Good point.

When appropriate, I use my AmEx MRs to extend the life of otherwise expiring miles and points.

A couple ways to get miles for stuff you are probably already doing and won't cost you anything more:


Continental - get miles for grocery shopping at Shoprite, if you shop there anyways, it's a great way to keep your account active without doing anything but buying groceries.

United and Continental (and probably others) - miles for using a debit card

American (maybe others?) - Miles for paying your electric bill if you use their alternative suppliers.

In my case the debit card will earn me enough for a free trip, the grocery shopping won't, but it will keep the account active by putting in a few hundred miles every three months.

I'm an infrequent flyer collecting AS points with their credit card. If I could do it all over I'd collect AA points instead. I like their one way rewards to Europe. It makes it easier to book. I've read that AA will allow date/time change for free if available. I recently had to change my AS award flights to Europe (I know I should have had trip cancellation...why doesn't it come free with the credit card?) which were on AA anyway, and AS charged me $200!

But AA charges more miles to add a stop over while one stop-over is complementary on AS.

I think for the infrequent flyer the best idea is to find the cheapest tickets possible, and consolidate miles in airlines based on alliance. AS is also great, as you can accumulate miles on a variety of airlines, and get some value from Delta flights ;-).

Diabo, this is a great summary. Thanks for doing that for us. Also, what am I? I am loyal to Delta but find the information in your OP very beneficial for my many other accounts. I am also a frequent flier but not on every airline. I'm glad I didn't let the thread title make me pass this one by. I've got it bookmarked.

Again, thanks :)

Although it's been a while since I used points.com, I remember converting 30 US miles to 1 DL mile. This re-sets the expiration clock on both accounts.

Also, I use car rentals to re-set the expiration clock on my orphan accounts. But base miles are a rip-off since most agencies charge a FF mile surcharge for domestic airline programs. So a FF bonus is needed to make the surcharge worth the $ just to save orphan miles.

Q4 2010 Car Rental Bonus Promos! ;)

I would add caution praising DL, with so many changes in the airline industry, I know they will be in the forefront of the next "enhancement" and all the hard work in accumulating miles could be a waste

Love the thread. Am disloyal to a bunch of non-*A airlines. Mainly the ones that fly convenient routes for my occasional trips to non-*A hubs or to places UA/US/CO do not fly nonstop. So I have bits and bops of miles on AA, DL, VX that add up over time. And I use those miles for various things like this year I got a OW F ticket on AA for 50K miles transcon to attend a family event. Also used about 50K DL miles for RT coach ticket for Mr BT2 on a route that would have cost over 1K $$ had we paid for the ticket. Once upon a time I was the lowest tier on AA and had an admiral's club membership but that was many years ago in Chicago and they don't fly enough nonstops to my places right now for me to sink time into them from LAX.

+1 as well^

I added a couple of airline programs (both good and bad) to the list in the opening post.

what about the citi premier pass elite card? It's pretty good for the unloyal. You get 1 (flight) point for every mile flown (including reward tickets). Those flight points are offset by a spend point, this doubling your return on thank you points. You can redeem on expedia at 1typ per penny of value off of expedia.

that's a credit card program, not a frequent flyer one.

Delta changed the rules a while ago. SkyMiles never expire as long as long as you don't die. Delta can still bury your account if "a member does not respond to repeated communication attempts regarding the status of his/her account." Maybe they want to check that you're really not dead?

http://miles.site666.info/ updated.

One more update to your list. You can redeem UA miles for one-way Star Alliance awards for half the roundtrip cost. For example, one-way Economy from US to Europe (or vice-versa) on a Star Alliance partner is 27,500 Mileage Plus miles.

A good case is Alitalia (Millemiglia).

Old programs "expire" every 2-3 years and then they announce a new one. The old miles can not be used in the new program.