How to Get Free Flights More Quickly

I devoted a fair bit of space in the book Make Your Travel Dollars Worth a Fortune to the subject of maximizing your airline miles to earn free flights on a regular basis. People have written whole books on this subject, there are blogs on this subject only, and a hugely popular message board about it. If you spend a lot of time on these, after a while it starts feeling like a graduate science course, with its own jargon, obscure acronyms, and clubby secrets.

I tried to boil the strategies down to their essence, however, because if you can just follow those you can be better off than 95% of the other travelers out there who don’t have a plan. On to that in a minute, but first, here’s an article that would be great even if I weren’t quoted in it, from MSN Money: The fastest ways to get free travel .

Some of it is about basic strategies, but the real genius of it is that some geeks did some serious number crunching and figured out which programs make it easiest to earn free flights and which ones make it the hardest. (No surprise, US Airways holds the bottom spot, as they do in almost every category imaginable.) In their crunching, the Marriott group makes it easiest to earn a free hotel stay, while Continental’s miles are worth the most among the legacy air carriers.

Promotions can seriously tip the scales though, like when InterContinental’s Priority Club puts hotel rooms on sale for only 5,000 points or an airline discounts the mileage requirement for some flights. This is where those blogs and message boards come into play.

The article looks at credit cards that earn you miles as well and the number crunchers agree with the consensus of most road warriors who follow these things: Starwood’s American Express card is the best. The best for you may be different, however. If you never stay at nice hotels on business, you’re better off with an airline affiliated card, especially if it gives you a huge bonus in year one with no fee. If you build miles in multiple programs as I do, the best bet is probably an American Express card with Membership Rewards because then you can top off your Delta miles one month and top off your Southwest credits in another: bang you’ve got free flights on both.

Mileage building strategies:

1) Try to concentrate your flying with just a couple airlines or programs. Even if it means you pay a little more sometimes or go through a hub instead of direct, this keeps you from having lots of orphan miles you can’t do anything with except buy magazine subscriptions. Ideally, this is one legacy carrier and one budget carrier.

2) Pay as many bills as possible through your mileage-earning credit card. This is not good advice for those who don’t pay off their balance regularly, so be careful. Try to only do this with a card that will get paid off regularly. But if you have the discipline, those recurring cable, wireless, and Netfilix bills can really rack up the miles. Add in some big expenses like tuition or car payments and it doesn’t take long to get to a free flight.

3) Do your shopping with a card that earns you mileage. How much do you spend each year just on Amazon and iTunes ? How much do you lay out each Christmas season? It’s likely another few thousand miles.

4) Shop through the airline site. If you do some shopping through your airline’s merchandise mall, you can frequently earn 3, 5, or even 10 miles per dollar—on top of what you’re earning from your credit card. You will pay the same price for those flowers or office supplies, but again this can add up quickly.

5) Watch for promotions. Once you’ve aligned yourself with certain airlines, sign up for their e-mail newsletter and keep an eye on promotions. They’re constantly offering double miles, mileage building challenges, and other ways to build up your balance more quickly.

[Update!] 6) Join the Travel Hacking Cartel .

What’s your favorite trick for earning free flights?