Free First Class Next Month: Signing Up for Airline and Hotel Programs

Hey there, you're reading an outdated post! The updated series from April 2015 can be found here.

This is the second post in a monthlong series. Each post will take about two minutes to read and may include an action item that takes the reader another two minutes to complete.

Nuggets 7.25.12

I'm rebooting the Free First Class Next Month series. It will basically be the same content as before, but the posts will be enhanced, updated, and reordered to improve them. See directly below this post for post #1.

My dad uncovered my first loyalty card ever. I would guess this is from about 1993, but I'm not sure.

Even as a little kid, I was earning miles.

Type in your name and email address here for a 20% off code for you (and a companion if you like) on a Virgin America flight.

Free Oneways on Delta Awards: The Video

I've uploaded a companion video to the famous Free Oneways on Delta Awards post.

Check it out, and take a look at the other videos I've uploaded.

The Five Types of Frequent Flier Miles

There are five basic types of frequent flier miles. I'll detail each, including how best to take advantage of them. Then I'll explain why it's important to diversify across the types (not just across frequent flier programs.)

1) Region-to-region based miles. American, Delta, United, US Airways, etc

Region-to-region miles are the most common type of miles. These miles can be redeemed according to award charts, so a flight from North America to Europe costs a certain amount of miles regardless of where in North America and where in Europe and regardless of the (valid) routing.

Clarifications to Free Oneways on Delta Awards

Today's post on tacking free oneways onto your roundtrip Delta awards generated a lot of interest, but I need to clarify a few things that spawned some confusion. If you haven't read that post, though, do so first. It's right below this post.

1. The distance between the open jaw cities needs to be less than than the distance of a oneway between your home airport and the roundtrip award's destination. Let me explain with examples.

The open jaw cities when you're adding a free oneway are the very first city in your itinerary and the very last.

Free Oneways on Delta Awards

After my popular posts about booking free oneways on United and American, this installment will focus on tacking free oneways onto Delta awards. This article presumes a knowledge of how to book free stopovers on Delta.com, which I covered here.

If you'll recall from those posts, we need two things to book any free oneway: a stopover and an open jaw. Luckily on its awards, Delta offers both a stopover and an open jaw.

How to Book Free Stopovers Online: Delta Airlines

A few days ago, I talked about how to book free stopovers online on United and American awards. This post is about booking free stopovers on Delta. Just as the other posts were preludes to booking free oneways online, tomorrow I will describe how to book free oneways on Delta awards. It will involve booking free stopovers online, so read this post carefully.

Delta is the only airline that allows free stopovers on domestic flights, so I'll show an example of that.

How Much are SkyMiles Worth? The Value of Delta SkyMiles Part 4

This post is part of a four-part series. In Part 1, we looked at the mechanics of the Delta Airlines program. In Part 2, we looked at its award chart and rules to find valuable awards. In Part 3, we valued specific SkyMiles awards. In Part 4, I’ll put a number on one SkyMile.

In this post, I’ll explain why I value one SkyMile at 1.22 cents, but your value will be different. To start I’ll go back to the values for the redemptions I found in Part 3.

How Much Are SkyMiles Worth? The Value of Delta SkyMiles Part 3

This post is part of a four-part series. In Part 1, we looked at the mechanics of the Delta Airlines program. In Part 2, we looked at its award chart and rules to find valuable awards. In Part 3, we’ll value specific SkyMiles awards. In Part 4, I’ll put a number on one SkyMile.

Now that we’ve looked at the rules of the SkyMiles program, and we’ve looked at the chart to find some valuable awards, we’re going to value specific awards.

How Much Are SkyMiles Worth? The Value of Delta SkyMiles Part 2

This post is part of a four-part series. In Part 1, we looked at the mechanics of the Delta Airlines program. In Part 2, we’ll look at its award chart and rules to find valuable awards. In Part 3, we’ll value specific SkyMiles awards. In Part 4, I’ll put a number on one SkyMile.

In this post, I’ll detail what I think are some of the best SkyMiles awards from North America.