Northwest’s Fly Free Faster 4 promotion begins on June 1. Register first and them complete one “qualifying activity” and five “partner activities” by August 31st for 10,000 bonus miles.

(The “qualifying activitiy” can come in the middle of or even after the “partner acitivities” – the order is unimportant.)

Qualifying Activity

The activities which will qualify you for the bonus:

• Credit one flight segment on Northwest, KLM or Northwest Airlink to your Northwest frequent flyer account
  

• “Apply, be approved and pay the annual fee for” a new Northwest Visa (although some folks have gotten free Visa cards and still qualified in the past, your mileage may vary).
  
• Sign up for service with MCI, Nextel, T-Mobile, or EarthLink (using a promotion that earns Northwest miles)
  

• Purchase a new one-year WorldClub membership
  

• Purchase 5,000 WorldPerks miles through the WorldPerks Buy & Gift Mile program

I’m not going to credit a flight to Northwest, since I’m a Continental elite and want my upgrades. I don’t keep a home phone, so MCI is out. Apparently WiFi through T-Mobile doesn’t count, and I’m sticking with my current Sprint service so Next and T-Mobile aren’t options.

Since I already have had the Northwest Visa (Fly Free Faster 2 qualification) and Northwest Business Visa (Fly Free Faster 3 qualification) I am going to sign up for Earthlink dialup service, even though I have a cable modem. I’ll get 10,000 bonus miles and will cancel the service after the obligatory two months ($21.95 x 2).

Update: An alert reader points me to what I think is a recent change, Earthlink miles won’t be deposited until 6-8 weeks after the 4th paid statement. I’ll probably rethink my qualification strategy, watch this space.

If you sign up for a Northwest Visa, be sure to also register at the Northwest Visa Marketplace. You’ll get bonus miles on some of your online mall purchases that way.

Partner Activities

Northwest’s website outlines the following ways to earn partner credits:

Shop on the WorldPerks Mall and spend a minimum of $25 on one item (not including tax or shipping) with the shipping date being between June 1 and August 31, 2004. To ensure you receive credit for your transactions, Northwest Airlines recommends making your WorldPerks Mall purchases early in the promotional period.


Rent a car from one of our car rental partners.


Stay at a partner hotel.


Refinance your home.


Dine at participating Dining For Miles restaurant.


Order flowers for any occasion

If you earn miles with a Northwest Visa (other than your bonus miles for signup), that will count as one partner transaction. You can only earn one partner credit this way (although if you had a Northwest Visa, Northwest Business Visa and Northwest Visa Check Card you could earn three partner credits).

The easiest way to get your partner activities without traveling is by dining for miles. Just sign one of your credit cards (such as a new Northwest Visa) up with the Northwest dining program and eat at participating restaurants and you’re done. Some friends of mine will likely be organize a DC bar crawl to knock off five partners with a beer apiece at five different participating restaurants.

I am going to transfer 1000 Radisson Rewards Goldpoints into 125 Northwest miles to bang out one partner.

Then I’ll probably buy a $25 gift certificate at GiftCertificates.com through the Northwest mall (gift certificates don’t count at several merchants but the rules don’t exclude this one, and they don’t charge a fee to receive the certificate by email). GiftCertificates.com can often be used to ‘double dip’ for miles with another online merchant, and I can always find a use for the certificate later.

Then I’ll buy something for $50 that’s free after rebate from OfficeMax. $50 orders come with free shipping.

That leaves me with only two transactions to go, and those’ll probably be restaurants, though only one if I wind up ordering something anyway from Target.com or Overstock.com. And if I find that I haven’t gotten the partner transactions I need at the end of July, I might transfer 2000 Diners Club points into 1000 Northwest miles.

Why don’t I just do 5 restaurant transactions? Because I prefer to earn 12.5 miles per dollar with United for my iDine activity, which is a promotion that I qualified for this entire year based on last year’s dining activity.