Cheap Airplane Ticket – Guard Your Right to Redeem It
Your right to redeem your free or cheap airplane ticket under your frequent-flier program can be lost if you do not monitor expiration dates and revisions in airline rules.
According to a study, about 10 trillion frequent-flier miles worth $165 billion have not been used, and about 20 percent of these will never be used because they have expired or they have been canceled because of changes in rules.
Among the things that you can do to preserve your frequent flier mileage while you are not traveling is to use your affiliated credit cards that add equivalent points to your miles whenever you shop. Another is to subscribe to online services that remind you expiration dates.
When the frequent flier programs started in the 1980s, there were no expiration dates and other restrictive usage rules, but now airlines have lots of rules that have become confusing.
If you are a customer of American Airlines, US Airways and United Airlines and your account does not record any activity such as redemption or travel for 18 straight months, your entire account is canceled and you lose an opportunity to get a free or cheap flight. Alaska Air and Delta Air Lines give an allowance of two years before they cancel accounts while Continental Airlines has rules of canceling accounts that are inactive for 18 months.
Continental however said it has not yet implemented its 18-month rule. JetBlue Airways meanwhile is stricter – it cancels accounts that lack activity for just 12 straight months. Southwest Airlines said it issues free tickets for qualified customers but the tickets expire after 12 months.
For people that have some inactive months or have stopped flying as frequently as before, use your affiliated credit cards for your hotel stays, car rentals and partner merchants so you still earn points and reset your expiration dates.
Redemptions can also reset accounts, so if your program offers newspaper or magazine subscriptions as rewards, you can sacrifice some of your miles for subscriptions just to protect the bigger portion of your account.
From time to time, check the email and email addresses in your airline accounts to see if they are correct. Check also your email spam lists as sometimes important notices are diverted to these lists. See to it also that rewards miles from partner airlines are credited to programs you need to keep current so you can soon get your free or cheap airline ticket.
