New to FF Usage and can use some guidance
 

I am a Member of Continental One Pass, AAdvantage, Delta, and Hyatt...Is there anyway, I can centralize my mileage for best use...I am getting the sense that I am spread all over the place and not getting the best of my mileages...

Please Help...All Guidance is appreciated..

Welcom to Flyer Talk!

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with merely having membership in several carriers across differerent alliances. The error would be in failure to consolidate travel on your top carrier when you are able to control it. If you have done that, and accrued points in several programs, there is not a particularly efficient way to combine or shift them into one program. The real question you need to ask is which program best suits my needs, based upon my location, travel frequency, primary destinations, and goals (e.g. reward trips or the benefits of elite status). Unless you ahve a large number of built up points and high elite status, dont let your existing programs supposed value determine that result: make the decision as if you have you are new to loyalty programs, and then stick with it, for the msot part. Use up any rewards in programs you wont be using in the future, and dont worry about "wasting" a few points in programs that are not suited to your needs.

Also, the search function can generate a lot of useful links. Best of luck!

some info from you would help.....home airport.where you go & how many trips/yr, y or f/j cabins....good luck...spend more time reading flyertalk...

edit to add....there is a thread on this page 'what's the right airline/allaince for me", provide the detail that rab shows & get better answers....

My airport is Laguardia or Jfk and i travelled at least 8 times a year and currently flying coach

Are those 8 flights foreign or domestic? Where do you normally travel? This questions will help us give more help. For example, if you travel to ATL often, then DL would be your main airline. If it's DFW, then AA would be your best bet.

Welcome to FT!!

CO or AA would be your best options for concentrating your earning on.

Given the uselessness of DL miles, even OP's destination involves ATL, he should still look at other FF programs than DL.

Miles are not created equal. In fact there is a thread right in this forum about which airline is the worst in award availability - DL took the dubious honor by many miles - no punt intended.

My 2 cents as far as Hyatt goes is to accrue Hyatt points for stays as I find them valuable for stays. (Assuming Hyatt's are located where you want to redeem).
If you are close to getting an airline award and you need to "top it off" you may switch to miles for a stay or two then switch back to GP points.

speaking of delta, i just booked a j award dfw-scl on aa for 100k mi, then changed it to a partner award to/from cor [cordoba ar] for about $30 more on the ticks & fleas inc tel fee.....dl wanted 200k mi to scl....

ismenie, a couple of points:
1. I don't think my first response to you was particularly clear. Let me try again: Being a member of several programs is not bad at all. BUT: Splitting your limited travel between several programs is not very good, because when you do that you never gain the true benefits of an FFP loyalty program, because they tend to compound. You need to figure out your ideal program, and try to stick with that airline or airline alliance on all travel occasions, unless the purchase price of a competitor is significantly lower (like 20% or more lower).

2. OK, JFK and 8 trips a year: good info to start. But as Open Jaw asked, to where do you travel? Domestic vs International? Coast to coast or more local? This will make a difference, let me show you how. Let's assume you travel almost all of that domestically. Let's pick just one scenario and see what can be done if you pick a good program and stick with it. In this scenario, I will assume that your eight trips per year are long flights to the west coast. It's just an example to show you the potential. I will assume a 2500 mile one way leg, which is about the distance from JFK to LAX, and we will pick American AAdvantage and the One World Alliance as your FFP, simply because it is the program with which I am most familiar.

JFK to West Coast = 2500 miles, round trip 5000. Multiply that times 8 trips = 40K miles for the year. Now, if you spread this over three airlines, at the end of the year you will not achieve elite status in any of them, and you won't have enough earned miles for a round trip ticket on anywhere. But if all of this travel were on AA, you would easily obtain the first elite tier (Gold) and you would have enough miles for at least one round trip domestic reward trip.

But that is just to start! Since you qualified Elite Gold after about the first leg in your sixth trip, you will get a 25% bonus in earned miles, which will get you closer to two free domestic trips with judicious use of points! You will also get 500 mile upgrade "stickers", priority check in and boarding, and several waived fees. People underestimate the value of this lowly Gold elite status, but it is worth it!

It gets better: Maybe AA restarts their Double Elite Qualifying Miles. Lets say you manuever three of your trips into the AA "DEQM" window. Now instead of only about 40K elite qualifying miles, you will get 55K elite miles, which qualifies you for AA's Elite Platinum status. Now you get a 100% earned mileage bonus on all of your travel, and maybe you are close to THREE domestic reward round trips shortly into your second year, you get more 500 mile upgrade stickers, you have even higher upgrade likelyhood, and several other fine benefits.

