at promoted hotels.

Car rental agencies offer three similar options from hotel brands for earning airline rewards miles. Either in transferring points or direct deposit of miles, understand that the value proposition is different for each.

For this example, I chose to direct deposit miles earned from an Alamo Car Rental directly into my American Airlines AAdvantage account at a rate of 50 miles per day. The cost per mile for direct deposit car rental varies based on both the car rental agency and the specific airline. For example, Hertz offers United Airlines MileagePlus members different deposit amounts based on elite status and credit card membership. From these two examples of direct deposit transactions, miles earned from car rentals cost far more than hotel nights and air travel.

Car rental agencies also permit members of their rewards programs to transfer miles into select airline rewards programs on a fixed ratio, as in my example of Best Western Rewards transfer to United Airlines. Therefore, from both of these two car rental examples, earning airline miles is a costly choice compared to others. I suggest only using this option if you are faced with a mileage expiration event. In other words, using the direct deposit option or transfer option to accrue miles from car rentals may be a cheaper way to maintain your airline rewards mileage or points balance than purchasing a hotel night or flight for the same purpose.

However, you should anticipate earning far fewer miles from a car rental.