Do you participate in any? What do you think about them? Have they given you any great benefits in the past? Share a story if you have one .
I have Continental One Pass and Soutwest Rapid Rewards. I do a lot of travel and was able to upgrade to Silver Elite status with Continental. From time to time that means I can get a first class upgrade when seats are available. It also lets me board earlier which is really nice.
We've used Continental, Northwest and American frequent flyer miles for trips to Hawaii, Paris and a couple of other places. We never had any problems using them. In the old days it was easy to accumulate mileage. Continental was always giving double or triple miles. Nowadays we don't fly enough to accumulate, but we do still have mileage banked for at least two more tickets.
I didn't really expect much when I joined the Starwood guest plan, but apparently some really nice hotels have set some nice rooms aside for members. I just enjoyed a nice room on the 29th floor of the Westin Grand Vancouver, and a friend said he saved a lot of money at a nice room in the Princeville (Kauai).
qantas frequent flyer had enough pts for my return ticket from Adelaide to LA and same for my wife, which we used on the honeymoon/Smeggy World Tour a few months back make most of my pts through my visa card that is linked to the same scheme
American Airlines. I get miles for all Credit card purchases at home, and the office. This is great because I purchase all software, and hardware for the company, and get dollar for dollar airmiles...usually average around 10k a month. Also, travel to England at least 2 or 3 times a year, so I constantly upgrade for free. Also get Airmiles on every phone call I make. We have used the airmiles for a trip to Cancun, and to Disney World. In fact, I am taking the whole family to Disney World in December, and yep...on airmiles. I LOVE AIRMILES !! DD
I am Gold on Continental and Gold on Delta. Silver on Northwest. I flew every week for work for the past 2.5 years, so I've built up hundreds of thousands of air miles. I'm Platinum at both Starwood and Hyatt, as well. Starwood is by far the best rewards program. I went out to Vegas and used my Starwood points and they put me up on the Penthouse level of Caesar's Palace. It was awesome. Starwood is really good about giving you a pimped out suite when you use your points to pay for the room. Actually I may get the suite since I'm a platinum member, but nevertheless it's great. I've gotten incredible rooms using my points at the W in NYC, the Westin Palo Alto, the Hyatt Cancun and the W French Quarter in New Orleans. Starwood rulz. I had my own courtyard to my room in my suite at the W in the French Quarter. Didn't pay a dime...
bigtexx, do you post on www.flyertalk.com as well? It is a great source of information about specific hotels and how they treat top-tier members, as well as about airlines. I myself love the benefits frequent flyer and frequent guest programmes give. Right now, I am on the 33rd floor of a Starwood property in Chicago, with a great view of the Chicago River, downtown, and Lake Michigan. These suckers refused my request to give me the presidential suite, though .
I don't post there, but I do read those forums every now and then. They have some interesting things in there for the travelling community.
I've accumulated about 200,000 miles over the last 3 years and they are definitely worth it. The fastest way to accumulate miles is flying business class internationally and look out for miles specials. You have to sign up for the special by calling them before you take your trip. I saw a special on Cathay which is part of the one world alliance (American Airlines) where if you flew them business class from San Fran to Hong Kong, you got like 120K bonus miles. They also had a special last year where you could fly Cathay to Asia for 45K. In other words if you flew Cathay Business class then you got almost 3 free economy tickets. It works out well if you company is willing to pay for business class. Another suggestion is once you get status on one airline, you can call the other airlines and get them to match your status. You will never have to wait in line at the ticket counter again. It's great. I go to the first class line when ever I travel.
I did that with British Airways (I have the highest status on Lufthansa/Star Alliance, so I wanted a way to get into those Oneworld lounges). They comped me to their second-highest status, which is fine, though, because you can always use their lounges and have other benefits when you fly with them (highest status would have been better, because then I could have used their lounges even when NOT flying with them...). Only problem is that most airlines say they will only do this kind of comping once.
