Pro Tip: Earning Airline Miles & Extending Expiring Miles

Earning Airline Miles

Always signup for the airline mileage program account prior to your flight in order to earn miles. If you signup after your flight, the airline might deny your request to retroactively earn miles. This happened to a reader while trying to credit a British Airways flight to Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan account. Hopefully nobody will lose out on miles for future flights after reading this post. Signup when you book your ticket if you don’t have an account, all accounts are free!

Not sure which program to earn the miles on? Check out my blog post on WhereToCredit.

Alaska Airlines

Extending Expiring Miles

Don’t let those hard earned miles expire! Most programs require there to be account activity at least once every 18-24 months or the miles will expire. There are many ways to “create activity” on your account if you aren’t going to be flying that airline anytime soon.

3 Ways I extended my miles:

1. I transferred 1,000 UR (Chase Ultimate Rewards) points to Southwest Airlines to extend the expiry period for another 2 years

Southwest

2. I transferred 1 SPG (Starwood) point to Hawaiian Airlines to extend the expiry period for another 18 months (Note, SPG Platinum status has no transfer minimums although Gold status has a 1,500 point minimum). Luckily Hawaiian Airlines sends you an email reminder if your miles are expiring 🙂

Hawaiian

3. Years ago, prior to earning credit card points I purchased a newspaper subscription with United Airlines miles to extend the expiry period for another 18 months

Note, Singapore Airlines miles expire 3 years from the date they are earned and you can’t extend the expiry without paying Singapore Airlines USD $12/10,000 miles to extend them for 6 months.