Dust off Those Old Frequent Flyer Statements

If you belong to a frequent flyer program where you’ve had no activity for a while, you might want to dust off those old account statements and do something to reactivate yourself. There’s always a travel grinch this time of year and it looks like this year it’s going to be USAir and Delta. USAir reduced its activity period from 3 years to 1-1/2. Delta reduced theirs to 2. See the details on recent changes in this article .

This means that if you have mileage in these programs (and others that may get equally customer-unfriendly in the months to come), you need to do something to start the clock ticking again or you could forfeit your mileage balance. Redeem miles if you can, fly them if it makes sense. The least painful way to re-up though is to buy something through their mileage mall online. Get a CD through Best Buy, order some songs through i-Tunes, send your honey some flowers, subscribe to a magazine using mileage. Get something on the books soon so you don’t get ripped off.