Last Reviewed: 9/9/2011

United and United Express together operate more than 3,600 flights per day to 200+ destinations, both domestic and international.  Their hubs are located in LA, San Francisco, Denver, Chicago, and D.C. Another interesting tidbit about United: they acquired Continental Airlines back in May, 2010, giving them combined revenue of more than $30B at the time. They are, perhaps, the King Kong of the air.

In this post, we’ll cover ways to both earn and redeem miles earned via their frequent flyer loyalty program, known as MileagePlus. We’ll also explore their Elite status levels, and the additional benefits you get from becoming an elitist.

Ways to Earn Miles with United Airlines Frequent Flyer Program

You earn miles by flying on any United or United Express flight, with a paid ticket. Additionally, miles earned on paid flights count towards Elite Status as well (more on that in a bit!). The table below shows how many miles you would earn by class for a given flight.

Earning Miles with Partner Airlines

United is a member of the Star Alliance (28 partners as of the date of this post), so you can earn miles by flying on these partner airlines. Some of the bigger names in the Star Alliance include: Air Canada, Continental, US Air, Lufthansa, SAS, Swiss Air, ANA, and Singapore Air.

United also has 7 additional partners outside of the Star Alliance, including Hawaiian, Island Air, Aer Lingus, Emirates, Qatar, Jet Airways, and TACA.

Earning Miles with the United MileagePlus Explorer Credit Card

You can earn up to 40,000 miles on sign-up, along with 2 miles for every $1 spent on United and Continental airline tickets, as well as 1 mile per $1 of spend on all other purchases. Read our review of the United MileagePlus Card here, or apply directly if reading blog posts bores you.

Earning United Miles with Non-Airline Partners

United has a number of arrangements with various partners (including various auto rental and hotel companies), whereby you can earn additional United miles for spending money with these partners. The following table outlines some of those arrangements and awards, though it is by no means an exhaustive list.

So, You Want To Be Elite?

It seems to be human nature that folks always seek out preferential treatment. So, if you’ve always been outside of those velveteen ropes looking in at the jet-setters, here’s your chance to join the elite–just follow United’s lead.  Karl, forgive us.

Obtaining Elite Status: Let The Transformation Begin

There are 4 levels of Elite membership, starting from Member (think: low social status–everyone starts here); Premier; Premier Executive (“Baby, I’m a Premier Executive”…dang, that sounds good); and 1K (the elite of the elite).

Elite qualifying miles (EQMs) are earned when you fly any United or United Express flight (1 EQM per mile flown). Elite qualifying segments (EQS) represent one flight segment flown, and offer another way to level up on your elite status.

Per the table below, you can achieve various Elite levels either by earning EQMs OR via earning a sufficient number of EQS’s.

The Benefits of Being Elite

The primary benefit is you get to look down on the rest of us schlocks. But there are some secondary benefits. While the chart below is not exhaustive, we’ve tried our best to pick out what we think are the most impactful benefits. You can view the full chart here.

It Should Be Fun! Redeeming your United Miles

Who doesn’t like to redeem their miles or points or cash back? Although, I must confess, after the act of redeeming, I’m left with a deep sense of ennui, knowing I’ll need to use my credit card for another 6 months to redeem something exciting and meaningful.

While there are a number of ways to use your hard-earned miles, including for hotel stays, car rentals, shopping and dining, magazine subscriptions, etc, generally your biggest bang for the buck will be redeeming your miles for airfare or upgrades.

Here is an abbreviated mileage chart for economy class with some of the main destinations.

You can check out the full awards chart here. Finally, you can also redeem your miles for Star Alliance awards, though typically availability is the challenge as the airlines like to reserve award seats for their own customers (ie those with award miles from that given airline).

Upgrade Me! Redeeming Miles So You Can Fly In Style

To hard-core frequent flyers, upgrades often represent the holy grail of redemptions, since the dollar value per mile redeemed can often exceed $0.05 per mile (and that, my friends, is pretty insane!). The chart below (promise, this is the last chart!–I just needed to pump your heads full of juicy info) highlights miles and co-pays required to snag those upgrades. Note that it’s not the full chart, just some select destinations. As you’ll see, the more discounted your airfare, the higher the co-pays. Some of those co-pays (for international flights) are downright painful.

You can check out the full award upgrades chart here.

Hotel and Car Rewards

You can also use your miles to redeem for hotel and car awards, though we at PlasticIQ invariably find that you always get better economic value by redeeming your miles for flights and upgrades. (this sort of makes sense, since its United’s loyalty reward program). So don’t bother with these, unless you really have the urge.

PlasticIQ’s Closing Thoughts On The United Loyalty Program Known As UnitedPlus

We realize that folks have their own opinions and needs regarding airlines. For example, some folks probably love flying United; others may have no choice, given their need for specific routes and schedules. Yet others may cherish the idea of being “elite”. With that in mind, we tried to provide a broad overview of the various aspects of United Airlines’ frequent flyer loyalty program, and in certain cases we’ve provided some links for you to get even more detailed info if you so desire.

If you are primarily interested in just the bottom-line economics of the card, then I strongly suggest you take the PlasticIQ Ranking Engine for a spin. It’ll take as an input your estimates of spend by category, and then calculate, with great precision, which credit cards would generate the most rewards for you! You can also check out our post on how much miles from United Airlines are worth.

Rock on–from the elitist pigs at PlasticIQ.

