Triangle Trip

USAirways requires you to stay active on their Dividend Miles account by either depositing or redeeming miles once every 18 months. Otherwise you’ll forfeit your USAir miles. American, United and many other major US airlines have a similar policy. Unfortunately I forgot to keep my USAir Dividends Miles active as I have been banking all my USAir flight miles on United for the past two year.

I recently received an email from USAir asking for $9 to reinstate my USAir miles. I quickly paid and got my 72,810 miles back! For those who needs to keep their USAir Dividend Miles account active, I strongly recommend you get a magazine here: USAir Dividend Miles Redemption Options

Alternative you can bank your rental car activities to your USAir Dividend Miles account. However you’ll have to pay a small mileage deposit fee to the car rental company. Here’s a previous post regarding how you can avoid paying the frequent flyer mileage charges on your rental.

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.

I am a frequent car renter as I do not own a car myself. I use car rentals to earn airline miles to keep my frequent flyer accounts active as most have expiration rules. Car rental companies claim to be very flexible when it comes to earning points.

All car rental companies allow you to either:

1. Earn Car Rental points which can be converted to free rental days or upgrades
2. Earn Frequent Flyer miles
3. Earn hotel points

Of the three choices, the only one that is worthwhile is #2 — Frequent Flyer miles. Here are the reasons why:

1. Car rental points do not hold value. Most car rental companies (mainly Hertz) change their redemption policy on an annual basis and increases the number of points you need to get a free car rental or upgrade. All major car rental points expire after one year if you do not use them.
2. Although all car rental companies list hotels as partners but you do not get hotel points from your rental unless you are staying at the hotel. You will also need to book the hotel during your car rental or book the car rental from the hotel’s website. This is a huge scam. Most car rental companies will not give you any points if you do not meet the requirements which appears as fine print.

In summary, always bank frequent flyer miles whenever you rent a car. Additionally, bank it on Northwest’s WorldPerks account as NWA is the only airline that doesn’t carry a surcharge at Hertz, Avis, and National. All rental car companies will charge you $0.50 per day for accumulating points on other airline programs aside from Northwest.