Triangle Trip

Most major car rental companies allow you to choose from earning airline miles, hotel points or their loyalty points. I have never been a huge fan of earning car rental points because they generally expire after one year. In addition, I lost about 10,000 points when Budget decided to end their PerfectDrive program without notice. In order for you to earn the hotel points, some hotel requires you to book the hotel with your car rental. Booking hotels on a rental car site makes me nervous and complicates the points earning process. Hence the best practice is to choose airline miles as your reward on all your car rentals.

For every car rental day, major car rental companies will give you 50 airline miles. However, the car rental companies do not tell you upfront that they are passing on what they called “Frequent Flyer Service Charge” or “FF Surcharge” to the renters. This means you are paying US$0.50 per rental day to earn 50 airline miles, making each airline mile = $0.01. A penny per airline mile is not that bad value wise but there is a way to get around it.

To avoid paying the US$0.01 per airline mile surcharge on your next rental car, you should choose American Airline miles as your reward. Hertz and National Car Rental do not apply the Frequent Flyer Service charge or (FF Charge on your Hertz bill) if you select AA miles as your reward. For all other airline programs, Hertz and National will charge you US$0.50 per rental day.

Since we are talking about rental cars, I would like to pass along to my reader the following: National Car Rental is offering triple airline miles for car rentals from April 29 to June 25, 2009. Here’s a list of National’s airline partners. With the National triple mile offer which will give you 150 miles per rental day on most airlines, paying the US$0.50 per day is not so bad.

Now you’ve secured that vacation time, what do you look for when buying an international ticket? For us seasoned travelers, there are only two factors – airline and price. Since each of us have already aligned with a specific airline, our choices probably falls with our primary airline and all of its alliance partners. And of course, since this vacation (unless you’re  Madoff) is not exactly on an expense account, every dollar counts! So looking for the best combination of airline and price becomes a science and a work of art. Does this mean you should click on that “purchase now” button once you found cheapest flight operated by your airline/partners? Not just yet! Check out the following tips to make sure you have fully maximized your purchase!

1.  Co-share – As you price out your ticket, the airline that you see on your itinerary may not actually be the actual carrier. What does this mean? Typically, it’s a partner airline operating the route but using your favorite airline as the label!  Have you even see an UAL flight from LAX – PEK? A quick check on the UAL site says it’s UAL #4456. Look closer, you’ll see it’s actually not UAL, but an Air China operated flight. So what now? To me, this is more of a personal preference. Co-shared flights will still give you the full potential of earning miles and alliance benefits. But every airline (especially foreign) operates differently – age of aircraft, crew experience and expertise, service, cabin configuration, food options, movie options, just to name a few. So do your research and homework before jumping on that co-share flight!

2.  Earn miles – Yes, make sure to earn your miles for your trip!!! This may sound easy, buy a ticket and give the agency/airline your frequent flyer number and you’re set, right?  Not exactly! Depending on your class of ticket, there are actually tickets that do not earn miles. The adage you get what you pay for comes in play here. If it’s too good and too cheap to be true, you may want to double check the class of ticket with the airline. So before you buy that ticket, inquire or look for the class of the ticket (H, Y, K, W, etc).  It varies among airlines, but call them directly to ensure that your ticket class allows you to earn your miles!

3.  Upgradable – We all worked hard to earn our miles. The best redemption for miles? Upgrades! International upgrades to be exact!! Real business class seats, legroom, reclining seats, special meals, and most importantly, that curtain to keep out the riff raffs! Of course in order to enjoy these amenities you must be willing to part with your miles. Ironically, and this has happened to me on several occasions, the airline may not want to take your miles! Conspiracy? Miles dilution? Not exactly. It’s all due to the class of ticket. Just like earning miles above, there are several class of ticket that are not upgradable. So do your math and homework. Find out if your class of ticket is upgradeable and if not, which classes are. Upgradable tickets usually cost a little more, but it might be worth your while to redeem those miles.

Now you can click on that “purchase now” button! Safe travels!

-coach

I don’t really understand the concept of banking airline miles on travel reward programs such as Asia Miles and Canada’s Air Miles. These programs seem like a consolidation of all your travel activities (miles, hotel stays, etc.) without the benefits from the airline or hotels. Another very minor advantage is you can also use your miles for other goods like travel gear and electronics, but many US airlines offer that type of redemption option.

What I am trying to say here is:  if you decide to bank Asian Miles on your Cathay Pacific flight from Hong Kong to Vancouver, you’ll only get Asian Miles but zero Marco Polo miles or benefits. I see the value in Asian Miles if you are flying all sorts of airlines throughout your life and want flexible redemption of miles/points. However, I don’t think you are getting the most out of the Asia Miles program if you only travel with one or two international airlines – say Cathay Pacific and ANA when you live in Hong Kong.

With the consolidation of US airlines and global alliances, all travelers should only need three frequent flier accounts to accumulate airline miles. Make sure your frequent flier account is on one of these alliances: Star Alliance, SkyTeam or OneWorld. Most of the major airlines in any country have membership with one of the alliances. For example, if you live in the Hong Kong, you will only need three accounts:  Cathay (OneWorld), China Southern or Korean Air (Skyteam), and ANA, Singapore Airlines or Thai (Star). You should bank all your air travel on one of the accounts. For redemption, you can easily book your flights on a member airline – i.e., use your Marco Polo miles to book a American ticket from Hong Kong to Chicago.

Once you have enough Marco Polo points in a year, you will get more benefits such as 25% to 100% more miles on every flight — something Asia Miles or Air Miles cannot offer. So forget the airline/hotel/car mileage consolidation programs and stick to an airline or alliance to make your miles pay off.