Hello Bullajami,

Your post caught my eye. I have a similar Navy Federal Credit Card (NFCU) card (although I’ve never used it which I’ll explain later) and I lived in Va Bch for 7 years courtesy of Uncle Sam and I too occasionally travel on government paid tickets. In a couple of months I might be able to tell you how easy it is to upgrade a government ticket to Bahrain! I’m also a relative newbie here so I cannot offer you extensive experience although I have learned a few things.

Pay attention to these forums, reviewing the MilesBuzz forum is my personal daily minimum. Perfect example, you mentioned “On my recent flight from Rome to Philly I signed up for a USAIRWAYS visa”. I did the same thing a few months ago based on a thread on the MilesBuzz forum and got 35,000 mile first use bonus and annual fee waived for the first year.

I used a NFCU Travel Visa (the predecessor to the Flagship Visa) as my primary credit card for about 10 years until 3 or 4 years ago. I kinda “fell into” a mild form of credit card churning over the years as I would often respond to a snail mailed solicitation for a XXX Airline Visa/MC/AmEx with xx,xxx bonus miles and no annual fee for 1 year. I used these cards once to get the bonus and then cancelled them 6 or 9 months later always using the NFCU card as my main card.

I redeemed NFCU points for domestic coach tickets many times, which was like getting a 2% rebate and being able to accumulate the miles for the flights. However, a few years ago I realized the NFCU card, as with many of the “xxx points gets you a ticket worth xxx dollars cards”, stinks for international business or first class tickets and is of no help with upgrading any purchased ticket. The maximum ticket value for the NFCU card a few years ago was $1200 and that wouldn’t get you an international premium seat. On the other hand, at that time, the 60,000 points/miles (that were needed for a $1200 ticket through the NFCU program) would get you a premium international seat if the miles were redeemed through a frequent flyer program. In other words, I decided that accumulating points in a frequent flyer program (or several of them) was more valuable to me than accumulating points in a “points for a ticket of xxx value” program. I kept the $49 annual fee NFCU account open for a couple of years to burn through all my accumulated points and then switched it to a NFCU no fee Cash Rewards card which I’ve never used and keep open just for an “emergency” and to have an account that’s open for a long time.

Pay attention here and to the blogs as others have suggested and you will quickly learn that you do NOT need to fly much to accumulate lots of points. Credit cards bonuses, back accounts, brokerage promotions, dining, flowers, coins, shopping malls; there’s a way for almost anyone to earn miles for doing all the things they would be doing anyway. What works for one person may not work for another, fortunately there are many possibilities.

I also suggest you review the MilesBuzz forum for the many threads started by folks asking how to get started on becoming a miles junkie. Most of those threads have great suggestions that are applicable to many people, probably even you. Good luck, enjoy!