frequent flyer miles success stories???

On my last 3 trips I found low enough fares that I didn't try to use frequent-flyer miles. Also, I was returning from London, and the horrendous taxes on LHR departures make use of miles for those trips ill-advised.

Apparently I'm lucky that my origin airport is Washington-Dulles. In 2015 I had no trouble booking flights into Rome (late May, non-stop) and out of Zagreb (October, one stop). Then in 2016 I snagged a mid-May non-stop to Madrid and an early-August one-stop return from Barcelona. All flights cost the minimum number of miles (I think 30,000 each way), had minimal taxes to be paid, and had very reasonable connections at non-problematic European airports (no Heathrow, no Charles DeGaulle). None involved what I call "commuter" airlines. Perhaps unbelievably, both return flights were booked less than 2-1/2 months prior to departure.

I know no tricks. I think a great deal depends on your origin airport; that's probably 80% of the story right there. Planning early helps, and being flexible about dates, origin and destination obviously expands your options greatly. Driving to O'Hare from a residence in Indiana or Wisconsin could make a great deal of difference.

If I didn't have access to a comparatively "easy" airport, I'd switch my mileage cards to cash-back cards. Actually, I should probably do that anyway.

The last 2 times I've purchased tickets on Delta I've used their option of miles+money so have spent miles on part of the ticket. I don't really try to game play with this so anyone who is very up on spending points probably thinks it's a waste but I liked saving $500 on a ticket.

Go to the Delta site and enter a search for”Pay with Miles” and select the option to see several days before/after a given date. You will be able to see what’s available. I’ve noticed that the quantity of miles needed was more this year than previous years.

I have used United and American miles for 2 separate trips to Europe this year. I found the best success when I was able to travel mid-week, especially Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Also if you have a bit of flexibility about which airports you fly out of and into, that can help to find flights. And I also look at one-way flights, particularly if you are flying home from a different airport that the one you started out with. On a recent flight I flew over using American miles and flew home on United miles with a partner airline. Makes it a little more complicated, but it saved me a lot of money. Or maybe you fly over using mileage for a 1 way ticket and then fly back on a paid ticket where you found a good deal. And remember there are some inexpensive flights (or trains) within Europe, so it makes it easy to fly into 1 city, go somewhere else while you're there, and then fly home from there. There's nothing wrong with using one way tickets to get you there and then back if that works, or use the "multi-city" option to fly into 1 city and home from another. It takes some research and willingness to jump in when you do find something, since the free seats can disappear a day or so later. Also depending on how many miles you have, maybe splurge and use more miles than you had originally planned in order to get the flight you want, rather than hanging onto miles that seem to get harder to use each year. Also try looking as far ahead as you can and try for non-peak times. You do need to watch out for the cost of upgraded seats (such as to Economy Plus), but it can make the flight more enjoyable and still cheaper than paying $ for the whole flight. Hope this helps, and good luck!

I have three trips coming up between now and Christmas, all using miles on Delta.

In the past, due to my poorly-served airport, I was able to stumble on value as high as 6-cents per mile. However, for these three trips, try as I may, value doesn’t go over 1.2 or 1.4 cent per mile, no matter what date. Therefore, as we’re finishing up this batch of miles, I’m taking a look at cash back credit cards instead.

The September trip was booked back in December, but August and November trips were booked in May and June. No tricks. I just look and book if available.

As Jean said, use the flexible dates option and you’ll see the number of miles needed on different dates within the same week or so. The lowest option will be highlighted.

As acraven said—beware the copay taxes, especially flying into or connecting in England. For example, AA direct to Paris was $5, while British Air connecting in London was $500, using the same batch of AA miles.

I"ve flown to Europe every year, six years in a row now, using miles. I've used Alaska miles (partners with AA and formerly with Delta) and AA miles. My flight options have been better than you might think. Alaska allows one free stop-over on a ticket, which allows me to stop on the east coast and see family on the way to Europe. It also allows me a direct flight from the east coast to Europe, which is nice to start.

