Flyertalk Eye for the Straight Guy
 

I've come, I've read, I've grown overwhelmed.

I used to be super frequent with TWA. Always upgraded, joined the airport club, got miles every time I flushed a commode. I lived high on the hog. But then I stopped traveling so much, lost my stature with TWA (and then lost TWA all together), and I'm a decade off my peak and I have a bunch of raggedy miles tucked here and there and it's just all a mess. My milesmanship is in tatters. I desperately need a frequent flyer makeover.

Can you guys help? If you can't make me one of you, at least maybe you can stop the bleeding. Here are my current stats.


American Airlines

Citibank mastercard gives me miles

Summary Date:
Jul 2004

Program to Date Miles:
338,961

YTD Elite Qualifying Points:
10,118

YTD Elite Qualifying Miles:
13,490

YTD Gold / Platinum Qualifying Segments:
2

Miles with Expiration Deferred Through 6/04/07:
88,289

Upgrade Account Balance:
0

Total Available Award Mileage +
88,289



United

When I last checked, I had 9866 miles that "wouldn't expire". But now I see I have zero. I guess they expired.



TWA

I had 7816 miles on TWA. I'm not sure I ever rolled them into AA. I guess they're lost.


Also:
I've had a bunch of hotel and car rentals over past 8 years that I forgot to get credit for. And I don't keep good records. Shall I forget about them?

And my company pays several thousands of dollars per month to various vendors via our checking account debit/credit card. I'm trying to visualize how I can channel that into frequent flier mileage. the problem is that the company uses a small local bank that has no frequent flier tie-ins, and it'd be a pain to switch banks (though not unthinkable, I'd rather not if I can help it).

So what are my first few steps to get back into form?


Come Fry With Me

Welcome to FT. I can't really help you, but presumably there are some other FTers who are better versed in this stuff. My guess is the moderator will move this thread to a forum where others can, as this one is for get-togethers/dos. Good luck!

Not The Right Board
 

I apologize to the mods....didn't find a newbie board, a "welcome to flytalk" board, etc, so I figured this would be the appropriate miscellany board.

Please move me, then!

As you have over 13K on AA to date, you might want to consider a platinum challenge to jump start to elite status. You'll see lots of threads on the AA board on that topic (or just use the search engine there).

Even though you have AA miles, though, it may not be the best carrier depending on the routes and destinations you fly. Maybe post some info about where you typically go? That will help FTers sort out if there's something better for you out there. Just because I fly AA doesn't mean it's the best option for you.

I'm sure the moderator will move this in due course (TravelBuzz maybe?). I know it's difficult, as I was a newbie at one point too, sorting out the best place to post things.

Tom in the Air New Zealand Lounge at the Wellington NZ airport

Come Fry With Me, welcome to FT! The best place to get the most help on your request is in MilesBuzz and I'll move it there. It will also help if you can make your thread titles as descriptive as possible, in this case something like, "Mileage Makeover help, please" just as a suggestion. Ocn Vw 1K, Community co-moderator.

CFWM, welcome to FT!

My advice is to pick one airline and stick with it until you reached some level of elite status at least. Which one? Depends on where you live. Northern NJ, maybe CO. Atlanta, DL. Texas, AA. You get the idea.

Take advantage of every promotion for obtaining status like the AA PLT and GLD challenges and constantly check the FT forum for your chosen ariline for tips and promotions you may have missed.

Good luck. ^

If you fly infrequently enough that what you want to do is accumulate miles but not attain elite status, take a look at the Alaska MVP program. Even if you never actually fly on Alaska, you can dump miles from American, Northwest, Continental, and a number of other travel partners into your Alaska account. (www.alaskaair.com) Alaska also has a check card through Bank of America that will earn you miles. I think American has one through CItiBank.

You probably lost the UA miles by not having any activity on the account for a long time. As long as you earn or use miles once in a while, all the miles in your account are safe.