United MileagePlus® Credit Card
Earn up to 40,000 bonus miles & first year free, a $95 value Check your first bag for free on United and Continental-operated flights, up to a $50 value round trip Board your flight before general boarding with priority boarding privileges Visit the United Club with two complimentary day passes every year, up to a $100 value Earn 2 miles for $1 spent on tickets purchased from United and Continental and 1 mile per $1 everywhere else Enjoy exclusive access to once-in-a-lifetime events through Inside Access from Chase Your miles don’t expire and there is no limit to the number of miles you can earn

Last Reviewed: 7/15/2011

Like many loyalty programs (especially airline programs), you need to channel your inner Isaac Newton to understand and master all of the angles and rules of the program. The Delta Skymiles program is no exception.

This post aims to provide a panoramic view of some of the key aspects of the Skymiles program, and in certain cases we execute quick-cut analyses to try to provide insight into specific areas of the program (for example: a comparison of Pay with Miles versus Standard Award redemptions).

If you want to dig even deeper on Skymiles, you might want to check out forums such as flyertalk.com, where you can join or read threads exclusively dedicated to the Skymiles program.

Finally, if you are more interested in learning about different Delta credit cards, you can check out our post, “Delta Credit Cards: Which One Is Best For You?”

Delta Skymiles’ Medallion System

Like many airline loyalty programs, Delta has various levels you can obtain—represented by medallions in order: silver, gold, platinum, and diamond.

You achieve medallion status by earning MQM miles (Medallion Qualification Miles). Any miles flown on Delta on a paying ticket will also count as MQM miles. While MQM miles cannot themselves be used to obtain reward tickets, they act as a counter to determine when you reach the next medallion level.

While you can read the full table of Delta Skymiles medallion benefits here, we’ve extracted what we think are some of the more important perks in the table below:

Earning Miles with the Delta Skymiles Program

In addition to the standard 1 mile per mile flown that you earn by being a member of Delta Skymiles, you can also earn a couple of different bonuses on top of that. Specifically, there are fare class bonuses–basically, you get extra miles for flying the “expensive seats”. You also receive additional bonus miles depending on what medallion status you have achieved. The table below provides the details.

Exchanging Partner Points for Delta Skymiles: Fools Gold or Wise like Yoda?

The Delta Skymiles program also provides you with the option of converting points earned in certain other loyalty programs into Skymiles. It has been PlasticIQ’s consistent experience that whenever a loyalty program offers any sort of conversion or “points/miles purchase” option, the economics invariably work against the customer. While we did not conduct an exhaustive study, we focused on some of the major loyalty programs (e.g. Hilton, Marriott, Starwood, Amex) and, as expected, trading in your points in these other programs for Skymiles would likely be a bad horse trade.

As the table above shows, for 4 of their major partners, you are losing anywhere from 11% to 75% of the value of your original partner points when you transfer them into the Skymiles program. While there are many other (generally more obscure/minor) partners we could have analyzed, we believe the economics will bear out similarly. Perhaps the only caveat to making use of this feature would be if you just needed a few additional miles to help you qualify for a free ticket. Then, and only then, it might be worth taking the relatively small absolute dollar hit to achieve that goal. But stay away from exchanging large blocks of points.

Redeeming Delta Skymiles for Award Tickets

While you can view the full Delta Skymiles Redemption Chart here, the below excerpt provides you with information on some of the more commonly traveled routes.

Comparing Pay-With-Miles Versus Standard Award Ticket Redemptions

Delta offers the option of using miles to directly pay for an airfare (as if each mile were worth a certain amount of money). Obviously, it’s critical to understand how much better or worse off you would be versus saving your miles for an award ticket. One advantage of course with the Pay With Miles program is that if you have fewer than the required miles for an award ticket, you can still “cash them in” for at least some economic value. Here are some basic facts about the Pay-With-Miles program:

• Available only for Gold and Platinum Delta Skymiles credit card holders and Delta Reserve credit card members.
• No blackout dates or inventory restrictions—-you just need to make sure the flight is marked as “Pay with Miles” eligible when searching on Delta.com.
• If you want to pay for an airfare with both miles and a credit card, you must use an Amex card.

The table below provides information on the number of Skymiles required to purchase tickets under this program.

Note: tickets purchased with Pay-With-Miles are treated as awards and thus do not earn award milesage and cannot be upgraded.

The natural question that follows is: so, does it make sense to actually make use of the Pay-with-Miles program? That’s where we here at PlasticIQ fit in.

As the table below shows, in situations where you can acquire a rewards ticket at the low season pricing level, you’ll almost always be better off with getting an award ticket versus using Pay-With-Miles. However, if you are forced to use your miles on tickets during medium and high season pricing, then Pay with Miles typically will be a better deal for you. Of course, you should do the math on a case-by-case basis when you are considering an actual ticket purchase (since prices always fluctuate), but these are just some general observations to help guide you.

The one piece of information I am missing is the availability of Pay-With-Miles flights, since I don’t have a Delta credit card. But a quick examination of Flyertalk and some other blogging sites indicates that availability may not be a major issue (though without actual data, I can’t say for sure). If any readers have info on this, please let us know!

Wrapping it Up

Well, this post took me a seriously long time to put together, maybe a good 10+ hours of writing and research, so if you had the patience to stick it out, congrats!  Since I’m finishing up this post in a hotel in Las Vegas, I’m primed to go hit the tables now.

It’s always tough to come up with a solid “thumbs up, thumbs down” on a specific rewards program, as people’s preferences and personal situations vary so widely. We hope to have accomplished at least two goals here: 1) provided you with a good overview of the various aspects of the Delta Skymiles program, and 2) given you some insight into specific aspects of the program, such as partner redemptions and Pay-With-Miles, as well as a framework for thinking about whether using those aspects of the program makes sense for your situation.

