I'm looking to sign up for my first Frequent Flyer's program, and am overwhelmed with all the different options and possibilities. I'm hoping I can get some advice on which program would be best for me.

I live in the Los Angeles area and use LAX primarily, though sometimes Long Beach as well. I plan to fly most often back home to Florida, at least twice a year (MCO, JAX, or GNV usually).

I've always just gone with the cheapest flight options in the past, but as long as fares are fairly similar, I don't need to pinch pennies, so I could be consistent if there's enough flight options to my destinations.

Future flights I'm hoping to take include destinations like San Francisco, Las Vegas, Costa Rica, Thailand, Italy. As for other reward options, I'd probably be most interested in saving to try and get free/reduced price international tickets and/or upgrades in general, rather than springing for a free domestic ticket in most cases.

Also, I'm not really interested in any Credit Card offers at this time.

Thanks for the help in advance!

Welcome to Flyertalk vincevalen!

I can relate to being overwhelmed with the plethera of choices as a newbie. I was the same. That's why I suggest signing up for all of them! Don't choose only one, go for them all.

Now if you only travel that route twice a year you will not gain much in terms of elite status but you will earn some nice RDM coinage. Depending on what airline you fly you will earn miles in different ways.

Southwest (WN), Virgin America (VX) and jetBlue (B6) will give you miles depending on the dollar cost of your ticket, a bonus for buying it through their website and/or using their co-branded CC's.

American Airlines (AA), Delta Airlines (DL) and United (UA) give you RDM miles and Elite Qualifying Miles depending on your miles flown and what fare class you buy.

I would suggest that you do like many flyertalker's who do not fly frequently, including myself, and earn your miles from partner bonus offers.

Credit Cards are the biggest and most bountiful. They really are the best way to travel free without ever flying. I understand wanting to avoid this side of the travel community but the benefits of these cards really are amazing.

Financial institutions offer bonus offers for account opeings (Fidelity,TD Ameritrade and BankDriect) these are large as well.

There are tons of offers all the time. From Netflix to e-shopping. Keep reading these forums and you will be on your way to earning free flights.

I slightly disagree with the recommendation above to sign up for them all.

First of all, if you're interested mostly in international destinations on other continents, that limits you to the legacies.

Next, you need consider that some are dupilcates. For example, no need to sign up for both UA and CO and US. For that group, sing up for CO (because it's your CO-type number which will become your UA number once CO/UA finish merging), and use it for all CO, UA, and US flights.

Then, if you're interested in doing upgrades (with a combination of miles and cash co-pay), sign up for AA and sign up for DL. If, however, you're only interested in miles (for outright awards), sign up for AS instead, as it partners with both AA and AS. (That way you can have just two programs which cover all the US-based legacy airlines, and can redeem on all US-based legacy airlines.) But beware, you will not be able to upgrade (anything other than Alaska's own flights) if it's AS miles you collect.

And, btw, you need lots of miles in one program to get either free flights overseas or upgrades on paid flights. So if the price difference isn't too big and the schedule isn't too bad, I suggest you pick and first, second, and third priority on which program you'll collect in. (You won't be able to transfer the miles between programs if you wind up with them too scattered!)

And finally, you mentioned "lower the price". Sorry, there is no "cash + miles" option for award flights on any US-based airlines that I'm aware of. (BA is the only airline I'm aware of having such an option, at least in the past. They recently revamped their program, and so I don't know if even they still have that.)

And beware that using miles for those intenational flights will require that you be flexible. For example, it's very hard to use miles for free flights to many destinations on peak holiday dates any more.

Some are duplicates. For example, no need to sign up for both UA and CO and US, since you can sign up for one and credit flight on the others to that one. (UA and CO are merging, but at this instant are still separate as far as sign-ups go. Similarly, AirTran and Southwest are merging, but they are still basically operating independently as of this month.)

Furthmore, most have some sort of expiration-without-activity policy, so you'll have to keep track of that somehow, and learn techniques for keeping your miles / points in each alive if you have miles / points scattered across oodles of programs.

But some LCCs have expieration that you can't easily avoid! These I would suggest you avoid signing up for, and steer away from flying them, unless you're ready to do whatever it takes (possibly hold a particular credit card which may have an annual fee) just to keep the miles from expiring.

And LCCs will not get you to those international destinations.

And interni

I disagree with this. While UA/CO and US are both *A, their programs are much much different.

UA/CO is a partner of Chase Ultimate Rewards, so if you earn Chase UR points (from the Sapphire Preferred or Ink Bold), you can transfer to UA/CO. They allow for one-way awards.

