It’s been a tough 18 months in the frequent flyer world. It’s easier than ever to earn points, but the cost of awards has gone up, up, up.
Miles and points have been very good to me, and I do my best to give back where I can. I don’t make a public show of my charity, but I do my best to give the best advice I can and to offer giveaways when things are offered to me. And when I have gift cards, I can either turn them into money orders or do various frequent flyer experiments, or I can give them away.
So here, I thought I would give away $400. And what better way to give them away than to my readers who comment on this post?
Goodness knows it’s been a tough 15 months or so for frequent flyers.
- United devalued its award chart, especially premium cabin awards and especially partner awards in first class.
- Delta devalued its award chart, and then decided they didn’t want to wait for changes to go into effect so they imposed an interim devaluation. Then they finally decided to go revenue-based.
- Southwest devalued its points, underscoring just how arbitrary such changes can be — there’s no fundamental reason to devalue a revenue-based frequent flyer program, higher ticket prices automatically make an award cost more already. Here they just decided to make their points worth less.
- American eliminated international gateway stopovers and distance-based awards and US Airways eliminated the 90,000 mile business class award.
- Hilton devalued the most among hotels, such that I am no longer inclined to stay with them when I can avoid it. I didn’t re-up my Diamond status (or accept free Gold status).
- Others devalued as well – Marriott with big award category shifts, Hyatt with a new more expensive award category 7 and other changes.
And that’s just a small sampling.
So I would like to focus on something positive for a change, and I’m looking to you for help to do so!
Here are the prizes:
- (4) $100 gift cards
So here’s how you enter.
- Leave a comment on this blog post. Say something positive above miles and points, blogs, forums, or your fellow travelers.
- Enter by Noon Eastern, Friday May 30. That’s 4 days from this writing, and there are four prizes.
- Enter no more than 4 times. Four prizes, four days to enter, you can enter by commenting up to four times. (It doesn’t have to be one per day, the only limitation is that you cannot enter twice in a row you have to at least wait for someone else to enter before you enter again each time.)
- Four prize winners will be drawn at random. As in past, I will use random.org for the drawing.
- Fine print. Void where prohibited by law. All of my decisions are final and unappealable, I want to make giveaways as easy as possible and with the fewest headaches possible.
So, what do you like about miles and points, blogs, forums, or your fellow travelers?
- You can join the 40,000+ people who see these deals and analysis every day — sign up to receive posts by email (just one e-mail per day) or subscribe to the RSS feed. It’s free. You can also follow me on Twitter for the latest deals. Don’t miss out!
Hmm, just tried posting after a few days.. got the “slow down” warning?
Love the free upgrades as a preferred on US Airways
Am positive we willbe able to fly more business class trips and stay in great hotels in the future
I enjoy the valuable information provided by fellow travelers.
using credit cards to accumulate points permitted me and one son to go to Italy two years ago and myself and another son to go to France this year — two trips for two I would not have been able to afford..
Sign up bonuses are a positive to me! As long as they’re still offering them, free travel will happen!
I won a $50 gift card from the Point promo while staying at Hilton!
With miles and a stop-over one can indeed realize some very good trips. Also thanks to the travel blogs!
I am positive I will enjoy my trip to Europe this summer: booked round-trip in first class with points – for a family of four!
Thankful for bloggers who helped us enjoy years of amazing trips BEFORE the devaluation.
2-miles help me to travel more cheaply.
Miles and points are the best way to see the world at a greatly reduced cost. I’ve been able to travel to some pretty incredible places that I would not have been able to see without participating in the “game”.
I love the planning and strategy of using points to make a great trip
One positive is that I am learning more and more about miles and points. I am relatively new to the game, but it already has helped me fly home and bring my Mom with me back all with miles!
getting errors about posting too quickly..problems ?
never knew it was possible to fly longhaul in premium class w/o sites like this —
hell I’m travelling more nowdays & thanks !
try 2
Southwest miles allow me to fly home from MDW to CLE to see my family more frequently than having to pay in cash.
Flying is still better then driving for long distances
I’m positive I’ll keep at this points collecting hobby despite the devaluations. They’ve happened before and they’ll happen again, but so far I’m still able to extract value, so onwards I go!
Points and miles still open up the possibility to travel to places I couldn’t have imagined going to before!
I’ll donate my winning to Kiva.
The easy conversion between programmes
Love the free hotel stays.
I like points because as a business traveler, even though I know you aren’t supposed to hoard miles due to depreciation, my business travel allows me to bank the miles in the hope of one day taking my fiance on one really awesome honeymoon. 🙂
There is life after Vanilla Reloads…
Kudos to the forums, bloggers, and all those who share tips to make point collecting such a rewarding hobby!
I just love the adventure of being able to fly to new places.
Just got into the miles gameabout a year ago and almost at 1M miles!
As much as I love traveling, it’s also nice to get back home.
Simply great blog for air travelers.
Have you explored ISIS Mobile Wallet? With the AMEX Serve prepaid card you can get $1 back on every purchase up to $50 a month. A great way to save some cash and help push contactless payments into the mainstream.
http://www.paywithisis.com
http://www.serve.com
I love the tips I get from you and others on Boardingarea. There’s still a lot of good value to be had using miles!
I like to fly!
First class with points on Singapore almost beats Apollo 11… almost.
Southwest Companion Pass has let my wife and I travel a lot more than we would have been able to otherwise.
taking my family to asia in business for free!
With miles and points, sky is the limit. You can fly to HKG for a couple of bucks on business class.
First Class flights with miles – who wouldn’t like them.
Let’s remember: a few hours a month can still get you free travel all over the world. Also, jumping on deals is getting easier and easier with social media and excellent blogs.
Having miles and points makes places like the Maldives possible.
Even with the devaluations, points and miles are better than cash back which is probably the next best alternative for credit cards.
Crush your enemies, THAT IS GOOD, CONAN
Miles is better than gold. No tax.
Thank you for your great blog. I am especially interested in articles on hotel reward cards.
Business class with miles!
something positive
Thank u to all who have talked about Hyatt and the great redemptions…going to the Vendome in July
The community is always working to find the next deal or sweet spot or gem
I love that despite all the devaluations there are still deals to be had and its still a rewarding hobby.