Amex Delta Skymiles Gold Card	Amex Delta Skymiles Platinum Card	Amex Delta Reserve Card
BONUS MILES: 20K with your first purchase, 5K when you add two Additional Card members to your account. That’s 25K miles, redeemable for a flight! $0 intro annual fee for the first year, then $95 Check your first bag FREE — for up to 9 people on your reservation — on every Delta flight Earn DOUBLE miles on qualifying flights — 1 mile per eligible dollar on everything else NEW — Priority Boarding and 20% In-Flight Savings	Get 20,000 bonus miles upon your first purchase with the Card (5,000 of which are Medallion Qualification Miles) Get 5,000 bonus miles when you sign up for two Additional Cards Check your first bag for free on every Delta flight Receive Zone 2 priority boarding on Delta flights Receive 20% In-Flight Savings on food and entertainment Complimentary companion coach ticket each year upon renewal	Get 10,000 Medallion Qualification Miles (MQM) upon your first purchase with the Card Unparalleled Miles BoostSM – get up to 30,000 MQMs and 30,000 Bonus Miles Enjoy Delta Sky ClubTM access Check your first bag for free on every Delta flight Complimentary First-Class companion certificate each year upon renewal Access to Concierge services Receive 20% In-Flight Savings on food and entertainment

Last Reviewed: 7/3/2011

Southwest Airlines has completely revamped their loyalty program (dubbed “Rapid Rewards”) with the goal of making it simpler to use. Here are some of the key selling points of the program:

• Unlimited rewards seats
• No blackout dates
• Points never expire (unless your account is inactive for 24 months)
• Earn points on every dollar spent
• Option to redeem for international flights, hotels, gift cards, and other benefits

In this post, we’ll cover the following facets of the SWA Rapid Rewards program: earning SWA points, redeeming SWA points (including partner redemptions), companion passes, and A-List/A-List Preferred.

Earning Points with the New SWA Rapid Rewards Program

Unlike most airlines, where you earn miles, with SWA you earn points (no real difference though). Points can be earned by flying on any Southwest airlines flight, through the use of any Rapid Rewards credit card from Chase, or through qualifying purchases with partners. So called “non-revenue travel” (plain English: tickets that you get for free, for example from a reward redemption) does not earn points.

The following table shows how many points you earn based on the price and class of the given SWA flight:

So as you can see, you earn the fewest points on so-called Wanna Get Away flights (those are limited availability seats), and the most points on business-class seats.

Earning SWA Points with Partners

You can also earn Rapid Rewards with various partners.

Hotels: Earn 600 Rapid Rewards points per qualifying stay at any of the following hotels: Best Western, Choice Hotels International, Hilton, Hyatt, LaQuinta, Marriott, Starwood, Wyndham, and The Venetian/Palazzo.

Dining: The SWA rules for dining are quite involved, but the primary benefit is earning 3 SWA points for every dollar spent at participating restaurants. You can read the complete Rapid Rewards Dining program details, or see the list of participating restaurants.

Rental Cards: Earn 600 Rapid Rewards points per qualifying rental at any of the following companies: Alamo, Avis, Budget, Dollar, Hertz, Thrifty.

Bear in mind that PlasticIQ values SWA points at $0.0160 per point, so a 600 point bonus for an entire hotel stay or rental car session is probably not a life-changing amount of money (a little less than $10). We like to remind our readers of absolute dollar values to make sure we all keep our perspective!

Earning SWA Points With Southwest Airlines Credit Cards

Another great way to earn points is with either the SWA Rapid Rewards Plus Card or the SWA Rapid Rewards Premier Card. You’ll earn 1 point per dollar of spend, and 1 additional point on every dollar spent with Southwest or their partners. For much more detail, you can read PlasticIQ’s review of both Southwest Credit Cards.

Redeeming Your Southwest Airlines Points

SWA Rapid Rewards points can be redeemed on any SWA flight for any seat, as long as it’s available. The number of points required to earn a free ticket is based on the price of the ticket multiplied by the required number of points per dollar for the given fare class. The table below shows the details:

As you can see from the above table, you get the best value for your hard-earned SWA points by redeeming for Wanna-Get-Away flights (which aren’t as hard to book as you might imagine). While we value individual SWA points at $0.0160, we encourage you to read our post, “How Much Are Southwest Airlines Points Actually Worth?” to get the full picture.

Partner Redemptions

SWA claims that you can also redeem your Rapid Rewards points for international travel on other airlines, hotel stays, gift cards, and travel packages. Amazingly though, they publish no detailed information on their website, and after 3 calls to their customer service center, it became clear that no one at SWA knows anything about this partner program. I’ve made some inquiries up the chain of command there, and once I learn more, I’ll update this post with some useful information. Consider this section a placeholder at the moment!

Companion Passes

Southwest Airlines provides you with the ability to fly a companion with you for free for an entire year, but it takes some serious loyalty to earn this benefit:

• Members who earn 110,000 points or more in a calendar year or who fly 100 or more SWA flight segments will earn a companion pass, which allows one designated travel companion to fly free with the member for one full year on any SWA flight.
• Companion pass qualifying points are earned from: flights made with purchased tickets, points earned from any rapid rewards chase credit card, and points earned from Rapid Rewards partners. Bonus points and purchased points don’t count.
• Companion passes have no blackout dates or seat restrictions.
• Once the companion pass is earned, the member can begin using it immediately for the remainder of that calendar year, as well as the full next calendar year.

Tiers: How To Get on the A-List!

Southwest Airlines offers elite levels of membership, called the A-List and (even more elite!) A-List Preferred. The table below provides details on what it takes to join the ranks of the most loyal, as well as the ensuing benefits:

Note: Qualifying points are earned through the purchase of SWA airline tickets (not rewards tickets) or through the use of the Rapid Rewards Premier Card from Chase. Purchased points, bonus points, and promotional points do not count towards A-List status. Furthermore, members who have a Rapid Rewards Premier Card from Chase will earn 1,500 tier qualifying points for every $10K in credit card spend, up to 15,000 tier qualifying points per year.

