Fly for Free by Maximizing Your Airline Miles: 7 Tips to Earn More

This post is part two in a series about how to earn airline miles, hotel points, and loyalty program rewards, so you can fly for free and travel at a discount.

If you haven’t read the first post in this series, Why Frequent Flyer Programs are Worth it, then I recommend you take a look at that first and then come back to this post. However, if you’re already familiar with frequent flyer programs and want to learn more about how to maximize your earning potential with mile and points, keep reading.

This post focuses on 7 ways you can start accruing more frequent flyer miles and points right away, so you can book that free ticket or upgrade even sooner than you thought.

So let’s dive in.

Fly For Free: 7 Tips to Earn More Airline Miles 

1. Keep Track of Your Airline Miles and Don’t Let Them Expire

Do you know where all of your airline and frequent flyer miles are? No, seriously. Do you?

I’m an avid traveler, and until recently, I didn’t even know the answer to this. Over the years, I have signed up for so many loyalty programs, I lost track.

Why does this matter? Because if you lose track of your loyalty programs, you could be losing valuable points without even realizing it. Many travel rewards programs have expiration dates on the miles you earn, and when you lose the miles, it’s like losing cash.

So if you want to fly for free, the first thing you should do to maximize your airline miles is to make sure you don’t lose them. Sign up for a program that can keep track of your miles for you.

There are two well-known programs out there for tracking points: Award Wallet and Points.

While both will keep track of your airline miles and loyalty programs (with a couple of exceptions), Award Wallet is a much more comprehensive program and the one I prefer to use. Not only is it great for keeping track of all your points, but you can set up alerts to be notified when miles are expiring.

However, Points has one feature that Award Wallet doesn’t. It allows you to exchange points and miles with certain programs. This can be worth it depending on the points/miles you need to get free nights at a hotel or a free airline ticket, but keep in mind the number of programs that allow this is quite limited.

2. Consistency and Loyalty Pays Off

As much as you can, stick to one airline and one hotel chain when you travel. If you do this, you will accrue miles with the chosen program much more quickly, which will help you gain status sooner.

Once you gain status on an airline, you earn bonus points and miles for all of your travel. These points add up quickly which means – you guessed it – you’ll be able to fly for free sooner!

If you’re not sure which airline to choose, find out which ones have a hub at your local airport. For example, if you live in the NYC area, these are the airlines that have hubs at the major airports:

• JFK: American, Delta, and Jet Blue
• Newark: United
• LaGuardia: Delta and American

In addition to earning miles with U.S. domestic airlines, you can also continue to accrue miles for a US airline with an international partner airline. Please note, the miles earned with an international partner often don’t count towards earning status with an airline, but the miles are still valuable because it’s the miles you need (not status) for a free flight.

This is why it pays to know the 3 big airline alliances, especially if you fly often overseas. The 3 big alliances are OneWorld, SkyTeam and Star Alliance.

Here are the airlines for the three big alliances.

Oneworld:

• American Airlines
• British Airways
• Cathay Pacific
• Finnair
• Iberia
• Japan Airlines
• Latam
• Malaysia
• Qantas
• Qatar
• Royal Jordanian
• S7 Airlines
• SriLankan Airlines
• Fiji Airways
• Royal Air Maroc (future member)

SkyTeam:

• Aeroflot
• Aerolineas Argentinas
• AeroMexico
• AirEuropa
• Airfrance
• Alitalia
• China Airlines
• China Eastern
• Czech Airlines
• Delta
• Garuda Indonesia
• Kenya Airways
• KLM
• Korean Air
• MEA
• Saudia
• Tarom
• Vietnam Airlines
• Xiamen Air

Star Alliance:

• Aegean
• Air Canada
• Air China
• Air India
• Air New Zealand
• ANA
• Asiana Airlines
• Austrian
• Avianca
• Brussels Airlines
• Copa Airlines
• Croatia Airlines
• Egyptair
• Ethiopian
• Eva Air
• Lot Polish Airlines
• Lufthansa
• SAS
• Shenzhen Airlines
• Singapore Airlines
• South African Airways
• Swiss
• TAP Air Portugal
• Thai
• Turkish Airlines
• United

 3. Take Advantage of Airline Promotions to Earn Airline Miles

Airlines are always offering promotions with other travel partners. It pays to check on the airline websites every month or so to see what offers are available, especially if you’re planning a trip.

