Hi,

I fly about five to eight domestic and international trips per year - a relatively light load for this site - and book most tickets on the cheapest means available. I put my OneWorld miles on American, my SkyTeam miles on Delta, and my Star Alliance miles on SAS Eurobonus, but this is just out of habit. What frequent flyer programs have the best payoffs for cheap tickets?

Thanks.

Hi intltravel90, weclome to FlyerTalk!

You are going to need to provide a lot more information before you can get any sort of answer.

Including:
Where you are based
where you typically travel
what is importnat to you: upgrades, award availability, ect.

how do you decide what ticket to buy?....travel agent?....indie site like expedia?...then fly virgin/air india or which ever is the cheapest?

where do you live and where do you want to fly to ?

what do you want to do with your miles ? Upgrades or free flights` ?

that would help you in a choice

RB

Thanks for your replies. I usually buy the cheapest tix available (kayak, etc), which sometimes takes me to Orbitz but sometimes takes me directly to airline website. Sometimes, I'm willing to pay marginally more for more miles - but rarely.

I'm looking primarily for free flights - but I'm curious what the reply would be with regard to upgrades, too. My focus is free flights.

Based in NYC, want to fly to Europe, Latin America or the Middle East; Asia wouldn't be bad, either, though!

Thanks again.

From east coast to Europe ANA is great because it's mileage based rewards. Much fewer miles from east coast to Europe. But you have to watch out for ANA surcharge fees.

Aeroplan Air Canada is also great. Their rewards are lower than most and they're Star Alliance. If you get a no-fee Fidelity AmEx card you can earn 2 Air Canada miles per dollar on all purchases. (The BoA Aeroplan card gives a 25K bonus for a fee and 1 mile per $). Aeroplan has a wonderful 120K around-the-world in First Class option.

US Air has off-peaks to Rio in May and Oct. for 35K rt (30K if you get their credit card). Their off peaks for the same to Europe are Jan. and Feb. and they fly to most of Europe from Philadelphia. They're running a waived fee 35K mile cc promo now.

Delta is a chore to get partner rewards on but their own international flights are largely out of JFK. There's 50K pers. and biz DL cc offers out with fee waived.

American and United/Continental aren't bad at all and both have many cc offers out.