But wait, there's more! Maybe you get a credit card with a generous sign up bonuse, like the Citi AAdvantage Platinum MC, and you get 25K free miles. We are darn close to four free domestic trips. (I'm using the AA Mile Saaver rate of 12.5K per direction). And you also signed up for the SPG AmEx, earning you another 25K miles after, part of it for initial sign up, part of that after spending $15K in six months. You break the code and start using this card for everything, including recurring automatic bills like phone bills, utilities etc. You earn, effectively, a fabulous 1.25 per dollar spent on this card. In the first year lets say you spend $30K on this card, being careful to pay it off every month. Now were are we? I'm gonna tell you. :

You only flew 40K miles. In your split out programs you would get very little. But because you stuck with a program you got lots more:
Because of the DEQM offer you earned gold after the fourth trip, and Platinum after the seventh, and with the respective 25% and 100% mileage bonuses you now have 53K+ miles in your account.
Citi AA MC sign up of 25K and a little bit of spending yields you closer to 80K miles.
SPG sign up and spending bonuse yields you 25k bonus miles, and you are now up to 105K miles.
You spend $30K per year on that SPG AmEx, and convert it over at a rate of 1.25 mi/$ due to SPG's bonus method, and now your have closer to $143K miles. (SPG purists bare with me, I know about the 20K issue, just trying to model the effective result)
And because you spent $30K on that SPG you are automatically granted Gold (second tier) status in the Starwood program.
Man, you did really well this year, and thats all without taking advantage of the more obscure opporunities, good job!

You see how this works? The program builds upon itself, like compounding interest.

Best of luck to you. And whatever program you go with, keep in mind that many of them offer a referral bonus. Keep your fellow FT members in mind for that.

The reason I stated that the OP should credit all flights to DL is because he is already a Skymiles member. The OP never stated that he was thinking moving to another ST member.

I have read all the posts by others on FT about DL and I must say that I agree some opinions and disagree with others. Personally, I have never had problems obtaining award flights with DL because I am very flexible with my travel dates and normally book well ahead of time.

Thank you all so much for the Upstart Information
 

You guys/gals if any have open up my eyes to the possibilities...As for my flying habit, I will be flying at least twice to Vancouver and twice to Atlanta...The Remainder of the trips will be to South/Central America and Two Trips to Europe. European and Americas destinations unknown at this point...

^ to you for taking the time to help out a newbie with questions. Great community spirit.

I guess I must have been truly lucky - I just redeemed DL miles for 4 domestic coach tickets for my daughter, son-in-law and 2 kids to fly RT from MHT to LAS.

OK, you should do a bit of checking with the major airlines and alliances and their accessability to your destinations to help you decide your primary FFP. One thing to consider: Select the FFP based on the likely long haul routes, not on the short trips to Atlanta. In order of priority, I would consider this:
1. Europe (assuming two trips)
2. South America (assuming one trip)
3. Vancouver (assuming two trips)
4. Central America (assuming one trip)
5. Atlanta (assuming two trips)

If you can find a good airline for the top three, don't worry so much if they aren't the best for 4 and 5, because the real mileage will come from your TATL (trans atlantic) runs.

I can't speak to Europe and Vancouver, but AA is very hard to beat for flights to South and Central America. If you end up going AA, get yourself up to speed on the AA Challenge program before you fly, you might be in a good position to earn accelerated Gold or even Platinum status with those long haul flights. Its how I got my first Gold and later, Platinum status.

Very lucky indeed if you were able to redeem it at the LOWEST tier of the miles required. And good for you DL miles suit your needs for domestic travel.

There is abundant availability for higher tiers of the miles required, but at the Saver level which has very little or none available for many routes while other airlines have availabilities for the saver awards.

Post No.8 from clacko gives you a stark example, in case you fail to notice it:

<<speaking of delta, i just booked a j award dfw-scl on aa for 100k mi, then changed it to a partner award to/from cor [cordoba ar] for about $30 more on the ticks & fleas inc tel fee.....dl wanted 200k mi to scl....>>

Now you tell me, would DL mile worth the same as AA mile?

Go to Coupon Connection to get a feeling of how much "value" people place on DL miles when looking for a trade, you will get a more realistic idea.