Some Final Thoughts on the Newly Revamped Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards Program

The new program is certainly simpler to understand than its predecessor, which in itself is a major plus. However, as with nearly every loyalty program (whether hotel or airline), the major factor to consider, in my opinion, isn’t so much the specific details of individual rewards, but rather, how much you like the service provided. If you find SWA to be convenient or otherwise just “like” this airline, then it may make sense to really focus on earning rewards with it. Join their loyalty program, get the Rapid Rewards credit card, go the whole nine yards!

You can also read our review of both Rapid Rewards Plus Cards here.

SWA Rapid Rewards Plus Card	SWA Rapid Rewards Premier Card
Apply for Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards PLUS	Apply for Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards PREMIER
Apply for SWA PLUS card if you don’t plan on using it for more than 1-2 years.	Apply for SWA PREMIER card if you plan on keeping it for 2-3 years or more.

Last Reviewed: 6/17/2011

On March 1st of 2011 Southwest Airlines introduced its newly revamped Rapid Rewards loyalty program–replacing the older, more complex program, with something that doesn’t require so much deep thought to understand. This required PlasticIQ to revist its previous estimate of the value of Southwest Airlines points.

Despite its name, Southwest Air actually has quite extensive route coverage in most regions of the US, with the exception of Montana, Wyoming, North/South Dakota, Kansas, Iowa, West Virginia and Georgia–although many of their flights to require plane changes.  SWA’s reach was significantly bolstered with SWA’s recent acquisition of AirTran, which strengthened their East Coast routes.

Getting Down To Business: Estimating the Value of Southwest Airlines Points

The math to calculate the value of Southwest miles (they call them points) is quite simple. There are 3 classes of travel on SWA: Business Select, Anytime, and “Wanna-Get-Away” (think Lenny Kravitz “I want to get away…I want to fly…”–would be a perfect promo song for Southwest, but I digress…).  Both Anytime and Wanna-Get-Away (WGA) are economy class, it’s just that there are a pre-defined number of WGA seats allotted.

As the table below shows, your best value are WGA redemptions, which yield a pleasant $0.0167 per point.

But Are WGA Seats Really Available?

Of course, no matter how good the value for a particular reward ticket, if there are never any seats available, the reward isn’t worth the paper its printed on. So the folks here at PIQ conducted a quick assessment (by no means exhaustive!) of WGA availability, and our findings were quite positive.

Our method was to examine 5 routes (SFO->BOS; LAX->LAS; Dallas->Seattle; Seattle->Raleigh; LAX->New Orleans) and measure the number of WGA flights where seats were available versus the total number of flights. This is a solid measure of seat availability. Additionally, we looked at bookings 2, 3 and 4 weeks out (as of the writing of this post), with a Thursday departure and Sunday return.

As the table below highlights, WGA flight availability is quite strong. Very short notice bookings (2 weeks out) had the least amount of WGA availability, with only about 60% of flight times having an available WGA seat. However, if you book 3-4 weeks out, availability jumps to around 80%, which is quite excellent.

Other Redemption Options for your SWA Points

SWA also allows you to redeem your miles for air travel on most other major airlines, as well as hotel stays at over 70,000 hotels world-wide. We’ll be doing some additional research to get more info here, but we’ve done enough of these analyses to know that your best redemption value will be using your points to redeem for airfare on SouthWest Airlines. Kind of makes sense, right?

How Does the New Southwest Rapid Rewards Program Stack Up Against the Older Version?

We’ve read a lot online about how the new SWA Program isn’t as good as the old (credits-based) program, but we’re not convinced. Here’s why:

It used to take 8 roundtrip flights to earn a free roundtrip ticket. We previously estimated the value of these roundtrip tickets to be around $300.

Under the new program, 8 roundtrip flights at an average fare of $300 would generate (8 flights * $300 per flight * 6 pts/dollar) 14,400 points. As we value points at $0.0167 per point (assumes redemption for WGA seats), this equates to $240. So it seems from the point of view of earning free flights by flying, the older program may have had an edge of around $60 in this example.

However, that’s only part of the picture. We valued the points under the old Southwest Rewards Program at around $0.0140, whereas the points in the new program are valued at $0.0167—a 19% improvement in value. This means that any points earned through the use of the SWA loyalty credit card will be more valuable in the new program versus the old one. You can read our review of the Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards Card from Chase to see how the credit card itself (versus the standalone rewards program) performs.

PIQ’s Summary Judgment

Like all airline loyalty programs, if you love flying the particular airline, then the exact dollar value per point may not be of huge concern. Conversely, if you can’t stand a partiuclar airline, then even if the value is off the charts, it likely won’t matter to you. But I would say this: if you already are a member of Rapid Rewards, or contemplating joining, you won’t be doing yourself a dis-service. With miles (points) valued at $0.0167 for WGA rewards, and with WGA rewards readily available in most cases, you are well ahead of many other airline loaylty programs.

You can also read PlasticIQ’s review of the Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards Credit Card for more insight.

SWA Rapid Rewards Plus Card	SWA Rapid Rewards Premier Card
Apply for Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards PLUS	Apply for Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards PREMIER
Apply for SWA PLUS card if you don’t plan on using it for more than 1-2 years.	Apply for SWA PREMIER card if you plan on keeping it for 2-3 years or more.

Last Updated: 5/5/2011

British Airways offers their Executive Club loyalty program, where frequent flyers earn BA miles which can be applied for free flights or upgrades. Analyzing the value of miles is always tricky business since assumptions like whether you fly first class or economy, domestic versus international, and so on, affect the value of miles. That said, PlasticIQ takes our best shot at it.

