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General Links*******
NEW!!! Mile Maven - This is a pretty cool tool developed by FT'er boazs - it's a great way to check promotions & to see if the routes you are flying will earn bonus miles. See the
related discussion here - I highly recommend you check this site out before every one of your future trips!
Check out
ANDREWCX's website for information on how to earn points & miles, etc, when you are booking your runs. There's information on how to get money back & earn extra miles & points. For example, if you book on Expedia for a run, book through the Mileage Mall & earn Amtrak Guest Reward points or something.
Details on Post #87
More good stuff from gleff's blog. This time, its a quick, easy to understand summary of how to find cheap airline & hotel deals (not necessarily for MR's, but for general travel):
How to Find the Best Airfare Deals and
How to find the Best Hotel Deals (Thanks gleff!)
HRS - Hotel Reservation Service - good for finding cheap lodging for Mileage Runs in Europe - in 25 languages.
English Version Available, also. (Thanks Kurz!)
Travel Axe - downloadable tool that allows you to search multiple websites at once for best prices on hotels. The negative thing about this is that it lists rates that we are not always qualified for (i.e Gov't rates, Senior Rates, AAA/AARP rates, etc.) - sometimes if you book these rates at a Super 8 or something, they'll let you get away with it without checking ID, but if you go to any of the majors (Hilton, Marriott, SPG, Hyatt), then generally, they'll check your ID - so make sure you're not booking improper rates.
Talk Links - General List of Links by Flyertalkers.
Webflyer’s Bonus Promotions Page – Wise to check whenever your flying so you can be registered for the latest promos for your airline.
Frequent Flyer Bonuses - a site run by FT'er superdawg that lists various airline promos & bonuses - similar to WebFlyars Bonus Promo page above
Discussion Regarding Bumps
Seat Plans – So you can see the seating configuration of the planes – this is a pretty good site.
Sleeping in Airports for those runs with quick turnaround or if you don't see the point in getting a hotel for 8 hours. Advice here is may be a little outdated - however, the best advice I've gotten from here was the 4th floor observation deck at BKK - only they failed to mention it is the coldest airport ever! Of course, they also said that the observation deck at ABQ was fine to sleep in – that’s not true – the police kicked me out around midnight. Don't forget a blanket and a pillow!
Seat Guru So you can see which are the best seats on your flights – not all airlines are listed.
Seat Expert Another seating guide – not all airlines are listed (Thanks JDiver!)
CheckMyTrip.com and
ViewTrip.com - two sites that let you view your itins if they were booked on the corrosponding GDS system. (Thanks johnep1
Industrial Patent’s Flyertalk’s Guide to NWA
IP’s Guide to NW’s Equipment
IP’s Guide to getting your seat bumped on NW
lisamcgu's list of 2004 Q points for AA runners
PremEx's Overview of UA Upgrades - Useful info if you're on a UA run to SIN and you want to fly in C vs. Y
ozstamps Guide listing all known UA fare codes – very useful for the UA promos that require certain booking classes.
List of fare codes for NW, CO, UA, US, DL, AA, and AS
Link to a thread on the UA forum that shows the printout of the SWU rules
Trying to find cheap weekend F fares? Izzik suggests
It's using Orbitz's Flexible dates - power search for savings option.. starting at the homepage, click on Expanded Search Options at the bottom which brings you to the full search page. Then change the cabin to First and select the Flexible dates option. It will bring you to the regular screen but it is now set for searching F fares instead of the default Y fares.
Shopping and VAT on a MR to Europe - Going to Europe for Mileage Run? FT'er Kurz outlines information regarding the taxes (which are as much as 19% in the Netherlands!)
Travel Links – fairly generic, although thorough website – I like the fact that it’s got information about traffic to BWI – I live about 5 minutes from DCA, but BWI is always WAY cheaper to fly out of for me it – but there are a lot of general travel links on it.
Sidestep - A downloadable program that pops-up when you run a search for a fare or hotel on a major travel site. Seems to have good reviews by some - I personally dislike it & uninstalled it because it kept popping up & was just overall really annoying, but a lot of FT'ers will swear by it. I've listed it here because Natty Dread mentioned it below.
Mobissimo Search Engine - as Natty Dread explains it below -
You can search for flights and it consolidates results from airline web pages, wholesalers, and other resources, so that you can find who actually has the best offer. Best feature is that it includes international sites you can purchase from and converts their prices to dollars. You can exclude that feature from the results if desired.
Qixo.com - mentioned in a
Wall Street Journal article (not sure if the link will work as it was e-mailed to me by a coworker & I think they eventually expire if you're not a subscriber), along with Mobissimo (listed above) and
Fare Chaser (owned by Yahoo) and Sidestep (who actual now has a
Sidestep for Cars & a
Sidestep for Hotels tools) - All of these websites search other travel websites for the best deals. Only Sidestep is a downloadable tool. Qixo charges 20 bucks to book. Not necessarily something completely useful for booking, but it may help you research.
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Mileage Run's Greatest*******
Some of the best runs are never published on Flyertalk - but some are...
86910 status miles for US$1740+taxes
What's the Lowest cost per award mile you've ever encountered? - just trips that FT'ers have done to earn miles.
The Baht Run - Becoming a UA 1K for about 750 bucks & a week in Thailand - see, dreams to come true. (Thanks gleff, for finding this thread on Google’s history –
This one actually made the Guinness Book of World Records).
The Latin Pass Run - The run that scored a million frequent flier miles!
Wondering how to spend the Thanksgiving Holiday? Here’s tvl4free's Turkey Day Run - 22 UA segments in November.
What’s the maximum number of segments people have done in one day? Find out by clicking.
Best Award/Rewards Of All Time - A thread that
Randy Petersen started in the Milesbuzz forum - what to do with all those miles that you earned from your business travel or Mileage Runs.
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Another thing that I can add is that see what other people do and how they do it – look at other people’s routings and try to figure them out. I’ve learned a lot just by reading posts from people like viajero joven, channa, keithguy, whlinder, tvl4free, and many others that I have failed to mention here – even if it’s hard to understand how a routing works, by reading what these & other MR Guru’s have to say, you can try to re-create & understand the logic behind it all.
Here's a recent example of an FT'er who was trying to do his first Mileage Run - he got help with it, but as you can see, it's a process that requires understanding. If you read the primer first & use these links, you'll be able to get an understanding as well. People will also probably be more willing to help those who help themselves.
Hope this helps some…more info continued below...