I’ve never participated in any frequent flyer programs before because, well… I’m not a frequent flyer. But with the distance between Taiwan and America, it seems like even a few trips could rack up some serious miles. I think I’d be a fool not to take advantage. Any frequent flyer Jedis out there that could help this padwan out? Any good stories about cashing in your miles you’d like to boast about?
So many original posters keep popping up here with original questions…
Pick a program with airlines that most match your travel habits. The miles will eventually build up. I focus on Star Alliance and tell all the members to accrue my miles to United Airlines. The miles transfer among all inside the alliance, but the accrual adds up for the annual level calculation. My Taiwan friend uses Star Alliance, but accrues their mileage on Eva.
I flew from Europe to USA, and USA to Taiwan, last year on two separate tickets both obtained merely with miles on Star Alliance. The flight from Europe was on United, the flight from USA to Taiwan was on Eva, which has recently joined Star Alliance. Even though I had never accrued miles on Eva, I was still able to use my Star Alliance miles for free. They even compt’ed me to business class. I’ve bought friends round-trip tickets using miles from Asia to USA and I was not even present for any part of the transaction.
Note that the budget airlines (like Air Asia) don’t have programs or programs are very minimal.
Do your research on which of the three major alliances (Star, SkyTeam, oneworld) make sense for you, based on where you live and where you travel. Focus on a primary program/airline to accrue miles, if you file 25k miles in a year or more you can obtain status levels which give some benefits (including increase earning of miles). Miles can be earned on any airline within an alliance to your primary account. You can use reward miles across the whole alliance.
I use Star Alliance which works well for me in Asia using (United, EVA, Singapore, Asiana, ANA, Air Canada, Air China, Thai, and others).
And, don’t get your hopes up. Air miles used to be quite useful - these days, not so much, unless you’re flying quite a bit. The big thing is that miles now expire with many programs - I think my Eva points disappear after three years, for example, and with flying to Canada once a year and my flights usually limited to summer, I don’t accumulate enough points to ever buy a significant trip. (Plus I seem to fly with different airlines every year because whatever’s cheapest changes a lot - one year Philippines, next year Korea, and so on.)
Yes, I can occasionally use miles to buy a smaller trip within East Asia - but often that’s not worth it, because many times you can buy a hotel/airfare package that works out better.
Of course, it depends how much you fly, but I gave up factoring frequent flyer programs into my plans several years ago. That’s with, let’s say, 1.5 international trips per year.
I used to fly a huge amount but have cut back over the last year. I am flying with EVA to the UK on the 1st July. Chose EVA because my china Airlines gold card expires…guess when…June 30th and the elite class is cheaper than China business class
I had many miles with KLM, and now they expire every year. Unless I get 15+ flights or do a ludicrous amount of miles, I’m not going to jump from Ivory to Silver anytime soon. The miles are good enough to change my Economy class seats for Economy Comfort and get an additional piece of luggage, though. about 160€ saved/trip.
After posting that last night, I started trying to figure out how to use a bunch of points that I’ve accumulated (and thanks for prompting me!). As best I can figure:
Return flights between Taipei and Istanbul on Singapore Airlines, plus internal flights within Turkey on Turkish Airlines, get me enough KrisFlyer points to fly one way to Singapore (or elsewhere in Southeast Asia). I think. There are weird little Saver/Normal distinctions that look promising at the first stages of the website, but are the kind of thing that will suddenly say no to you at the end of the purchasing process. And my wife was on the same route with me, so she can get a one-way ticket too. Those points expire at the end of this year.
Lots of Eva co-branded credit card use, plus a couple of return flights between Taipei and Vancouver, seems to get me enough points for two one-way (business class!) tickets within Southeast Asia. But I need to book that soon - at the end of July I drop just below 50,000 points, and that limits options.
