Is it that time of year already? No, not holiday shopping and tree trimming time. It's time to book "mileage runs" to bump your frequent flier mileage up to where you'd like it to be. At least, that's what Joe Sharkey tells us in his latest On The Road column.

Here's the deal, says Joe. If you want to retain elite status--silver, gold, double-super platinum elite, whatever--you need to fly a set number of miles in a year. (Usually at least 25,000 for the lowest status, which can net you early boarding, free upgrades and smiles from gate agents.) Credit card purchases and the like that accrue miles normally don't count: You've actually got to put your butt in the seat. That means Joe and his buddies have been known to fly back and forth to Guam--twice--to boost their mileage. Our fave part of the article, though, comes when Joe chats with a shadowy figure in the frequent flier world known only as Viajero Joven:

"Some people want to do over 50,000 miles, which is not possible in a single trip because of the size of the planet," he said. "So they do multiple trips, consecutively."

Now that's our kind of guy.

[Photo: Mareen Fischinger]

Related Stories:
· End of Year. Short on Miles. Coach Class, Here I Come [NYT]
· Jaunted's Business Travel coverage [Jaunted]]]> pbb 2006-12-13T12:30:01-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2006/4/18/11059/9122 The San Francisco Chron checked up on the various schemes to transfer frequent-flier miles to other people, and what it saw wasn't pretty. The money graf, though is about how pointless these programs are for most people:

Frequent-flier programs are, as you probably know, called "loyalty programs" inside the industry. But everything I hear about frequent-flier programs these days reinforces my view that the only loyalty the big airlines really want is the loyalty of travelers who fly a lot and buy expensive tickets. For the most part, that means frequent business travelers whose trips are paid for by their employers or clients. Airlines don't give a tinker's dam about loyalty of occasional leisure travelers -- or, for that matter, travelers from small businesses who buy cheap tickets whenever they can.

Yes we know JetBlue finally offers a frequent flier program, but late last year we were a little frustrated with the whole segment earning thing, so we called JetBlue for some clarification on the TrueBlue program.

"Yes it takes a little longer to earn a flight, but once you have a flight you can get on any flight JetBlue offers, we don't blackout passengers, which is great."

Wow we thought.  We took this to mean any flight we saw online that had availability could be booked using your TrueBlue reward flight.  Now that was a cool frequent flier feature.  We were wrong.

Full Story Post Jump
]]> markj 2006-02-15T10:22:25-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2006/2/6/34551/53932 Got some ancient frequent flier miles with US Airways? It's time to create some activity in your account, or risk losing them. On Feb. 15, the airline will erase the miles in accounts that haven't had anything done to them for three years. All isn't lost if you don't want to redeem them right now, though -- signing up for the Airways email newsletter, for instance, gets you 1000 more miles and also qualifies as account activity. You might also want to consider buying still more miles, or redeeming the miles you have in one of those magazine-subscription offers.

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·   US Airways warns dividend miles may expire [Charlotte Observer, via Daily Traveler]]]> johnrambow 2006-02-06T03:55:02-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2006/1/10/141440/948 worth less because of competition from the discount carriers.
 
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·   Fliers wonder if there's no such thing as a free ride [USA Today, via The Daily Traveler]
·   Frequent flier elitism isn't what it used to be [Jaunted]]]> johnrambow 2006-01-10T14:14:40-05:00 Search Jaunted string http://www.jaunted.com/search/