Furthermore, this is our first miles value post where we actually provide estimates for business class as well as upgrades (historically, we have only valued economy class). It will be up to you, our reader, to select the mileage value that most closely mirrors your real-world behavior.

A Quick Overview of PlasticIQ’s Approach to Estimating the Value of BA Miles

In order to keep our analysis focused, we restricted our analysis to flights from 5 major US cities (LAX, NYC, Chicago, ATL, Phoenix) to 4 major European destinations (London, Madrid, Frankfurt, Paris). We used Kayak.com to determine flights costs at several times throughout the year in an effort to capture and average seasonal variations.

Since British Airways also tacks on a rather large fuel surcharge, and since flyers still need to pay this charge even if they use their BA miles, we make sure to factor this (and taxes) to our calculations.

The Results of Our Analysis

The tables below contain estimates of the worth of BA miles under varying scenarios, including class and zone of travel (Zone 1 European markets require fewer miles to travel to than Zone 2 markets). We also provide estimates of the value of upgrading between classes.

As the table above illustrates, redeeming BA miles for Economy tickets is an economicaly poor decision–yielding an average value of around $0.0040 per mile. This extremely low value is due to the fact that after getting your “free ticket” you will still need to shell out roughly $600 in taxes and fuel surcharges. The best redemption value is for First Class tickets, yielding about $0.0237 per mile. The catch here: while you are indeed maximizing the value of your miles, you are also shelling out a lot more miles to travel the same distance.

The folks at PlasticIQ have also taken a look at redeeming your British Air miles for upgrades–a move that often yields the highest dollar value per mile of any airline redemption strategy.

As the table above highlights, upgrading from Economy to World Traveler Plus (aka Premium Economy) yields a value per British Air mile of around $0.0400, by far the best redemption option if you are just trying to max out on value per mile.

Redeeming Your Miles Through British Air’s Partner Airlines

So if you were planning on using your BA miles to fly from the States to say London on economy, by now hopefully you realize that’s a losing proposition given the sky-high taxes which you still need to cover. However, all is not lost.

BA is part of the OneWorld Alliance, which means if there is award availability on one of these partners, you can use your BA points to fly on those airlines. It will only be possible to do this for routes that British Airways doesn’t fly (for example, most any flights within the US). OneWorld partners include American Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Japan Air, LAN, Qantas, and several other less well-known carriers.

Naturally, the folks here at PlasticIQ were curious as to the value of redeeming through partner airlines. We chose to evaluate domestic (US) routes on American Airlines as the use case, and what we found was one major pro and one major con.

• The Pro: You’ll be able to obtain roundtrip domestic tickets for as low as 25,000 miles–the same number of miles it would cost you through AA (MileSaaver Fares). Since AA miles are valued at around $0.0136, that represents more than a 3x improvement over BA miles used for BA economy tickets.
• The Con: In a word, availability. In my test, I was trying to book a full 2 months out, and was unable to get my desired dates. I needed to settle for somewhat different dates. Note that my exact dates were available as reward flights through AA directly, just not through BA, which of course means BA is only getting a limited number of award seats.

Some Final Words on the Value of BA Miles

If you typically only fly Economy class, trying to earn miles on BA (via a British Airways credit card, for example) is not a recipe for inner peace–given the extremely painful fuel surcharges that reduce the value of the BA miles to a pittance. However, if you normally would fly First Class, or typically upgrade, then pursuing a BA miles accumulation strategy may make sense. In fact, at a value of $0.04 per mile for upgrades from Econonmy to Premium Economy, you are well ahead of the performance of any cashback card.

Also, while you do have the option of trying to book an award ticket through a British Air partner airline (at typically much better value per BA point), availability is a real issue (which technically should decrease the value of BA points by some factor when used in this fashion).

2/14/2011

Right now I’m in the air, about 8 hours into my 10 hour flight to London Heathrow.  Flying Virgin Atlantic Premium Economy (courtesy of my full-time employer).  Just a couple of days ago I returned home from Aruba (personal trip!) on United and was upgraded for a 4-hour leg of that flight to their Economy Plus.

The first question you might have?  Why would a credit card blogger be writing about his flying experience on Virgin Atlantic?  Wouldn’t this be something best left to the Flyertalk community?

Not really.  While we don’t pretend to be airline experts, there are many airline and hotel credit cards to choose from, and while its tempting to slap dollar values on points, sometimes the underlying quality of the experience more than justifies calculated price differentials.  For example, would you rather fly airline A and have a great experience for 25,000 points (let’s say, $250), or fly airline B and have a lousy experience for 20,000 points (say, $200)?  It probably depends on the individual, but this post is here to remind you that sometimes so-called “soft factors” can hit hard.

Virgin’s Premium Economy is probably the equivalent of many airlines’ business class.  The seats are super comfortable.  The movie selection is awesome and free at this class (I could have watched Inception, which I’ve seen before; but I opted to watch Machete—I still haven’t recovered).

The service is incredible.  The stewardesses feel more like waitstaff.  They swing by frequently, offering a full open bar.  The dinner choices were excellently prepared (I had some sort of cheese-filled pasta, but there was a lamb dish and one other choice as well).  It wasn’t the crappy food that you have to pay for on other airlines.

Now compare this to my experience on United (returning from Aruba).  We had the privilege to sit in United’s Economy Plus for a 4-hour leg of the flight—certainly enough time to evaluate its merits.  Besides the extra legroom, which is always nice, there was, I can honestly say, nothing exceptional at all to write about.  No open bar.  No in-seat TV.  No nice food, just a sack of peanuts.  Not even a nice hot towel. And the same service that you get in straight-up economy class.