End result: it looks like we may be going to Southeast Asia for Chinese New Year! Maybe fly into Singapore and out from Langkawi/Penang, or vice versa. So that’s nice - with the big caveat that we may not actually be able to book it, depending on what the websites say at later stages. But I think this is indicative of what Frequent Flyer points are more useful for these days. There’s no way I can accumulate enough points for a peak-season flight to North America; and if we were already planning to go to Southeast Asia, we could probably get an airfare + resort package that wouldn’t cost that much more than we’re going to spend on hotels anyway. As it is I’m starting to plan this trip simply because we’ve got the points, and if we don’t use them this year they’ll expire. If we had the money we’d go farther afield, but currently we don’t really have the money, and we’ve got the points, so what the heck.
I have had a star alliance silver card through Thai for a few years, and got some perks, such as extra luggage allowance on Thai, the odd free plane ticket to Thailand and the like.
The last couple of years have been a star alliance gold card, and it does offer perks such as lounge access, 20kg extra luggage, priority check-in, the odd upgrade to business and the like. I like having those perks.
The frequent flyer miles will get used eventually, I got a ticket to Europe on them last year and guess I can repeat that this year. By doing stuff like that, I do not run into issues with expiring miles.
This year I will total 8 round trips to Europe, so well, I guess I will have miles coming out of my bung-hole shortly.
Oof. I both envy you and feel sorry for you. That’s a lot of time in the air.
And yes, if you’re flying a lot, then you definitely want to figure out the Frequent Flyer programs. But I’m not sure about the OP’s situation - if she or he’s just flying once or twice a year, then the points can be a nice occasional bonus, but I don’t think choosing the right alliance to book with should factor into plans; it’s easy to get irrational and wind up paying 10,000NTD extra for an alliance flight that will get you points that you’re unable to ever use anyway (I suspect I’ve done this).
It used to be easy - I’d basically use Eva’s or Cathay’s systems for, roughly, “Buy four flights get one free” by accumulating points over 4-5 years. Unfortunately most plans don’t allow that kind of long-term accumulation anymore.
EDIT: Getting a mortgage and a wife with Taiwanese-style office vacations didn’t exactly help my frequent flyer status!
For me, if you look at a $/mile value comparison, international business class upgrades, particularly those with flat bed seats are the best use of miles for me. Or if I can get US domestic tickets for 25k for my family, it is a big deal for them so I get them free tickets. A good thing about using your miles for upgrades and not free tickets is that you can then accrue miles for those flights whereas you don’t on award tickets. Some Asian airlines suck when it comes to accruing miles because they often don’t give you any miles or only 50% on discount fares.
The status benefit that I enjoy the most is having lounge access: shower for long trips, free food (mediocre but at least something), and free booze. Also, in domestic US, I typically get first class seats for free. International, if economy is full, I am typically upgraded to business but otherwise it is hard to get a free upgrade. Also, only certain fare classes on most airlines are elligible for using miles to upgrade so if you are on a discount fare, they may not even accept miles for upgrade
Lastly, if you are worried about your miles expiring, they often renew for one year if you accrue any mileage which can be done through hotels, rental cars, or maybe even buying some crap off Skymall which might be worth preserving the mileage in your account.
Unless you fly frequently business on long haul, you get more or less nothing I fly about once a week to HK, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, few long-haul as well… all in Eco and with the cheapest airlines. I prioritize convenience and time of travel rather than what airlines / alliance I take. So I end up taking all different alliance and airlines, most of the time I book ticket class with no miles which are 15% cheaper (till recently Cathay didn’t offer any miles for the supersaver class to HK).
I think you can however get more miles using a co-branded credit card like the EVA one and use it for all hotels and ticket booking. When I was living in China, there were a crazy deal to convert your China Mobile points to miles on Air China: I almost could get 2 tickets a month Beijing to Hong-Kong for a period of 3 years and topping like 300 000 miles in 3 years. I think they found out that they were giving too much and they change the deal just before I come here
and the elite class is cheaper than China business class
I fly about once a week to HK, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, few long-haul as well… all in Eco and with the cheapest airlines. I prioritize convenience and time of travel rather than what airlines / alliance I take. So I end up taking all different alliance and airlines, most of the time I book ticket class with no miles which are 15% cheaper (till recently Cathay didn’t offer any miles for the supersaver class to HK).