One of the more common mistakes that people make is to ignore airline partnerships. You might book a flight on, for example, Emirates, and assume that you must join the Emirates frequent flyer program to earn miles. Inevitably, those miles will expire a few years later as most people don’t fly to Dubai (and beyond) that often…
Once you become a bit more familiar with airline partnerships, you come to understand that you can credit the miles from your paid flights to a frequent flyer program offered by a partner. Taking my Emirates example, you could credit those flights to Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan. You might also sign up to a credit card program that offers dozens of airline partners – American Express, Chase, Capital One, Citi, etc. – but ultimately still send miles in the direction of a frequent flyer program (or hotel chain) that you are comfortable with.
But once you get to a much more advanced level, you start to realise that you should sign up to certain frequent flyer programs despite having absolutely no intention of flying with the airline in question. Here are a few candidates and their sweetspots…
Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan
Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan members can use their miles to fly on a number of different partners. One of my favourites is Cathay Pacific, where you can:
- fly between Europe and Hong Kong for 42,500 miles in Business Class or 70,000 miles in First Class (each way)
- fly between Hong Kong and Australia in First Class for 45,000 miles (each way)
You can also:
- fly between North America and Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific, stopover for as long as you like in Hong Kong, before continuing onwards to Johannesburg, Dubai or Tel Aviv (among many other options) in First Class for 70,000 miles
- fly between North America and Tokyo on JAL, stopover for as long as you like, before continuing to anywhere else in Asia that JAL flies… for 70,000-75,000 miles
Asiana Mileage Club
Asiana is a member of the Star Alliance, allowing you to…