Mileage Plus is the frequent flyer program from United. Awards are classified as either Saver or Standard. As you might surmise, Saver Awards require less miles to obtain, but come with blackout dates and capacity control restrictions, whereas Standard Awards do not. Note that United is a member of the Star Alliance (a partnership of more than 20 airlines aimed at extending their collective global footprint).

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US Airways is a member of the Star Alliance (not to be confused with the Rebel Alliance), a network of 21 member airlines that have partnered to offer service to virtually any location on the planet where folks actually fly to. In assessing the value of their frequent flyer program, known as Dividend Miles, we consider both the US Air and Star Alliance redemption schedules.

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Note: this post addresses the older version of the SWA Rapid Rewards program which is no longer offered.  Unless you are an airline historian, you should really be reading our new post, “How Much Are Southwest Airlines Points Actually Worth?“.

To earn a Standard Award good for one free roundtrip ticket on Southwest Airlines requires 16 credits. You earn 1 credit for each one-way leg of a trip. So, 8 round-trip flights would earn you a free Standard Award from the Rapid Rewards Program.

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Members of AirTran Airways A+ Rewards program earn credits for flight segments. And of course you can earn more credits if you use the AirTran Airways A+ Visa Card. PlasticIQ has attempted to estimate the monetary value of a single AirTran Airways A+ credit.

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In order for PlasticIQ to accurately rank the dozens of credit cards with frequent flyer programs, it is necessary to calculate the dollar value per mile for each of these programs. We have written numerous articles about each, but below is a table which summarizes our estimated values for each program along with a link to a more detailed posting.

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The Continental OnePass frequent flyer program offers both SaverPass and EasyPass fares for many global destinations. SaverPass fares require far fewer miles to obtain flights, but suffer from limited availability. Conversely, EasyPass fares, while requiring significantly more miles, have no availability restrictions.

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The schedule to earn ANA international flight awards is somewhat complicated. Here are some of the basics of how it all works:

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In September, 2009, JetBlue announced some major changes to its TrueBlue frequent flyer program, requiring PlasticIQ to completely re-evaluate our estimate of the worth of JetBlue’s TrueBlue points. Previously, we had estimated JetBlue points to be worth about $0.0120 per point. With the changes to the program, that estimate has climbed slightly to about $0.0122 per point.

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Since the federal approval in October, 2008 of the merger between Northwest Airlines and Delta, the two airlines have made strong progress in integration. Of particular interest to PlasticIQ is the fact that their frequent flyer mileage schedules are now identical in terms of miles required to travel to specific regions.

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At a high level, estimating the value of Delta Skymiles is a 3-step process:

• First, obtain the miles redemption schedule from Delta…easily done.
• Next, make some assumptions around what portion of travel will be done during periods of low, moderate and high demand, as the Delta Skymiles program charges different amounts of points for each of these tiers.
• Finally, tie in PlasticIQ’s estimates of typical “market rate” ticket prices, making sure to back out out-of-pocket taxes and fees which miles never cover.  This will enable us to calculate the dollar value per Skymile.

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