US is not a partner of anything except SPG. However, they have a lot of "buy miles" promotions and you can gain a lot of US miles through promotions. US does not allow for one-way awards. In addition, their Barclay's credit card is one of the best deals of credit cards I think -- the credit inquiry is done on Transunion instead of the other 2, 40K miles are earned on first purchase, and you get 10K miles each year (which washes out the $89 annual fee).

Sure, both can be used for *A, but they are completely different programs. I participate in both and am glad I do. OP has said that they don't fly enough to earn a lot of miles, so elite status isn't an issue. If OP were to buy a ticket on *A, he could decide later which airline to credit to. But should still sign up for both programs.

It seems this is the day of the newbees with some of the most elementary questions...I swear I'm waiting for someone to ask what a plane is and if they have bathrooms and if they allow smoking and handguns....OMG

Sign up for them all, doing so hurts nothing and if you buy the cheapest flight you can find, you will then earn points for any and all. Not that it matters much, without credit cards, a few flights to Fla will take you YEARS to get enough for any international awards, you will NEVER get status on any airline, and maybe 6-7 years down the road you will have enough points in one for an award.
you need to pick one and use it all the time (even if it's more expensive or has a less desirable routing), get the associated credit card and it's bonus points, read all about it's program and every possible way to earn points in it.
Thats what people do here....i suggest you read about one or two choices and use the SEARCH function to get answers. If you spend time reading these boards, you may get a clue.....if your expecting us to have a magic answer for your vague newbee question so you can go away happy and not waste your time learning, i gave it to you.

First, a lot depends on your flight habits and plans. Yes, if you have a choice of airlines with reasonably equal schedules and prices, it's best to focus your travel on a single airline or alliance. Keep in mind though that what you can get is still limited. Even if you fly from LAX to Italy, it's still only about 12,000 miles round-trip, which at best will be half of a domestic round-trip ticket or an eighth of an international business-class ticket.

For people who aren't road warriors, the best deals are credit card bonuses and points. I know you said you're not interested, but that's where the points are these days.

Forget about upgrades. In practice, getting upgrades with points usually require a fair amount of points, and often also require you to buy a somewhat expensive fare. Upgrades are usually the province of elite fliers (i.e. those who fly at least 25,000 miles a year on a particular airline/alliance, and often 50-75,000 miles a year are required). There is also no such thing as a "reduced-price" flight, although when you consider that taxes, fees, and fuel surcharges can run into the hundreds, maybe a "free" ticket (notice that airlines no longer call them "free" they call them "awards") is really just a reduced-price ticket.

The best "deal" for your points is international premium class travel. If you just look at the posted prices, a round-trip business class ticket to Europe can easily run $5,000 or more, while you can sometimes get it for 100,000 points, or a value per point of 5 cents. Most of the time, though, you be doing quite well to get rewards of as much as 2 cents per point.

I would just pick an airline that you think goes most of the places you want to go, and try to travel as much on that airline or its partners as you can. It doesn't cost anything to sign up with other programs, but keep in mind that you will need 25,000 points to get anything of value (except sometimes gift cards that won't be a very good value for your points) and if you only take a trip on a given airline every few years, it's really kind of a waste. Many airlines have points that expire anyway. I got a couple thousand American Airlines points for a flight I took two years ago, but I didn't fly them again and they expired. No great loss.

UA/CO is if you want cheap and affordable travel to many destinations. Delta is if you want quality service.

But I think you forgot one very important thing, given that the OP is a newbie who will take a long time to get to antyhing.

UA/CO are going to be in *A as long as *A exists.

But there the distinct piossiblity (if it merges with AA) that US could move to OW within a couple years. Now, to you, a couple years may long enough to decide whether to burn US miles on *A while you can or accept them moving to OW. But if the OP is making plans for slow longtime earning on *A, I would say UA/CO because it's "sure" to stay in *A, rather than US because there's too much of a risk that it will go to another alliance within a couple years.

I kept getting advice from people to start collecting BMI for *A as recently as a year ago or so. Now it's being bought by BA (and thus natually going to OW)! There is definitely a downside risk to choosing a "small outlier" airline that seems to have good promotions if you only want it as long as it's in a particular alliance.

(And I don't know about you, but most people who are drilled say they earn US miles to redem on partners, not on US itself).

Meanwhile, I think it's silly to tell a newbie to "sing up for them all" without explaining what you mean by "all" (do you mean every airline the world? every regional LCC in the US? or just "all the ones you are likely to fly"?) and without explaining about expiration policties. I've seen too many newbies burned because they collected in too many different programs, didn't learn about expiration, and then lost miles in some of them because they stopped paying attention a year later. (Just because someone is excited now and posts on FT doesn't mean their life can't become busier a year and a half from now, exactly at the time they'll have to start being concered about how to keep miles here or there from expiring.)