Now, maybe all of this is widely known (of course we all know that VA has great movie experiences, for example), but it’s one thing to know about it, and another to experience it.

The moral of this story (as much for me as anyone!): while our PlasticIQ ranking engine does a damn good job of telling you where you’ll get the best bang for the buck given your own unique spending profile, it can’t know how much value to add to a given airline credit card for, say, a “hot towel on the neck”, an open bar, or your choice of 100+ movies.

But unless you are Hymie from Get Smart, there is definitely value in these qualitative perks, lots of it in my opinion.  Now excuse me while I munch on my egg and cheese ciabatta sandwich that my lovely stewardess just dropped off.

Last Reviewed: 8/20/2010

The Virgin Atlantic Flying Club is Virgin Atlantic’s frequent flyer program. The lowest level of membership is Flying Club Red, then Silver, and finally, Gold. For those of you who are interested in an analysis of the monetary value of a Flying Club Point, check out PlasticIQ’s article, How Much Are Virgin Atlantic Flying Club Miles Worth?.

Earning Miles with Virgin Atlantic Flying Club

As a Virgin Atlantic Flying Club member, you earn both miles and tier points on all flights in economy, premium economy, or upper class (the British version of First Class). When you fly premium economy or upper class, you also earn additional bonus miles (per the table below).  For example, if you flew 3,000 miles from point A to point B round-trip, and you were a Gold member, you would earn 4,500 miles for that route.

Earning Tier Points: The Way to the Top of the Virgin Atlantic Flying Club

By earning tier points you can advance from lowly Red to Silver to regal Gold within Virgin Atlantic’s Flying Club. When you fly with Virgin Atlantic or one of their flying club partners, you not only earn miles, but also tier points. The table below illustrates.

* You earn double the above tier points when you fly from London to Sydney.

There are also more than 10 Virgin Atlantic Flying Club partners, with their own tier points earning schedule, as outlined below.

Advancing in Virgin Atlantic’s Flying Club: From Red to Silver to Gold

If you earn 15 tier points in a rolling 12-13 month time-frame, you move up from Red to Silver. If you earn a total of 40 tier points in any 12-13 month time-frame, you’ll go from Red to Gold.

Tier points are calculated and totaled from the current day of the current month to the first day of the same month in the previous year (thus the rolling 12-13 month time-frame).  Props to Sir Richard Branson for giving customers the benefit of rounding to the beginning of the year-ago month–this works in your favor!

When being evaluated for tier upgrades, tier points are considered valid for a full 12-13 months from the date at which they were earned.

Other Benefits From Virgin Atlantic Flying Club Status

Red Level Benefits

• Basically just the opportunity to belong to the Virgin Atlantic Flying Club program and earn miles.  Basically, being red is totally average and you shouldn’t consider yourself special in any way.

Silver Level Benefits

• 25% extra base flown miles on every flight flown with VA.
• Full use of the premium economy check-in area.
• Priority standby: if a flight is already full, you’ll be bumped to near the top of the queue.

For more details, see Virgin Atlantic’s Flying Club Silver Benefits

Gold Level Benefits (partial list)

• 50% extra base flown miles on every flight flown with VA.
• Priority boarding (with Upper Class group)
• Fast track through immigration and security at London Heathrow.
• Allowed 1 extra piece of baggage free of charge.
• Access to Virgin Atlantic’s Clubhouses on departure.
• Individual access to Virgin Atlantic’s Revivals Lounge when flying into LHR on a VS prefix ticket.
• You automatically can bump a family member over 18 years of age to Silver Status.
• When you renew your Gold Status, you’ll receive a free companion ticket. You just need to travel together with that person in the same class.
• You’re guaranteed an economy seat on any Virgin Atlantic full fare flight that’s booked at least 3 days before departing.

For more details, see Flying Club Gold Benefits.

Renewing Your Flying Club Status

Once you reach Silver Membership status, fortunately you don’t need to earn another full 15 points the next year, but rather only 10 points will do the trick. For Gold status, instead of 40 points, you’ll need 30.

Your renewal year is referred to as your “Fixed Membership Year”, and is defined as starting from the 1st day after you earn your Silver or Gold status, to the end of the same month of the following year.  Again, kudos to Virgin Atlantic for rounding forward to the end of the month.

If you want more information on this topic, go to the Virgin Atlantic Tier Points page on their site for more info.

Earning Miles Through Virgin Atlantic’s Various Partners

As mentioned above, you can earn miles simply by flying on Virgin Atlantic, as well as by using the Virgin Atlantic American Express Card. However, you can also earn miles in the Virgin Atlantic Flying Club by spending money through one of VA’s partner airlines, or other non-airline partners.

There are roughly 7 classes of parnters through which you can earn Virgin Miles:

• Shopping partners
• Airline partners
• Hotel partners
• Car rental partners
• Virgin Group partners
• Financial partners
• Local partners

While you can conduct a more detailed evaluation of each of these partner channels by visting Virgin Atlantic’s Flying Club Partner Section, PlasticIQ has displayed a graphical list of all the airline partners in their program below.

Redeeming Your Virgin Atlantic Flying Club Miles

Your Flying Club Miles can be redeemed for free flights on Virgin Atlantic or on the majority of its partners. The Virgin Atlantic Spending Calculator shows you the number of required miles for a given round-trip flight. Each partner has its own Partner Redemption Schedule as well.

There are three levels of Amex Rewards—Membership Rewards Express, Membership Rewards (which is what this article is focused on), and Membership Rewards First. We have blogged separately about the Express program in our post What is the value of American Express Membership Rewards Express Program Points? Who knows, maybe someday you too can be cool and own an Amex Red card like Bono (hint: you’ll need to become a UK resident first!).

