They're also good because they give 500 mile minimums even to non-elites.

Just my 2 cents to the info on Skyteam Aeroflot from 2010:

Aeroflot
+ Miles never expire if you buy a qualifying SkyTeam airline ticket once every 2 years.
It is only partially true now, if I'm not mistaken. Apparently they introduced the requirement that in order to be able to redeem your miles, you need to have at least one Aeroflot flight you actually paid for (!!, not an award flight and not any other Skyteam partner flight) over last 2 calendar years. If you don't have SU flight, but have other flights, your SU miles will not expire... but they will be locked until you make at least one SU flight. Unless you go to Russia frequently, this just cuts almost all residents of other countries interested only in a frequent flyer program.


- Non-flying account activity does NOT extend the deadline.
- Buying an upgrade or award ticket does NOT extend the deadline.

That was my reasoning on DL: I've become so accustomed to redeeming one-ways with UA, BA, and AA that the R/T requirement now seems suffocating. I think of the infrequent flier slogging his way to 40,000 or 60,000 miles to get anywhere good on DL...and that's before you get into DL's notoriously abysmal availability on its own metal.

Yeah, I can see AS fitting into the mix somewhere because of the partners.

My thoughts in favor of BA are that you only need 4,500 Avios to redeem a short-haul award. Expensive little American Eagle routes that you never really wanted to spend 12,500 AA miles on suddenly become 3-4 cpm redemptions.

What a sneaky change of the rules! I've moved Aeroflot to the bad programs section.

So for SkyTeam it now works out like this:
- If you're concerned about miles expiring, go Delta.
- If you want reasonable award flight availability, use Air France/KLM.
- If you want to combine some SkyTeam and OneWorld partners in one program, send your miles to Alaska.

Speaking of SkyTeam, Delta cut its ties with e-Miles and e-Rewards. On the bright side, Delta SkyMiles never expire as long as you can convince them that you're not dead.

BMI is now even more dead than it already was. UK residents can only redeem miles by moving them to BA (and only collect them by using BMI's credit card), South Pacific members have their accounts frozen until BA decides what to do with them, and the rest of the world was already kicked out of the program ages ago.

Alaska Airlines dumped a few of its smaller partners, and IcelandAir is about to go very soon.

KLM now charges for the first bag on european flights on the cheaper economy tickets, but you don't need to pay if you're a Flying Blue member (even at the lowest level).

Complete updated list on miles.site666.info including a few changes to make things easier to read.

How does AS compare to others on redemption side?

There have been some improvements such as one-ways.

This is great info in general, so thanks. You should also add JetAirways (Indian carrier) to the "Bad Programs" list; their miles expire after 13 quarters (about three years) and account activity does NOT extend the deadline.

From the JPmiles program information website:

Like most other loyalty programmes world-wide, JPMiles cannot be held indefinitely by a member. JPMiles are valid for redemption up to the end of the thirteenth quarter from the quarter in which they were earned.

For e.g.: JPMiles earned in the 1st quarter of 2009 (January-March 2009) will expire
on the last day of the 1st quarter of 2012 (i.e. March 31, 2012).

JPMiles that are not redeemed before expiry, will lapse.

Some things change end of this month/year:

Delta switches to revenue-based mileage system in 2015.
That's good news if your job pays your full-fare tickets, bad news if you buy your own discount economy tickets.

US Airways ditches Star Alliance for OneWorld end of this month.
That's bad news for most europeans, 'cos your US Airways miles will no longer work on Lufthansa, Swiss, and TAP. You get overpriced BA awards with London Deathrow in return. And Iberia, but who wants to fly with them?
Doesn't sound good for asians either: Cathay Pacific instead of Singapore Airlines...

Complete updated list on miles.site666.info

The former actually changes 1/1/15.

Oops!

Re: OP. Suddenly a timely topic, for sure.

At first glance Spirit Ailines would appear to have a terrible program, with aggressive expiration, 50% credit on most flights and not many partners.

BUT...if u get the credit card the picture changes a bit, as long as u can do award travel in the spring and fall slow seasons and scoop up some of the 5K and 10K RT off-peaks. Not always easy to do and they have a ridiculous $15 junk fee for bookings 6 months or less out, but you only need $2,500 in actual or manufactured spending for the 5K. The card also gets 100% miles credit and staves off the mile expiration.

They also have one-way awards at the low tier. So, to take a real-life example, I found a date with 2.5K OW from ATL to DEN in April (connection via DFW). They didn't have a return near that date, so I got a $99 DL one-way.

Spirit's flying experience is best-suited for short trips and they're definitely not for everyone, but with the credit-card game u don't really have to fly to earn miles.

Does having the CC open up more availability? I am interested in DFW-PHL for the most part.

Uh, actually, CX has MUCH better partner availability than SQ (especially in premium classes, where SQ is impossible to get with US miles). So that is good news. TG being swapped for MH is probably a wash. What probably hurts is losing CA/OZ/NH for JL/CX for North Asia, though not as much as having BA swapped in for LH.

Then again, a lot of people are buying their US miles anyways... and LH/LX F was impossible to get, LH C was difficult. BA FC won't be, so which is better, a cheaper F you can never fly, or a more expensive F cabin that it's actually possible to fly?

I will miss the cheap (90K R/T) C trips to North Asia using Dividend Miles. Always thought that was an exceptional value to HKG, even if you had to do it on United metal. Uptairs window on a UA 744 is actually a fairly pleasant C experience.

I'm going under the assumption that this award will be dead in the combined program. It'll be 120-150k or whatever.