Hello everyone I will keep this short and to the point. I am looking to fly between LAX and SMF twice a month. Driving is 6 hours one way from my home and a train is about 9 hours while flying is less than 2 hours.


I was thinking about applying for a Citi AAdvantage because it states I will earn 30,000 bonus miles if I spend $1000 in the first 3 months. So if I have 30,000 miles of free flying can I use it whenever I want? If the trip on paper is 1,000 miles does that mean I will have 30 free trips covered or are there hidden fees? I just have no clue how airline miles work or all the fine print so I figured this forum would get me some clear answers.


The total trip mileage wise is probably around 1000 I have been driving every other weekend with a rental for under $200 with gas, but 6 hours one way driving is just horrible. The only real issue I see with flying is making sure to buy tickets months in advance to get the best available rate. My trips are usually a weekend thing Friday- Monday

The "cost" in miles is not equal to the distance flown. You will have to check the award chart for AA to get the miles needed for the trip. For AA, that may mean a minimum of 12.5k miles in each direction.

In other words, taking out their credit card will get you 1 free trip.

Quick advice:

1. Don't even think of using the 30K miles from Citi for this. I won't get
into the nuances of how one earns and uses miles, but suffice it to say, it
is not as you pictured it.

2. Use google.com/flights to plan out your itinerary at least a month in
advance.

3. For those specific pairs, United, Delta and American all fly nonstop. All
run about $195 from today through to December. SFO and OAK are
much cheaper (Spirit is $71RT to OAK).

open chase southwest cards during the 50k promos. right now i just looked at a random date flight roundtrip and its 12k points. so you can get up to 4 flights out of just 1 credit card bonus. chase has 4 versions of the card so you can open a new card and close the old one when you need more points. ive already gotten 150k miles from 3 of them. been like 3 or 4 years now and ive never paid for a domestic flight and ive sold many flights for friends as well.

I greatly appreciate everyone's advice and help. I wish I could fly into Oakland, but that is almost 2 hours away from the area I need to be in.