This promo won best bonus at the Freddie Awards last year.

Lesley Lindberg, in accepting the award, told her counterparts with competing airline programs "we got alot of your members with this one." (or something to that effect.)

BA - Prior to June 1 2003, they had the best award to India & Asia

125,000 BA Miles for FIRST CLASS US TO ASIA including India.

100,000 BA Miles for BUSINESS CLASS US TO ASIA including India.

Both these were the best ever rewards for India and the maximum bang for the buck.

Hmmm. I'm surprised no one has mentioned either of these:

BA. First Class from the US.

175,000 miles: LAX-JFK (AA-P Class); JFK-LHR (Concorde); LHR-BKK (BA-F Class); BKK-SYD (BA-F Class); SYD-SIN (BA-F Class); SIN-LHR (BA-F Class); LHR-JFK (Concorde); JFK-LAX (AA-P Class). I did this one last year.

150,000 miles: LAX-LHR (BA-F Class); LHR-BKK (BA-F Class); BKK-SYD (BA-F Class); SYD-SIN (BA-F Class); SIN-LHR (BA-F Class); LHR-LAX (BA-F Class). I am in BKK on this one right now!

Sadly, after BA eviscerated their program, that 150,000 mile award is now a 420,000 mile award.

I've always thought the best was in WN early days between Dallas and Houston competing with Braniff when you got a free bottle of bourbon on a less than $30 fare

Actually, I think it was a $26 fare and you received your choice of alcohol.

IIRC Southwest was the largest Chivas Regal distributor in Texas that year.

The same flight could be had for $13 without the alcohol... just a way of extracting marginal revenue for the same seats when an individual was flying on a company dime.

In 1970 I used to fly from LAX to SFO on the PSA redeye to visit my girlfriend (now wife)for what I believe was $15.50 each way. Since there were no cellphones I never knew if there'd be anyone there to pick me up.

I've got a few to speak about...

CO onepass used to have a reward CS7 traveling on partner COPA from caribbean or central america not connecting in USA (Panama City was fine) flying to South America (Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo and Santiago included, and open jaw was OK and free stopover in Panama)...all for 20,000 miles on coach....recently it was raised to 30,000, which is still a great deal, anyways.

I could fly from San Juan, Puerto Rico rntp and use this CS7 award...

Also, on Delta Skymiles... once I flew for 70,000 miles coach reward... using Delta (domestic) and Korean Air (int'l)... went from San Juan to Tokyo Narita via LAX,(NRT 1st int'l stopover allowed outbound), then on to Mumbai, India (final destination) via Seoul, then stopped in Seoul (SEL was 2nd stopover in'tl allowed en route on the return), and then stopover in San Francisco (one stopover enroute allowed domestically), and then finally back to San Juan on Delta... and I got bumped on my last leg and ended up with a $600 voucher! This was in 2000.

In 1997...for 30,000 Skymiles... went from San Juan, PR to Anchorage, Alaska, then stopover in Los Angeles, and then back to San Juan.

Another time, CO onepass was running a 50% miles off reward off a few cities... one of them was Aguadilla, Puerto Rico... I went from Aguadilla to Los Angeles, with a Newark stopover... for 17,500 miles...

Also, on former TWA... I went from San Francisco, stopped in New York, then flew to Stockholm (open jaw), then flew back from Athens via JFK and stopped in Chicago, and finally back to San Francisco, all for 35,000 miles (this is 1992).

On Aadvantage.... went from SJU to HNL... then flew back from Maui and stopped over in Dallas, and back to San Juan...for 35,000 miles...

Also, went from San Juan to Dallas, stopped there, then went to Santiago, Chile, then back to Dallas, and stopped again, and finally back to San Juan, for 40,000 miles.
(San Juan-Dallas normally is 30,000 miles, so for 10,000 extra miles I went to So America)

The key is to book them in advance.

Now, it is not worthwhile for me... I would rather accummulate double miles on paid tickets!

This doesn't really qualify as an award, but certainly the best deal I ever heard of.