Welcome to Flyertalk. This is a rather frequent topic in one form or another here. Most typically people who are considering changing programs. It would be useful if you could add a bit more information. Particularly what airport you typically fly out of, where you typically fly, how much you fly for work, how much you would be interested/willing to fly in addition, what to you want to do with the miles (exotic vacations, upgrade on business trips, etc). Given schedule cutbacks at some airports by some of the majors there are some places and flying patterns that greatly change ones perspective of how to go about this. Have fun.

I feel your sense of melancholy/bittersweetness
 

LIke you, I wondered if there was a support group that I could join to try to pick up the pieces and move on......but then I joined HiltonHonors and signed up with MyPoints. I do my shopping from Mypoints and transfere the points over to Hilton. In fact, I only shop through the airlines shopping portals and get miles on thier programs. But I like to build up the Hilton account cause I will always have a place to stay- domestic or international....Also, get into the habit of signing up for internet services with airline miles, keep the service for the minimum amount of time , collect the bonus miles and do it again with another deal.....Same with no fee, bonus miles credit card deals. I have more tips, but the above strategy has helped me look at myself in the mirror with pride again..Step by step- take each day slowly, and consult with others who proudly proclaim " I am a frequentflyer miles addict".

Thanks everyone for the welcome, thanks mods for the teleportation.And thanks to the Fab 6 for the advice.

Ok..........................

Airports: NY area. Laguardia, Islip, JFK and Newark in descending order of pref.

Prefered Destinations: love travel, go anywhere. Burning desires for Barcelona (been there 19 times as a musician, lots of friends), Lisbon (great city, though fast turning into McEurope), Toronto/Montreal (easy drive, but flying's faster), anything in Asia. San Francisco. London. Belgium (mussels, chocolate, french fries, and beer...it's heaven).Warm places in winter. Cool places in summer. I'd have done that Iceland trip reported in Slate in a red second. Love to travel.

Problem: very very little money. But this didn't stop me from hitting Tokyo two months ago ($350 r/t on AA, thanks to travelocity farewatcher, see, I still have vestiges of studliness left!). But as a musician and a writer, I can often score ways to at least partially pay for trips (gigs and articles). I have the adventurous, impulsive, finagling mindset that would have made me a frequent flyer contender if I'd not sort of fallen apart with all that a decade ago.


tom911: I will indeed go surf the AA board and find out what "platinum challenge to jump start to elite status" means. I seem to be all about AA, so I'll concentrate my efforts there.

shambles: thanks for welcoming me back into the unhealthy world of obsessive compulsion. I'm not fully grokking what you're saying with the Hilton thingee, it's sort of like coming in mid-spiel on the cuckoo-for-cocoa-puffs bunny without being acquainted with the cereal. I could definitely use a way to lodge cheap, I do lots of driving road trips (for food...I satisfy cravings with multi hour rides, though I'm strangely not obese). I'll go to hilton's site and see what I can learn.

Much appreciated. Please let me know if the further info above changes anything. Shall I kiss those thousands in monthly expenditures (in my original posting) goodbye? C'mon, you guys. There's no one out there ingenious enough to help turn that into an MMT (major mileage thing) for me?

Of course you can-IF you control the purchsing.Milage malls(office max,target,hp,drugstore.com)or credit cards(starwood amex is accepted at Costco)are the ways to go here.

No, let me outline the issue again:

I run a company that pays about $2,000 to $3,000/month, via credit card, for ongoing vendor services (not buying toilet paper at Walmart...more stuff like hosting our web site). That credit card is actually a credit/debit card from the bank where we have our biz checking account, and anything charged there automatically comes out of that account. Our bank is small and doesn't offer any airline tie-ins at all.And we're not going to switch to another bank at this point.

Is there any financial Rube Goldberg solution that will allow this expenditure to accrue miles somewhere somehow?

Given the info you gave my first thought was that you should focus on AA. I think the only drawback to that is Asia. UA has better coverage there. So some combination of UA and US might work. But AA has better nonstop options to Europe out of JFK now than does UA. To the coasts is about a wash between AA and UA out of New York.

What most people do in the situation to do that is either:

* Get a business credit card that earns miles and charge to that (AA has one)
* Charge to your personal card and expense it

Whether that will work in your business is an issue only you can figure out.