If you don’t have much patience for analysis, and just want to check out an Amex card on steroids, read PlasticIQ’s review of the American Express Blue Cash Preferred Card. It routinely finishes at the top of the heap per the PlasticIQ Ranking Engine and won’t disappoint you.

Myriad Ways to Redeem your Amex MR Points

Amex presents cardholders with a dizzying array of redemption options, including gift cards, statement credits (like cash), travel, and more. The table right here summarizes our estimates of the value of your MR points under each method, but if you want to understand how we arrived at these numbers, do read on.

Major Differences Between Amex Membership Rewards and Amex Membership Rewards Express Programs

There are at least two major differences  between the full Membership Rewards program and its little brother, the Express program—at least from a value of points perspective.  The first difference is that the full rewards program enables you to transfer your points into mileage programs at (as of press) 16 different airlines, including such well-known brands as JetBlue, Delta, British Air, ANA, Singapore Airlines and others. Follow this link to see their full list of Amex partners. The program also enables you to transfer points into certain hotel frequent stay programs, such as the Hilton Honors program and the Starwood Preferred Guest Program.

The second major difference has to do with Amex’s Pay With Points program, which enables cardmembers to directly purchase airline tickets, hotel reservations, cruise packages, and bundled vacations directly from the American Express website.  The full Membership Rewards program offers a far superior conversion rate of $0.01 per MR point versus only $0.005 per point for the Amex Membership Rewards Express Program.

How Much Are MR Points Worth When You Use The Pay With Points Program?

As the table below highlights, when you use Pay With Points to redeem for airfare, your Membership Rewards Points will be worth $0.01. Other redemption combinations come in at somewhat lower valuations.

Value of Amex Membership Rewards Points When Transferring Into Flying or Hotel Loyalty Programs

Unlike the Amex MR Express Program, the full Membership Rewards Program allows you to transfer your hard-earned MR points into any number of (as of press) 16 different airlines and 6 different hotel chains. We’ve tried to analyze at least some of the more popular programs to arrive at redemption estimates. Check out the table below:

As you can see, you’ll fare much better (pun call-out!) going with airline redemptions versus hotel redemptions. While we realize this list is by no means exhaustive (and we will expand it over time), we do believe it’s directionally reflective of the value you’ll get for your MR points when transferring into loyalty programs.

Unfortunately, there’s no way to redeem your Amex MR points for the below (hey it’s a long post, I needed a break):

So, What Are Your Membership Rewards Points Worth When Redeeming for Gift Cards

Unlike some other redemption types, the value of your points here is much easier and straightforward to calculate. While they offer dozens of gift cards across shopping, restaurant and other categories, value almost always peaks out at $0.01 per point, and sometimes dips below that. The table below provides a small sampling for your delight. Note that we’ve also included the value of the Shop With Amazon program in the table below.

So, if Cash is King, What’s the King Worth?

Of course, we would be remiss if we didn’t tell you how much your MR points would be worth if you converted them directly into cash. The short answer is–not much. There are 2 ways to get rewards which are basically the equivalent of cash: redeem for either Visa Cash Cards, or get statement credits through the EveryDay Charges program.

How Does the EveryDay Charges Program Work?

It’s fairly straightforward. You just log into your Amex credit card account, select the charges you want to pay with your points, and follow the instructions from there. The real question is, what value do you get for your points.

As you can see, while neither redemption option gets you close to the baseline $0.01 per point, the Amex gift cards (which can be used anywhere that American Express is accepted) outperform the statement credits, although there’s always the risk that you could lose the card! Choose your poison, or, better yet, avoid both of these options altogether.

PlasticIQ’s Final Assessment of the American Express Membership Rewards Program

It appears that the AMEX Membership Rewards Program has a modest edge over the AMEX MR Express Program due to the ability to transfer AMEX points into various frequent flyer programs, and also due to the superior Pay-With-Points redemption rate (twice that of the MR Express Program). It appears that transferring into flying programs will yield a value slightly north of $0.0105 per MR point.

Now if you are just looking for the best all-around Amex rewards card, we’d be remiss to not point you to PlasticIQ’s review of the Amex Blue Cash Preferred Card. It’s a straight-up cash back card, and our favorite amongst all Amex cards due to its bone-crushing rewards program.

Amex Blue Cash Preferred Credit Card
Apply for Amex Blue Cash Preferred

Since PlasticIQ is endeavoring to determine the value of the numerous airline frequent flyer programs in existence, it’s critical that we establish standards to enable a fair, apples-to-apples comparison amongst the various programs. For example, is 1 mile on an airline that only flies to London worth the same as 1 mile on an airline that flies to all major cities, all else equal? The answer is obviously, “no!”. Therefore, we need to figure out a standard for adjusting the value of the miles of the London-only airline downward by some factor to account for this limitation. So here is our attempt to lay out some of the standards and associated discounts, though bear in mind this will be a living, growing document.

Standards for Flight Routes

One of the first areas that requires standardization is flight routes. All else equal, miles on an airline that flies to major cities in 3 continents are worth more than miles on an airline flying only to Europe.

Peak versus Non-Peak, or Restricted Versus Non-Restricted Flights

Certain airlines require more miles for peak travel versus non-peak travel, or more miles to be able to fly anytime versus seat supply limitations (aka blackout periods). Where the value of peak travel is at least $0.01 per mile, PIQ assumes a 50-50 split between peak and non-peak travel. Where peak travel value drops below $0.01, PIQ assumes 100% of travel is off-peak, but PIQ adds an additional 10% inconvenience penalty to the non-cash penalty.

Inconvenience Penalty

Certain airlines have the majority of their flights as non-direct, which represents a major time-suck for travelers and should thus be penalized. PIQ applies an additional 10% time-suck penalty for cases where the majority of routes appear to be connections.