A colleague of mine had a business that required a lot of travel. For a short while, American offered a pass for $100,000 (I'm not certain the exact cost, but I think this was it). This pass entitled the person to fly 1st class, with another person anywhere, for life. AND the flights for both people earned miles. He billed clients for estimated costs, and the pass clearly paid for itself in no time.

He told me that he later met another person who had such a pass, but whose company had folded. He then would charge people to fly them to Europe and back 1st class as his guest.

Apparently American hadn't done the math on this one, because they later offered it for much more money, and then probably dropped it completely.

We once used 85,000 miles on JAL for TWO business class tickets from Chicago to Beijing in 1996.

Also not strictly a reward, but when Pan Am first issued its WorldCard with First USA, they included Mastercard checks (initially three) which were good for a maximum of $10,000 a piece and were miles earning. After using those three, they issued another three. Not only did these earn 1 mile per dollar spent, but IIRC if you paid your balance in full early, they accrued no interest. In essenc this was a free 60,000 miles. About 4 months into the programme these the mileage element of these checks were revoked.

I second what has been written above about the KLM miles match. I made out big time from that one.

When United first started Mileage Plus, a domestic roundtrip First Class upgrade, including Hawaii, was just 10,000 miles. UA also gave a "class of service" bonus to anyone flying in First Class, even if upgraded using miles. I used to fly ORD-HNL and would upgrade with miles. However, the roundtrip would accumulate over 10,000 miles. So for every ORD-HNL upgraded roundtrip, I recouped my original miles. Furthermore, as a result, I always had at least 10,000 miles available in my account to upgrade my next trip to Hawaii.

I also did the same when flying to Europe. Just 10,000 UA miles got me a Business Class upgrade on Pan Am. As with Hawaii, the roundtrip, including all bonuses, earned me another 10,000+ UA miles. This enabled me to recoup my original 10,000 miles spent for the upgrade. Those were the days!!

[This message has been edited by Neal (edited Feb 12, 2004).]

In late 80s, there were a slew of triple miles promotions....and these were the days before you had to show ID for flights.

Soooooo, imagine having every male you know, flying under your name for the duration of triple miles promotion. Maybe paying them $25-$50 for their trouble/cooperation.

Not exactly an award or reward, but rather strategic UTILIZATION of a reward!!

Think 15 recruits and about 250K of mileage for maybe $600.

My vote goes out to the SAS "Fly 5 get 5" award when they were promoting the Star Alliance in 1997.

Each member had the same qualifier with mild variations: Fly at least one paid flight on each of the original 5 *A members (UA, LH, AC, TG, SK)

For your trouble, SAS gave you a free RT for 2 people on EACH of the 5, systemwide, with one stopover permitted in each direction.

PLUS - you didn't have to credit the qualifying flights to your SK account.
I gave up my UA number, and qualified for their bonus as well (50K miles)

I took in Vancouver, Toronto, London, Copenhagen, Oslo, Tel Aviv, Beijing, Bangkok, Perth and Buenos Aires...

I agree Fly-5 with SAS was really something... you had to mail in boarding passes so you could actually credit to UA and then send bp's to SAS (they didn't have a problem with this, the UA FF number was on the bp). I think I spent $600-700 for the 10 intercontinental tickets plus UA credit plus 100,000 mile bonus on UA for flying all Star members!

my all time big five in chronological order:

88 triple miles, what started it all for me

Chart House RTW promo (see previous post) (1996)

SAS Fly 5 combined with UA 100K promo (1998)

Latin Pass Million Mile (a nice even number!) (2000)

KLM status match/mileage match (2002)

some aren't awards per se but these are the ones I remember (there have been some great nonflying deals (Kelloggs, ValueMags, et al) but I see those in a different category

I agree that the KLM Mileage Match is the definite winner for me. Spent a little over $1100 and ended up with the equivalent of 83 Business Class round trips between Europe and the US. Plus KLM has reduced awards under which one could fly from LAX to AMS to SEL for 45,00 miles rt. in Business.

The Latin Pass Million was also one of my favorites as well.