Alaska's program has been degraded though (in my opinion) to get rid of their great former policy of free changes/cancellations up to 60 days before departure, something I took advantage of before (book a flight early, then keep checking for better options to pop up). So lately I've been using Alaska for the flight to Europe (with the free stop-over) and AA for the flight home. AA allows you to put a free "hold" on award flights for about a week so you can hold something and keep checking if you aren't sure.

I get my miles using credit card promo offers. Both Alaska/Bank of America and AA/Citi let you re-apply for a new card after a set time and get a whole new bonus again. Last year I got a 60,000 mile bonus (again) for a new AA card after spending $3,000(I think?). That's a hard offer to pass up if you can spend enough monthly on your credit cards but still pay off the balances every month - but I can.

Keeping the cards more than a year after you get them is not an effective way to play the miles game - you have to "churn:" cancel your cards after you get the bonus, wait, and get a new card and a new bonus again in a year or two. Yes, this can ding your credit, and each bank/airline has a different policy on new credit cards, but if you aren't planning to borrow a lot of money soon, your credit rating declining slightly might not matter to you.

Chase has some good cards too - the Southwest Airlines Chase credit cards are an amazing deal. (And you can't fly to Europe on them, though now you can fly to Hawaii!) Chase has very strict rules about how often they will let you get a new SW card (two years from the last time you got a bonus on the same card), and they won't give you any new credit card if you've had more than five in two years (the "5/24 rule"), so you have to play your credit card hand carefully.

Delta and Amex have a fairly strict "one card, one bonus for life, that's it" policy, but for some reason I was able to do it twice; I think because I got a new Delta FF account a few years ago I was able to do it again, but it wasn't exactly planned to evade their rules. (Just worked when I tried.)

Last year we were thinking about cancelling our Delta AMEX credit card and we still had around 70,000 miles. This was not enough to get two tickets to Europe, so we used the so-called pay with miles option. This allowed us to get $700 off the cost of our next two flights. Given that the flights were under $500 each, the miles paid for most of the airfare (Boston to Paris). The pay with miles option was only available on a Delta branded flight, so we had to book separate tickets for the rest of the journey (Paris - Venice and Milan - Paris on Air France).

I've actually had pretty good luck with Delta economy redemptions despite the 'Sky Peso' reputation. 2017 was two round tickets between VPS and London for 70K each (plus the usual taxes and UK airports departure duty), 2018 was a 27K domestic round trip ticket on something like 6 days notice when cash fare would have been $500+ and 2x 35K for a couple other domestic C+ tickets when cash price would have been $600+. and this year was 4x22K for my BIL's family to come for a visit when the cash cost of those C+ tickets would have run $400+ each.

Delta transatlantic often runs a stupid number of miles for business/Delta One in the absence of an award sale and is often best done by the back door by using Virgin Atlantic or Air France/KLM Flying Blue points for the Delta business ticket.

I have issues with United because they require saver inventory for all ticket segments to get a saver redemption from them and my local airports have only United Express service. This puts a severe limit on the number of saver award spaces on their first Embraer 145 to Houston and makes the transatlantic leg price out stupidly because of that first hop.

Last year we were thinking about cancelling our Delta AMEX credit card and we still had around 70,000 miles. This was not enough to get two tickets to Europe, so we used the so-called pay with miles option.

FYI, you don't lose your Delta miles just because you cancel the credit card. With some "credit card points" programs not directly with an airline, you would lose them but not if it is an airline-specific program. Not Delta's.

Another option might have been using the Delta tickets for one-way flights and booking the return on your own. Sometimes you can find a really cheap one-way fare home, depending on the city pairs.

Delta can sometimes have flash sales on SkyMile redemptions, so it pays to check frequently (as with airfares). I found an open jaw ticket for a friend that consisted of Greenville/Spartanburg (GSP) --> Frankfurt outbound and Berlin Tegel --> GSP return for 42,000 miles (total) early this year for an early May trip.

