The second part to traveling almost for free is to have a frequent flyer account. If you already have one great! If you don’t then here is why it’s important.
For those of you who do already have one, or fly for business, you’ll still want to read on.
THIS is your KEY to flying for FREE!
If you’ve ever flown before, or fly regularly for business, you know how expensive flights can be. If your company pays for you to fly you’re already ahead of the game. Chances are you can earn miles on those flights! However, if you don’t know if you have a frequent flyer (FF) account the likelihood is you may not. Those previous flights you’ve made may have been lost in oblivion if you did not link it to a FF account.
Every time you fly (for the most part) the airline rewards you with miles. However, they only do this is you have a frequent flyer account with them. This is something extra from just purchasing a ticket that you have to opt in for. You WANT the airline to credit you every time you fly.
I’m sure you’ve heard of the term frequent flyer. The first program started just over 30 years ago as a way for airlines to keep track of who you are to them and reward you for using them more often. It’s more of an incentive to stay loyal and keep using the same airline often. Even if you are NOT a frequent flyer it is still sound advice to use a FF account for a number of reasons (you can redeem them for things other than flights)
Even if you only fly once a year, or once every three years – link your ticket to your FF account!
The best part is you can earn miles WITHOUT EVEN FLYING! Most of the miles in my accounts were accumulated without ever stepping foot inside an airplane. I’ll cover this in another post fairly soon.
The point is: open a frequent flyer account. While you’re at it, open two or three. If you already have a FF account, go ahead and open another two. The reason being that even though the airlines want you to always use them there will come times when they are not the cheapest or there are rewards that are not available on your specific program. Instead of feeling left out and letting those miles go to waste, add them into another program.
How to pick a rewards program?
I could go into into lengthy post of which airline is better to open but the truth is get an account on the major players. If you live close to an airport see what airlines fly out of that and chose 3 of those.
Four good ones to start with if you live in the US are:
United Airlines MileagePlus
American Airlines AAdvantage
Delta Skymiles
Southwest Rapid Rewards (current promotion: get up 500 points when you enroll)
I’ve added links to those programs. They’ll open in new windows and you can sign up and start an account with each. You can finish reading here and continue on to the next post or if you really want to see why I chose those, read on.
United and American Airlines are two major airlines in the US. They cover virtually the whole country and most international destinations. If they do not fly into an international destination chances are it’s covered by one of their alliance airlines.
Yes airlines form alliances, just like on reality tv shows. There are three major airline alliances in the world:
Star Alliance – http://www.staralliance.com/en/about/member_airlines/
SkyTeam – https://www.skyteam.com/About-us/Our-members/
Oneworld – http://www.oneworld.com/member-airlines/overview
Star Alliance is the largest with 27 different airlines part of it. SkyTeam ranks second in airline partners with a total of 20, and Oneworld has 15.
The first three airlines I told you to open FF accounts with are part of each of these alliances.
United is a Star Alliance member, American is a Oneworld member and Delta is a SkyTeam member.
You can earn miles from flying in other international airlines in one of those accounts I just had you open.
i.e. British Airways is also a Oneworld alliance member. If you had a flight with British Airways, instead of opening a FF account with them you can collect those flight miles with your Oneworld partner – American Airlines.
Having an account open with those first 3 airlines pretty much guarantees that any flight around the world will be covered and you can earn miles for them. This of course is up to the airline program and there are specific details for each flight that you can read about when you book but for the most part you’re covered.
Airline miles do expire but don’t worry too much about that yet, since they’re fairly easy to accrue I’ll go in depth on how to accumulate them and prevent them from expiring.
The reason I added the fourth airline, Southwest, is that they are really making their presence known now and are increasing destinations. I recently had flown on them and their flights are relatively cheap and you can check up to 2 free bags on every flight. That can save you money if you really need to fly with two bags to somewhere. They’ve got pros and cons and it’ll be up to you if you think you want an account with them. If you’re not sure yet leave them out, I’ll cover Southwest in a future article.
Go on and open those FF accounts if you haven’t already. This is your first step in accumulating anything worthwhile. If it was a little confusing don’t worry, I’ll cover all of this more in depth in upcoming articles. Get excited, you’re one step closer to traveling affordably!