My Travel Addiction
Cheers from the flight deck
of British Airways flight 2226 on
OK, I admit it, I am
addicted to travel and accumulating frequent flier miles and frequent traveler
points. When I started flying back in
1983, I joined every frequent flyer club I could. Of course back then I didn’t
fly much and lost most of the miles from inactivity but I kept at it. Our first transatlantic flight was in 1992 to
sell comics at a comic convention in
Over the years I’ve done
some crazy things to earn frequent flyer miles and hotel points. Here are some examples:
·
I have cut out 100 mile
American Airlines coupons from Kellogg’s cereal boxes and sent them in for
credit (hey they put them on Cracklin’ Oat Bran, my favorite cereal, why not?).
I’ve gotten thousands of miles this way.
·
A few years ago, MCI and
AT&T used to offer 10,000 to 25,000 miles to switch long distance carriers
and you could switch once every six months to a year. I scored several free
tickets with this until they finally wised up.
·
Last year, British Airways
offered 10,000 frequent flyer miles to Executive Club members who test drove a
new Jaguar X-series sedan. Guess who test drove one two weeks after buying a brand
new Honda Element?
·
Over the years, I have had
several mileage earning credit cards.
Most offer no annual fee for the first year and give mileage bonuses for
new card holders. It would have been possible to rack up tons of miles by
canceling credit cards yearly and getting new ones to maximize the bonuses.
·
For awhile, Hilton used to
offer a bonus every time a member logged on to his account and changed a room
preference such as double beds or king beds up to four times a year. That was
easy and seemed to last a couple of years.
·
I have signed up to web
site challenges to get elite hotel program status by staying three or four
stays within a couple of months time. I
did this most recently last fall with Hilton, then, while visiting relatives
for Christmas, I changed hotels nightly to qualify for the bonus. I got gold
status with Hilton for that and a 50,000 point bonus.
·
I’ve completed online
surveys for airlines and hotel sites to get miles and points.
·
I’ve bought Wal-Mart gift
cards with a credit card for the express purpose of using it at Sam’s Clubs
because Sam’s doesn’t take credit cards.
Using this indirect method, you can get miles from your already
discounted purchases at Sam’s.
The easiest way to start
your own addiction is to join every frequent flyer club you can and get a
mileage earning credit card. Joining frequent flyer clubs are free and some
send everyone coupons and deals even if you rarely fly them. As for the credit
card, everybody needs credit cards these days anyway. If you charge things on a credit card, why
not get one that gives miles? Nowadays you can charge groceries, gas and most
everything on credit cards. Just be sure you have the discipline to pay off
your balance since credit cards tend to have fairly high interest. The next
thing you know, you’ll be on your way to a free ticket.
As crazy as some of this
may sound to you, let me assure you that my efforts are very minor compared to
some people I have read about on flyertalk.com.
Some people take flights just to earn the miles and fly back on the very
next flight, sometimes getting off the plane just to check back in. Amazingly,
some people do this on international flights.
This is called mileage running and I guess I am not quite there
yet. Others have found angles to buy
money orders with mileage earning credit cards just to deposit them back into
their accounts to pay back the cards. Many savvy business flyers have bought
separate tickets and thrown away the returns and other tricks to save
money. There are many more schemes on
the flyertalk.com web site than I could ever describe and I recommend the site
highly.