Award Travel: Redeeming Mileage Awards for a Airline Tickets and Upgrades is Getting Harder

Free Airline Reward Seats!  Airline miles . . . we all have them.  In fact, it's pretty easy for me to rack up airline reward miles with my credit cards.  It's not so easy to turn them into free airline tickets or free seat upgrades.  According to a recent article in the LA Times, airlines are offering fewer mileage seats and introducing more blackout dates.  These two things add up to trillions of miles being held by airline customers with no place to go.  My experience is that in order to successfully redeem your miles, you need to be flexible.  First of all, try to book that free ticket far in advance -- and for Hawaii, I'm talking a full year in advance, friends.  Also, be prepared to use more miles to get that ticket than you have in the past.  A ticket that you used to be able to get for 25,000 miles may cost you 40,000 miles nowadays.  For more help, you may want to check out www.webflyer.com to stay up on the latest and greatest frequent flyer program promotions.  Be tenacious and you too can be flying the friendly skies on a mileage award ticket.  And won't that feel great?

Photo by Jakob Lodwick via Flickr (Creative Commons)

Comments

[Jack from eyeflare travel tips]

Yep, prices are most definitely up, and benefits down. Feels like it's more slogging through the un-friendly skies nowadays.

I've started taking the train as much as I possibly can!