I have had an account with USAirways for years. My miles were moved over and I have a new account with AA. I think they charged me miles to move my account and I now need 5,000 more miles than last year for the same flight. I had intended to use my miles this year for my last flight to Myrtle Beach. Maybe I can use the miles for a subscription to TV Guide.
Wow burned through the last of one account with a flight to Turks and Caicos for 4 later this year. Got one account left but not too much to matter. I don’t even know where to shift to. They all suck now.
Most of these changes happened with UA a year ago. It is harder to earn miles now as they are tied to spending (unless you buy full fare economy of business/first tickets, which will earn more than before). A bit annoying, but honestly it’s how it should have been all along, and probably worth it to put the mileage runners out of business.
Like Sarah, I ran into the London tax issue and it wasn’t in Business/First, it was in Coach. I used miles to send my daughter and her boyfriend to France. The only routing I could get at the time was through Heathrow. Big taxes. My wife went to Germany through Amsterdam in Coach, negligible taxes. I spoke to a Delta CSR and she said that avoiding Heathrow will save you big time on taxes. My wife and I flew to Cape Town in Business Class through Amsterdam; very little in the way of taxes. It is a London thing.
Going to burn some AA miles this summer on Etihad. Hopefully flying around the world in first. Japan again or South Korea? Tough decision.
Slightly off topic > I just booked 2 tickets using my BA Avios points to fly JFK/YYZ on TAM. 9000 points per person. I have to be in Toronto in July. ![[wink.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/04707e6a7bbb03e0153e349d8a9270d30e1e9525.gif "wink"){kind=small}
Not completely true. The tax doesn’t apply if transiting, you were hit by fuel surcharge. It was a BA thing.
While it lasted, first class tickets on Cathay Pacific were the best thing going with AA miles. I still wear the Shanghai Tang pajamas given to the first class passengers.
Alan, as mentioned previously, you should only book in Business or First class for a BA awards flight. I recently blazed thru almost all the Avios my wife and I had accrued over the past 5 years to book 4 around the world tix on BA for a family vacation later this year. The BA TravelTogether vouchers we used to get a second ticket in the same class for free came in very handy when we booked our SJC-LHR-NRT leg. 2 seats in Premium Economy and 2 seats in Business for the SJC-LHR flight, then 4 in Business for the LHR-NRT, came out to $4200 total in taxes/fees. That’s less than the cost of a single Business class fare from SJC to NRT, transiting through LHR both going and returning (as well as an additional connecting flight thru LAX on the return). I used add’l Avios to book JAL for the NRT-SFO leg, and the taxes/fees assessed were a tiny fraction.
How do you guys rack up so many points? I fly to Brasil reguarly, but the points I earn are insignificant when compared to the points needed to take a worthwhile International trip on points. I just started getting into the Credit Card Bonus game (Chase Saphire and Delta Skymiles Amex). While these signup bonuses of 50,000 & 60,000 are awesome compared to flight earned miles, it would still take years to save up for a business class trip to Asia or Europe.
Run all your spending through a card that gives you points. Pay for everything you buy with that card. Use one of the airlines online shopping portals where there are often specials like 10 points per $1 spent and buy all your household items, toiletries etc. Buy airline tickets with your miles card (often there’s a bonus there). Transfer points from a corporate card if you can.
I don’t do all these things, just a quick off-the-cuff listing of all sorts of ways to get points.
British Airways offers 100K Avios signup bonuses (predicated on a certain amount of spend in the first X months) per cardholder, and you can pool your Avios if you set up a household account linking your family’s BA accounts to yours. My wife and I both got the 100K Avios bonuses, and until last year every dollar spent earned 1.25 Avios (now it’s $1 gets you 1 Avios).
But to accrue hundreds of thousands of points/miles, you do need to spend on a corresponding basis. Some people set up businesses that sell products thru online shopping sites like Amazon, and they use their rewards cards as the tools to acquire the inventory that’s sold. They make little to nothing (especially for their time invested) on the actual business, but their compensation is the airline miles/points they rack up.
All of the purchases made at the dental office where my wife works go on the Dentist’s AA card. That’s a lot of miles every year.
I consider myself pretty in the know when it comes to the rules at AA and how miles accrue, so it came as a shock to discover that now (maybe before, but I don’t think so), if you fly on Iberia (a longtime partner) on a discounted fare, your base fare miles are calculated at 1/4 of miles flown, and your EQMs accumulate at half of that! So, for a flight from NYC to MAD, which I used to do on Iberia or AA depending on timing, a discounted flight on Iberia will earn you about 450 EQMs whereas the same flight used to earn ~3700.
Guess they really, really don’t want you to fly partners! I do not immediately know if this is just Iberia, but since that’s the only partner I fly on revenue tickets, it’s the one I care most about!
To further devaluate their ‘gold’ program, I’m now receiving one email a month with an offer to pay $679 or thereabouts to bump up to Gold status. If they send that to everybody within 50% of the required miles, the Gold program is all but useless.
You sound more like a Flyertalker than Berserker. 
Frankly, with as many Exec Platinums and regular Platinums as there are, Gold has little value except maybe to get you free checked bags, and boarding just in front of the mongol hordes. Even as a Platinum, there are always 10-20 people ahead of me on the upgrade list, so that’s already futile, with no chance for just a Gold.
Completely agree with this. I only travel for leisure (no business travel). Prior to child, I was Gold but have since fallen back. I haven’t even noticed a difference. I have the AA Exec. MC which gives me free luggage and Admiral’s Club access. The only thing Gold would give me would be the ability to use my locked up 500 mile upgrades.
Anyone paying $679 for Gold status is crazy IMO. The only perks that matter to me are first class upgrades or free seats. The rest is just fluff. Gold doesn’t even allow you to sniff those.
And sadly, unless you get lucky on a flight from podunk A to podunk B (which AA really doesn’t do), you’re unlikely to get a chance to use those as a Gold. I think I have about 20 of them in the bank, but I rarely travel for work any more, and even when I still did I was probably getting upgraded like 10% of the time at most, as a Platinum.
Actually, Gold has the better seats perk - you DO get free upgrades to the Economy Plus seats, which, in today’s flying world, is a benefit. Basically AA Gold gets you ALMOST what you used to have in coach, everywhere.