I used United miles to book an Italy trip, flying into Rome and out of Florence, in late October-early November 2016. I was able to book for only 30,000 miles each way, think there is greater availability when you have their Explorer card. And best of all, I was able to book this only only a few days notice. Booked on a Wednesday, flew the following Saturday. United's program is changing though and not for the better. I think the gravy train might be over this fall.

I also used miles to fly round trip to Athens in October 2011, but that's not recent.

Miles can be great for booking into/out of cities that would otherwise cost a lot. Dubrovnik and Ljubjiana are two cities that if you price it out, tend to be very expensive. I have found the price in terms of miles is much more reasonable. Speaking about United here. All bet are off with the pending changes though. I have been sitting on miles waiting to make the most of them flying to or from cities that would otherwise be really expensive to begin or end a trip in. Not a good choice on my part, it's now obvious.

My best success story is being flexible with dates and airports. Use the "flexible date calendar" for Delta and you might be surprised to find that if you go a day or two earlier or later than you planned, you save mega miles. Also, I just could not find a cheap miles flight back from Barcelona last year, so we ended up coming home from Zurich and took a 39 euro easyJet flight to get there.

Excellent solution, Kelly!

Last month I flew a domestic flight on United miles. My strategies were ….let the miles dictate everything about my trip: my flight dates, # of days of my trip and flight times. My outbound flight was late night. My return was at 7am. Basically, I let the miles decide. It was like planning a trip with a bossy travel partner! Fine, we'll fly at 7am. Sure, fine! :-)

That was my last chunk of United miles from my years of business travel. I'm so glad to be done with them. Now I have a cash back credit card and I get to decide when I fly. So nice.

I have used United miles for Christmas trips several times -- booking in January when the calendar first opens, flying Tuesday/ Wednesday/ Thursday. Other trips are for cash when a bargain fare surfaces, but holiday trips tend to have higher fares so fixed-mile redemptions have been a good deal. That's changing after November, however, so I may be less interested in acquiring United miles.

We haven't paid for round trip tickets to Europe since 2007. I traveled a fare amount for business before I retired, and we literally paid for everything on a United miles credit card. On occasion, we purchased miles to add to the miles bank (worthwhile only if flying business class). We flew to Europe in 2011, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2018 on miles in business class and South Africa in 2019 in business. 2015 and 2019 were in Economy using miles. We now only have enough miles for 3 more round trips to Europe in Economy.

For the business flights on United, we booked as one way saver flights as soon as flights opened up (330 days in advance). Before United changed the rules, we could make changes to those flights as many times as we wanted at no extra cost, looking for the most optimal flights. Not so anymore. Another thing you can do with United (but need to do over the phone) is call and ask to book business saver fare using miles, but confirm seat in economy (when there are no business saver fares). You are then waitlisted, so if business saver tickets open up you should be automatically confirmed in business. If within a day before the flight, and still in economy, you are on the upgrade list. But since you PAID for business seats (even with miles) you are in front of the line, ahead of anyone using status or miles to upgrade. If for any reason, you are not in business, you get your extra miles back into your account.

That being said, business fares are more difficult to come by than back in 2011, and the route may not be the most optimal. On the other hand I'd rather be sleeping laying down flying from San Francisco to Sweden, with an extra connection, than sitting in economy with a more direct flight.

I have American miles, but seems more difficult to find usable flights (and avoid London) than United. However, starting in November, there are no more "fixed" miles pricing on United. Miles will be based on supply and demand. Could be lower (not likely) or higher (more likely).

One other thing I've noticed is that if you have the flexibility to travel at the last minute (week or two before), seems that miles seats availability opens up on United.

I’ve used FF miles for 16 transatlantic flights since 2011, including 2 that were business class. Never any problem although I find lately that the better American Airlines flights are not available using my Alaska Airlines miles.