Complimentary Companion Tickets

Some credit cards offer complimentary domestic/international airline tickets as an incentive. For economy-class companion tickets, PlasticIQ generally assumes that they will be monetized by the cardholder at the going market rate for such a flight. However, for Business Class or First Class companion tickets, PIQ will generally create 2 card entries in the database–one showing how much the card would be worth if you actually used the companion ticket, and the other assuming you don’t make use of it.

Extra Rewards for Travel on Designated Airline

Sometimes airlines will offer 2x rewards for dollars spent on their airline (e.g. buying tickets), or some sort of reward tied to the number of miles you fly with them (say 1 extra mile per mile flown). Given the wide choice of airlines out there, and the competitiveness of the industry, PlasticIQ assumes that only 25% of your travel will be on a specific airline, so we allocate your spend and miles accordingly.

Flying Club is the name of Virgin Atlantic’s frequent flyer program.   And Richard Branson is the name of their founder and CEO.  And he is my idol.  Hmm, where was I…Oh yes, one of the challenges of valuing miles from this program is that mileage requirements for free flights vary by specific departure location, requiring a more city-to-city analysis.  If you just want to learn more about the program, read our post, Summary of the Virgin Atlantic Flying Club Program.  For example, as of the time of writing this post, it costs 50,000 miles (standard rate) to fly from LAX to Heathrow, but only 45,000 miles if you fly out of New York.  Most other airlines have a simpler system where is costs, for example, the same amount of miles to fly from anywhere in North America to anywhere in Europe.

For those who like to get right to the point, PlasticIQ has estimated that miles earned on Virgin Atlantic are worth around $0.0124, but keep reading if you want to know how we arrived at that estimate.

Finally, if you just want to get a Virgin Atlantic credit card, try reading our combined review of the Virgin Atlantic White and Black cards. If you’re looking for an all-purpose awesome travel card, check out PlasticIQ’s review of the Penfed Premium Travel Rewards Amex.

Key Assumptions in Valuing Virgin Atlantic’s Flying Club Miles

As in all of PlasticIQ’s analyses, there are some critical assumptions we must make:

• Virgin Atlantic is a London-centric airline–all flights route through London. Thus, Asian routes make absolutely no sense from the US, since you are essentially flying the wrong way for a good part of the trip. For the market price of tickets, we rely on PIQ’s Detailed Analysis of Flight Costs.
• Virgin Atlantic has a very unusual (and unfortunate) tax structure tied to fuel surcharges, which we treat separately below, and which greatly impairs the value of Flying Club Miles when used to fly in VA itself and not their partners.
• Virgin Atlantic also flies to some other locations that PlasticIQ normally doesn’t include in it’s analysis, such as Cape Town (South Africa), and Dehli (India), to name a few. We observed that the schedules for these flights are generally far less convenient (ie more time in the air or on transfers) than if you went on the open market. Given that these are generally more “exotic” routes and also taking into account the scheduling issue, PIQ has decided to exclude these routes from our analysis.
• This leaves us analyzing only one destination—London!  However, Virgin Atlantic also has 16 Flying Club airline partners which significantly extend the reach and value of the Flying Club program.  Specifically, we analyze 4 of their major partners, including US Air, Singapore Air, Continental, and ANA.

Fuel Surcharge Significantly Reduces Value of Awards on Virgin Atlantic

Virgin Atlantic has extremely high fuel surcharges, as the table below illustrates.  Note that of their partner airlines that PIQ examined, only Singapore Airlines also has onerous fuel surcharges not covered by the award ticket.

As you can see, Virgin’s combined taxes and fuel surcharges are about $200 higher than those of other major airlines for flights from the US to London…But, you say, this shouldn’t matter, since you’re getting the ticket for free from an award anyway, right? Wrong! Written into the fine print of many frequent flyer programs is the fact that you, the redeemer, are responsible for all taxes and fuel surcharges. So all of a sudden a supposedly near-free reward ticket from NYC to LHR is going to cost you ~$350. Ouch! Talk about devaluing the worth of the program.

So How Much Are Flying Club Miles Actually Worth?

Firstly, let’s analyze just the value of using Flying Club miles on Virgin Atlantic itself.  We’ll then extend the analysis to the 4 major partner airlines (and one hotel chain, since VA miles can be transferred to certain hotel loyalty programs) for a reasonably complete picture!

Valuing Virgin Atlantic Miles on Flying Club Partners

Now that we have an idea of what a mile might be worth when redeemed on Virgin Atlantic itself , it’s time to view the holistic picture and include at least some partner valuations.  To make a final determination on the value of Virgin Atlantic miles, we then take a weighted average of the top 3 most highly valued partner miles.

PlasticIQ’s Final Assessment on the Value of Virgin Atlantic Miles

Thus, you can see that while Virgin Atlantic’s Flying Club miles are only valued at around $0.0072 on a standalone basis, the key turns out to be also estimating the value of Flying Club miles when used to redeem awards on partner airlines.  Once taking this into account, we estimate the fair value of Virgin miles to be around $0.0105.  Also note that as this value is completely dependent on being able to find available partner awards (not always a foregone conclusion), you may want to apply an additional discount to PlasticIQ’s calculated value to reflect this.

Check out PlasticIQ’s Frequent Flyer Mileage Valuation Comparison to see how the Virgin Atlantic Flying Club Program stacks up against other frequent flyer programs.

Cards mentioned:

Virgin Atlantic White Card	Virgin Atlantic Black Card	PenFed Travel Amex Card
Apply for Virgin Atlantic White Card	Apply for Virgin Atlantic Black Card	Apply for PenFed Travel Amex Card