People who usually travel only after having found cheap traveloptions, such as cheapairplane tickets, discount hotel rooms, discounttravel packages, and cheap vacation packages,often do their very best to earn miles when flying as well as make purchaseswith airline affiliated credit cards to earn miles that can later be redeemedfor free travel.
Unfortunately airlines are increasing the miles necessaryto redeem reward fares. Severalexpensive changes are imminent. Effective February 1st United Airlines almost doubled thecost of some first class tickets on international partner flights. For example, a one way ticket from the U.S.to Europe will require 110,000 miles vs. the now 67,500. Even economy tickets are being affected asevidenced by United charging an additional 5,000 miles (for a total of 45,000)to fly between mainland U.S. and Hawaii.
Delta Air Lines has announced that as of June 2nd it willincrease the number of miles needed to redeem many of its award tickets,raising the cost of a one way, first class domestic ticket by as much as 5,000miles. Its economy saver ticket toHawaii will cost an additional 2,500 miles (for a total of 22,500), with manybusiness tickets to Asia costing an additional 10,000 miles each way.
The days of a casual business traveler accumulating enoughmiles for a round trip ticket to Europe in business class by flying wheneverpossible on the same airline and making wise use of an airline credit cardcombined with other mileage accrual activities has passed.
Airlines usually increase the number of miles required toredeem free ticket to offset demand, either because they want to be able tosell more of those seats or limit an otherwise increasing number of travelersfrom flying on them for free.
While the news of pending higher mileage requirements maytempt some passengers to bail on hopes of earning free tickets, travelers closeto earning a reward will benefit more from staying loyal to a single airline inthe short run than cashing out miles for a magazine subscription or carrental.
The occasional flier, who takes only a couple of trips ayear, should stop trying to increase miles earned on such trips with airlinecredit card purchases. General travelreward credit cards, such as Capital One Venture, Barclaycard Arrival, andChase Sapphire, often offer better value for domestic reward travel.
Cardholders are often able to earn more than one mile/pointfor every dollar spent, with discounts for booking reward travel directlythrough the issuer. Another bigadvantage is that because travelers use credit card points to purchase seats atthe market rate, any open seat on any airline is available to them.
Do not be naive and think that you should keep accumulatingyour miles to use at some future distant date. The odds are that the value of those miles will deteriorate over time. Once you earn enough miles to purchase aticket you should redeem those miles as soon as possible.
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