You can easily sign up for these offers online and then the airline will automatically add the bonus miles to your account if you qualify. Examples include booking a rental car with a specific company or flying a certain route within a certain time period.

4. Earn Airline Miles with Hotels and Car Rentals

Another simple way to earn more frequent flyer miles is when you stay at hotels and use rental cars. Most of the major hotel chains and rental car companies will allow you to give your frequent flyer number and earn airline miles/points instead of earning points with their own loyalty program.

Not every hotel / rental car company works with every airline, but it’s worth asking when you check-in as to whether you can earn miles for whichever carrier you fly the most. If earning airline miles is more important to you than earning hotel loyalty points, you should always do this.

Pro Travel Tip: Most hotels will not let you earn points or airline miles if you book your room through a third party vendor like Expedia or Orbitz. Because of this, I always book directly. If a third party site offers you a lower room rate, call the hotel to see if they will match it. In most cases, they will. Then, you get the lower rate AND you earn points for your stay.

 5. Get a Co-Branded Credit Card and Use it for Everyday Purchases

I mentioned getting a co-branded airline credit card in my first post in this series about frequent flyer miles and loyalty programs. I’m mentioning it again here because this is one of the best ways to maximize earning frequent flyer miles.

The first thing to know is that most airlines offer co-branded credit cards which have a huge sign-on bonus. That means you can earn A LOT of airline miles – even 60,000, within three months, as long as you spend a minimum amount on the card. Most domestic roundtrip coach tickets are around 30-40,000 miles, so with 60,000 airline miles in your account, you can definitely fly for free on your next trip!

Right now, if you sign up for the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, you can earn 60,000 points if you spend $4000 within the first three months. And with the United Explorer card, you can earn 60,000 bonus miles if you spend $3000 within the first three months.

In addition to earning bonus airline miles when you sign up, you also earn miles with every purchase you make. Most credit cards will offer 2 or 3 miles per every dollar spent at restaurants, gas stations, supermarkets, etc.. Each card offers different bonuses so make sure you get a co-branded credit card that makes the most sense for your spending habits.

Even better, many of the credit card companies will waive the annual fee on these cards for the first year. So I consider signing up for a co-branded credit card one of the easiest and best ways to earn a free airline ticket within a few months.

(Please note the offers for all of the credit cards mentioned above change constantly, so do your research before signing up for one to ensure you get that works best for your lifestyle.)

6. Use an Online Shopping Portal

This is a fantastic way to accrue miles very quickly. You can do almost all of your online shopping through an airline portal, and you’ll earn bonus miles for doing so.

For example, let’s say you need to make a purchase at Sephora. You could end up earning 4x miles for your purchase. So a $100 purchase becomes 400 airline miles. This might seem like a small amount, but you’d be surprised at how quickly these points can add up.

You can sign up for an airline’s online shopping portal through its website. Once you do this, you can start earning extra miles right away.

7. Join a Dining Club Membership Offered Through the Airline

Do you eat out occasionally? Then this is another program worth signing up for to maximize earning airline miles.

Most of the airlines have their own version of a dining club, where you earn bonus miles if you eat at specific restaurants within their reward network. You can either join through the airline’s website or go to Rewards Network which gives you access to all of the airlines and travel partners affiliated with these dining clubs.

After you securely link your credit card, you will earn bonus miles every time you eat a restaurant within the travel partner’s network. The brilliant thing about this program is that it runs on autopilot. If you eat at a qualifying restaurant and use your linked credit card, you earn the points.

I can say Bon appetit to that!

Are You Ready to Maximize Your Airline Miles and Points?

I hope you found this post helpful and it gave you additional insight into how you can maximize earning airline miles so you can fly for free.

Once you get the hang of it, it becomes fun to see how much you can accrue, and how quickly. Even better is what waits for you after the patience of collecting all of these miles and points: a free trip!

Get started now and implement one of these tips today, so tomorrow you can start traveling for free.

Bon Voyage!

P.S. Looking for more travel related tips? Check out 10 Easy Travel Tips for a Comfortable Flight and 7 Tips to Help You Travel Like a Pro.