US & DL Reduce FF Miles Expiration

[Pat H Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Pat H]

1/31/07 US FF miles will expire after 18 months of no activity. You can get the miles reinstated for up to another 18 months for $50 + $.01/mile.

12/31/06 DL FF miles will expire after 2 years of no activity. DL has already reduced the expiration of current FF miles to 12/31/08!

[GrayFal Silver Contributor and supermoderator Find all posts View Profile Close GrayFal]

1/31/07 US FF miles will expire after 18 months of no activity. You can get the miles reinstated for up to another 18 months for $50 + $.01/mile.

12/31/06 DL FF miles will expire after 2 years of no activity. DL has already reduced the expiration of current FF miles to 12/31/08!

[bigfrank Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close bigfrank]

I do not like this. This might be worse for these company's as people like me instead of having 4-5 FF accounts will only now just keep 2 maybe 3 accounts.

JFYI US air and Delta are both affiliated with Amex. So basically you can keep your account active by transferring miles to them now and then from American Express.

[mshatty Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close mshatty]

Frank that's true but sometime in early 2007, I think the end of February, you will no longer be able to transfer your Amex points to an airline for FF miles. You will only be able to use your Amex points to book flights through Amex.

[Pat H Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Pat H]

You can also get the airline branded CC, credit a hotel stay or car rental, use their shopping portal, buy flowers, etc.

[camachinist Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close camachinist]

Cheapest option I've seen is to join the airline's dining program and buy lunch on a card tied to iDine once a year. We all gotta eat That way, you don't have to have the respective airline's affinity card to stimulate small bits of activity to keep the account alive, and don't need to do anything extraordinary to retain the miles.

http://skymiles.rewardsnetwork.com/

http://usairways.rewardsnetwork.com/

In the past, before iDine devalued their program and got into some legal trouble, I piled up a huge amount of miles from their promos and program loopholes. I don't use them anymore, but, as long as they're still in business, it seems like a good way to maintain a FF account.

Pat

[bigfrank Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close bigfrank]

Frank that's true but sometime in early 2007, I think the end of February, you will no longer be able to transfer your Amex points to an airline for FF miles. You will only be able to use your Amex points to book flights through Amex.

Really, Now how would that work? I have to look into this as I believe I have about a 100K with Amex right now waiting for the right place to put them.

[mshatty Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close mshatty]

Really, Now how would that work? I have to look into this as I believe I have about a 100K with Amex right now waiting for the right place to put them.

In a recent Amex statement there was a disclosure about frequent flyer miles not being available for point transfers from Amex beginning next year. So I immediately transferred all of mine to Continental One Pass which is my FF mileage carrier.

The deadline to transfer may have been 2/1/07. I just can't remember. So if you want to use your Amex points for FF miles, you may double check my representations here. If I remembered correctly, then don't get caught with all of the Amex points in your account if you want to use them as FF miles.

[WazzuCougFan Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close WazzuCougFan]

I have an American Express card through Starwood Preferred Guests (http://www.spg.com). It offers an excellent airline transfer incentive. For every 20,000 points transferred to a given airline, Starwood will thrown in an additional 5,000. Most airlines transfer at a 1:1 ratio; a few, such as UA, do not (it's 2:1). US Airways and Delta transfer 1:1. Here are the airline partners and transfer ratio:
http://www.starwoodhotels.com/prefer...tner_list.html You can transfer up to 99,000 to a particular airline partner per year, not per lifetime. (That isn't really clear on the site and was something that concerned me before I signed up for the card.)

You can transfer as few as 2,500 miles if you're a Preferred Guest (standard), or 1,500 if you're Gold. They just recently announced that they will award you Gold status if you put $30,000 on your card in a year; Gold can also be achieved through hotel stays.

The annual fee is $30 and comes with a 50% off hotel stay coupon each year.

[mshatty Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close mshatty]

You know I must be crazy because I swear I saw a deadline on being able to redeem Amex reward points for FF miles in the no so distant future. So I went to Amex's website and found a FAQ that indicates that you can still redeem Amex reward points for FF miles with airlines. Here's the FAQ

Q.In the past, I have redeemed Membership Rewards points for frequent flyer miles with Membership Rewards partner airlines. How is this different?A.You still have the ability to redeem points with our travel partners, by transferring Membership Rewards points into linked frequent flyer accounts of our partner airlines. This allows you to book airline tickets according to preset point amounts (example 25,000 points for a domestic ticket). Additionally, you can redeem for travel Certificates with our airline partners. For more information please call 1-800-AXP-EARN (1-800-297-3276). Redeeming points on the American Express site allows you to book travel on any airline available at americanexpress.com/travel without blackout dates or restrictions. Book online as you would with any online travel site and redeem points towards your travel booking.


WHAT I thought I saw on one of my Amex statements was that there would be a deadline to do this but there is NO indication in the FAQ that that will happen. So until you see something different, please ignore my earlier post about the deadline to redeem your Amex reward points for FF miles.

It is true that Amex is wanting their customers to use its travel site to book flights, cars, hotels, etc.

Never mind.