Airmile Hacking/Collecting

Hi Everyone,

I hope this is the right place to start this topic and that it has not be be treated at length elsewhere, I certainly couldn’t find anything recent.

Here my question: What is the best way to accumulate miles here in Taiwan? We are a family of four so we inevitably spend tens of thousands of NTD every month, I’d love to be able to get a yearly return ticket to Europe (or two?) out of it

We already have credit cards from 3 Banks, but I’m sure we can optimise.

Thanks

I must admit that I don’t have insider information on Taiwan CC mileage programs, but talking with friends and family about credit card rewards before and you pretty much need to pick an airline and use it exclusively. China Airlines, Eva Airlines, ect all have co-branded credit cards that give miles per dollar spent. I don’t think that you can “pool” miles from various sources.

Personally I still use a USA card Chase Sapphire in Taiwan since there are not foreign transaction fees that allow to rack up “points” that can be transferred to various Airline or hotel programs. I still use United and the star alliance network for my “free” tickets.

I’m not sure if Taiwan yet has a credit card that works like this where you can move your points to an airline. My guess is it will take a long time for this to happen. I think the Taiwan market might not be big enough for that to be a very profitable model for CCs and the Airlines.

(warning-- many airlines are revising the benefits and use of airline miles. It may take a lot more “miles” than before to get a long haul air ticket. However airlines make it hard to do “research” on how many miles it would take to get a free ticket.)

Thanks best-intentions. I know America is by far the best place for airmiles hacking where they routinely give you 30,000 to 50,000 miles just to sign up for a new card but I have not heard of such generosity outside of the US of A.

We collect “points” with Cathay bank and we were told that we can convert them into airmiles for both China Airlines and/or Eva Air…

So anyway, I fly to the mainland every couple of months but nothing major that would give me lots of miles, in fact I might strugle to keep my silver status I got with Cathay Pacific through status match (I was Air France silver but I’m sure to loose that because they don’t even fly here). I tried to get status match with China Airlines but they won’t even answer my mail.

Anybody else? :slight_smile:

Klm fly to Taipei. They are part of Air France.

Suggest you go to their offices, not via email.

If you truly can get China Airlines to status match, please update the thread!

“status” is harder and harder now. I’m United (star alliance) gold for the last 5 yrs, but it will finally go down to silver end of January 2015 : ( And probably down to “no status” in 2016. :cry:

I might see if China Airlines would do the same for me as I flying out of Taiwan these days is less with star alliance airlines although I guess I should give EVA Air more of a try.

For Frequent Flyer Program,
Enroll in Aegean Airlines FFP.
Star Alliance member.
They give you 1,000 miles on signup.
Get 6,000 total miles within 12 months to get SA Silver (they call Blue).
Get 14,000 more miles within 12 months of SA Silver (Blue) to get SA Gold!

Miles never expire(!).
Credit a SA flight activity (any distance…) to them every 24 months to keep your status(!).
That’s right, don’t even need the usual tens of thousands of miles every year to maintain status…

The mileage redemption for tickets and upgrades are cheaper or same compared to EVA Infinity Mileagelands, not sure about comparing to United.

For credit card I use Chase Sapphire Preferred as well, mostly because of no foreign transaction fees or exchange rate fees (plus 50k miles on signup when I did it).
Exchange rates are very good for their card.

Very true, sadly I don’t fly back and forth to Europe often enough to get sufficient miles and the choices to Mainland (mostly China Eastern and China Southern) result in very, very few miles indeed.