Triangle Trip

With the pending merger between Alaska Airlines and Virgin America, Alaska will be merging its Mileage Plan with Virgin America’s Elevate Frequent Flyer programs. Virgin America’s Elevate Points will be converted to Alaska Mileage Plan miles at a rate of 1.3 Mileage Plan miles per 1 Elevate point. Unlike previous airline frequent flyer program conversions where it’s 1:1, the Virgin to Alaska miles conversion will net you 30% more miles. Everyone should try to earn more Virgin Elevate Points before the merger of the two frequent flyer programs.

Given Alaska’s generosity, we also recommend you move your hotel points to Virgin America’s Elevate points. For example, transferring your Starwood (SPG) Starpoints to Virgin America Elevate points is 1 Starpoint for 1 Elevate Point. If you transferred 20,000 SPG Starpoints, SPG would give you another 5,000 points for the transfer. After transferring the SPG Starpoints to Virgin Elevate Points and the Alaska Virgin frequent flyer merger, you can net up to 63% bonus in Alaska miles. We highly recommend you execute the above strategy before the Alaska and Virgin America programs merge on January 9, 2017.

Here are two related articles you may also find interesting:

If you are not an Alaska Airlines frequent flyer or do not want to maintain too many airline accounts, did you know that you can bank your airline miles with SkyTeam and OneWorld partners!? Click here to find out.

Here’s an article on why we think hotel points are more valuable than airline miles.

No airline miles are useless. Airline miles, next to SPG points, are a very valuable currency even though they are being devalued daily. You should set a notification in your calendar to alert you to check your frequent flyer miles every year. If you have not done so, check your old frequent flyer programs and look for a great deal. I just found one on American Airlines which also allows you to book one way trips unlike other airlines.

Alternatively, here are just a few easy ways to keep your miles from expiring:

1.  Use your miles to redeem for a magazine subscription – which I’ve been doing for the past several years.
2.  Tie your frequent flyer account to the Rewards Network mileage dining program. Here’s the link.
3.  Or you could do what I did below:

My friends and I decided to sign up for the Paris Marathon occurring in April 2015.  And more recently, I got the expiring American Airlines miles e-mail notice.  I only had 20,000 so odd miles from 5 or 6 years ago that I never touched and almost forgot about.  Little did I expect I could purchase a San Francisco (SFO) to Paris (either airport) flight for 20K miles one-way.  With all the devaluation going on at airlines, this was a pleasant surprise.  I booked an USAirways flight (AA partner)  for 20k with one stop in Charlotte and minimal fees.  Note that British Airways (another OneWorld partner) requires you to pay an excessive stopover in London for $300+.

If your USAir miles somehow expired, refer to our previous post to get re-activated.

I am sure you all received an email from United stating that Premier/Elite benefits will be extended into the first quarter of 2012. However it not state the exact date. The good news is your United status will not expire on January 31 unlike other carriers which carries your previous year’s status to the end of February (see my previous post).

The real news United did not highlight is the fact that United will be adopting the Continental OnePass system as I have predicted last summer (see previous post). This means United flyers will need to use their OnePass number to bank miles starting in March 2012 (see United link). For those United flyers without a OnePass number, I’m sure United will be sending you a new six digit account number soon.

More importantly, United will be adjusting all the actual airline miles you have earned from partner airlines and count them towards your MileagePlus Million Miler program. To get this information, login to United MileagePlus Personalized Preview via this link. As you can see below, all of my miles earned from partner airlines and Continental have been added to my lifetime miles on my MileagePlus account.

As indicated by United, MileagePlus and Continental’s OnePass program used to track lifetime activities differently. United MileagePlus counted only base EQM (actual flight miles on United and United Express), while OnePass counted both base EQM and additional EQM (those earned on partner airlines or through promotions or certain credit cards).

United was kind enough to recalculate its MileagePlus lifetime miles balances to include additional EQM earned since enrolling in the program. United will refresh the balance before the 2012 MileagePlus program begins on March 3, 2012.

For those of you who are curious, below are the perks of becoming a United Million Miler.