Mileage Runs

[RDU-JFK]

I often read on airliners.net about people doing mileage run day trips to gain status, or just to get to fly a whole lot in a day, departing from and returning to the same city.

My question is, how do people book these trips (except Southerst, of course)?

[tipek]

I used to do that in late 90s :) I would book a trip from DCA to La Guardia and back, 30 minutes on the ground at DCA and again to La Guardia :)
Once I did DCA-BOS-DCA-LGA-DCA in one day :) That included emergency landing at EWR where we were later bussed to LGA for departure back to DCA :)
B737-300 USAirways Shuttle DCA-BOS
B737-300 USAirways Shuttle BOS-DCA
B727-200 USAir Shuttle DCA – EWR (emergency landing)
B727-200 USAir Shuttle LGA - DCA

It was lots of fun and the tickets on weekend were under $100 for round trip.
That trip gave me 2 free tickets on US Airways :) One ticket because I accumulated enough miles, and the second ticket because I wrote complain letter to US Airways that ground staff at EWR were rude and very unprofessional :)

In general I did lots of one-day flying out of DCA. Mostly to EWR, LGA, JFK, ATL and BOS :)
Its fun if you have the money :)

If you want to try it, sign up for e-savers at delta.com or usairways.com. Each wednesday they sent specials from your city. Usually those are last minute deals so the prices are low. Pick your destination and have fun :)

Take care,
Rafal

[RDU-JFK]

Thanks, I just might do it!

[T-Bird76]

The best way to do a mileage run is to look for low fares. Lots of these folks simply look for real low fares, and mile offers. You can also do credit runs on Southwest. I've done a few, often times Southwest will run Triple credit or fly one and get one offers.

As an example last year WN did a fly one round trip from ISP and get one round trip for free from ISP offer. I spend 70 dollars went down to BWI for the day spotted and came back and bam free ticket I used to go to LA.

Infact Southwest's program is the easiest way to get free ticket; they have loads of hidden offers with hotels and rental car companies. The trip I'm taking today based on my flying staying at Rapid Reward partner hotels and bonus offers will earn me 6 credits leaving me with only 9 to earn another free ticket. I just had an award deposited to my WN account last night which brings me to three tickets to use (and no I'm not giving any to anyone or selling them so DON'T ASK!).

The worst program out there is jetBlue, I can fly Southwest 8 times to BWI and get a free ticket but the same kind of trip on jetBlue lets say to IAD, I would have fly almost triple the amount of times earn a ticket on jetBlue. B6 also doesn’t partner with anyone so you only get credits when you fly with them. Plus their credits expire in a year vs. WN’s two years. Their programs really blows, I’m part of it since hell if I’m going to fly you I might as well earn something but it will take me another 8 months to get a ticket on B6 and only another month to earn a fourth ticket on WN.

AA is pretty good when it comes to mileage; they offer a ton of bonus miles and have a good partner system setup to earn more miles. The problem today with miles is they are so dam hard to use! It took me four phone calls and a three our discussion with AA last year to use my miles to get to Alaska. Allot also depends on who you speak to and the effort they want to put in to find you award seats, the seats are out there, you just have to push in order to find them.

In my opinion the best programs out there are Rapid Rewards, AA’s AAdvantage, U.S Dividend Miles, Hilton Honors where you can earn both hotel points and miles, Holiday Inn Priority Rewards gives you priority hotel check in, a huge range of hotels to choose from, free internet, and with every third stay double the points or miles.

As for credit card programs to earn miles, the new U.S Airways World Master card is fantastic, low interest rate, double miles on U.S Airways purchases, yearly companion ticket, U.S Airways club one day pass, and priority boarding in zone 1. The Citibank AA card is pretty good to simply for the bonus miles you get after making your first purchase of 250 dollars, after that it’s useless. The Rapid Reward Visa from Chase blows and the Delta Sky Miles card from Amex sucks big time.

When it comes to earning miles from Rental car companies, Avis and Hertz are the best. You can switch how you want to earn with every rental and if you’re an Avis Preferred Member you never have to wait in line for your car. The nice thing with Avis to if you bitch about one thing, BAM discounts, free weekends, or free rental, they give **** away like crazy. Oh btw so does jetBlue, bitch about something they throw flight coupons at your from $15, $50, to $100.

So there is a ton of ways to earn miles, for the novice this seems like a complicated process but when you travel a lot it becomes second nature how to work the system to your advantage.

So far this year I’ve worked it to the following

AA- 128,000 miles
WN- 52.5 credits
US- 53,000 miles
jetBlue- 48 credits, (I F#$king hate their program) 48 credits gives me ****!
Hilton Honors- 35,000 points
Priority Rewards- 15,000 miles to AA and 15 credits to WN

This is mostly all biz travel but I can generally suggest how I like to travel which earns me the most out of my time on the road.

[RDU-JFK]

Cool, thanks for the answer! I'm also interested in just doing a random flight that can route me through a bunch of cities-like LGA-JFK on a random Saturday that would take me through a few cities. Orbitz lets you do this but its still quite expensive.

[USAF Pilot 07]

Frontier's got a pretty good FF program as well. With them you only need 15,000 miles for a free ticket, and I believe they partner with other companies (car rental, hotel, Credit Car).

[mirrodie]

What's nice about accruing miles an points is that you can give someone the gift of travel. I love that gift!

Last year, well, actually toward the end of 2005, I got an email from AA saying I was like 7500 miles from GOLD.

So I went to flyertalk and they have a mileage run forum. At the time, I could have bought a ticket from JFK-BOS-SNN-BOS-JFK, over a period of 26 hours and I would have spent $388 and nailed the miles I needed. (SHannon is one destination most MR seekers like, tends to be cheap)

In the end, I opted out as my 2006 travel was going to be a lot less than the year previous and GOLD did not have much status for the limited amount of time I would benefit.

bottom line, look at flyertalks Mileage Runs forum. great advice there.

[hiss srq]

I do not know if you could call what I am doing this weekend starting tomorrow a milage run but I am going CLT-LGA tomorrow. Sunday LGA-DCA-SRQ-CLT-SRQ than Monday SRQ-CLT-PIT-BOS-LGA if my plans work properly otherwise I might just hop around the shuttle network for a few laps on Sunday and Monday and Saturday hang out with Idle

[eric8669]

Jetblue's program is not that bad. If you continue to fly them and/or have the Credit card the Points do not expire. I know it takes alot to earn a free flight, however they try to help you out. For instance in the past Year I have received mailers/promotions from jetblue where they will on occasion give you additiional points. I have recevied anywhere from 2 to 25 points from this.


Eric