The Top 6 Current Deals for Earning Miles and Free Travel

by Gary Leff

  1. Through May 6 a new Chase British Airways Visa receives up to 100,000 bonus miles for the $95 annual fee and modest required spend. Use the miles for a business class ticket to Asia on Cathay Pacific or Japan Airlines, or a business class ticket to South America on American or LAN (not to mention business class to nearer-Europe).

  2. There are plenty of reports that the 75,000 mile signup bonus offer for American Airlines credit cards still works, even though the landing page for the offer says it was only valid through February 28. I’ve yet to hear of anyone using the link who didn’t actually get the offer applied to their card account.

  3. Share US Airways miles with a 75% bonus through May 31 or US Airways credit card holders buy miles with a 50% discount through May 14.

  4. BankDirect offers 22,000 American Airlines miles as a bonus on new checking accounts. This is a great offer for folks who will keep a minimum balance of $2500 to avoid account fees, you earn 100 miles per $1000 average balance and they reimburse out of network ATM transaction fees. They’ve been my primary bank for checking since 2003.

  5. Starwood Is offering a free resort night for every three stays between May 1 and July 31. This is the most generous current hotel promotion in the market. If you’re making two stays, it’s worth a mattress run to make a third for a three night. And if you’re on the fence about whom to stay with during the promo period, it’s worth tipping over to Starwood to take advantage of this one. Registration required and resort stays (at any resort up to category 6, or the St Regis Punta Mita category 7) must be consumed by December 21. Sadly they’re not valid through the winter months, but those are peak resort occupancy times after all…

  6. Earn 50,000 Continental bonus miles with first purchase from a Continental Onepass Plus Mastercard, fee waived the first year. These miles are transferable into a United account, and will eventually be merged with United, so if you’ve already had a bonus for getting the United card consider getting this one as a backdoor way to churn the card (just one time).

Are there any similarly lucrative deals that I’m missing, that ought to be on the list?

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

More articles by Gary Leff »

Comments

  3. USAIR also has a 75% bonus on hotel transfers into the program. Just received the email today. It is a 25% bonus, plus 25% for credit card holders, plus 25% for elites, for a total of 75%. For Starwood transfers, it is effectively 100%, due to their 25% bonus on 20,000 mile transfers.

  5. @Carl: If you’re US preferred and have the credit card, SPG is effectively greater than 2:1. 20K SPG = 43.75K US. That’s 118%. But still fantastic if you meet all the requirements since it was only 50% the last two years – though with no such preferred/credit card restrictions.

  6. @Erik – thanks for the correction. I forgot to compute the DM bonus on top of the SPG bonus. Now if I can find a quick way to get preferred status, as I already have the credit card. But even without that, still a great offer

  7. tivoboy:

    Is there a link for that 80K PC card? I could only find the 60K one and I ant to apply. Thanks.

  9. I did not get the 75,000 bonus miles from American Airlines credit card. They only gave me 40,000. I even gave them a call and asked for it but they said no.

  10. @Carl: quick way for preferred status is to get the preferred trial for $200.

  11. re the Starwood 3 for 1: I spoke with SPG and asked whether Cash & Point stays qualify as eligible stays (there was nothing specific in the conditions of the offer defining what is eligible). Per the rep they said that Cash & Points is not ineligible per the fine print, therefore = eligible. But that’s just one reps opinion.

    Has anyone else gotten something definitive as to whether or not those are eligible? Between my wife and I we’re going to have 9 separate C&P stays this month so I’d love to jump on a St Regis if these qualify as legit stays.

  12. @peter those will not count, unless they mistakenly post as qualifying stays to your account. A cash and points stay is officially inelgiible for stay credit so won’t help you with the promo unless the hotel makes a mistake in how they post it.

  13. Oh well, that was my assumption too but I got my hopes up after talking to that rep.

Comments are closed.