Tips for using a lifetime of FF miles as cheaply as possible?

Alex1982

genetic wrote: »

Sign up to awardwallet.com and add your Aadvantage account. Write a comment on their blog and get 5 Aadvantage (American Airlines) miles to extend the validity of all of your miles for a year (or maybe a year and a half). Then you don't have to make the decision in the next 2 weeks and can actually get the best use of your points.

This is a great tip - any idea how long the miles take to post?

pollypenny

We each have 30,000 AA miles which we wanted to use to upgrade to BS on our return from PHL in April.

Yes, that was fine, but it woukd cost an extra $320 dollars!

I'm now thinking of using them for an hotel

steve1500

www.headforpoints.com very recently did an article on using AA miles

stevie11

pollypenny wrote: »

We each have 30,000 AA miles which we wanted to use to upgrade to BS on our return from PHL in April.

Yes, that was fine, but it woukd cost an extra $320 dollars!

I'm now thinking of using them for an hotel

I do find using AA ff points can work out costly. You have to be selective on which airlines are chosen in particular flying a leg with BA can often work least cost effective. Often the extra fees can work out nearly the same as a return economy flight during a sale.

I probably fly frequent enough at present on Oneworld to not lose my points but I as stated earlier in the thread I use awardwallet to keep my other family members accounts active, this works well.

stoneman

genetic wrote: »

Sign up to awardwallet.com and add your Aadvantage account. Write a comment on their blog and get 5 Aadvantage (American Airlines) miles to extend the validity of all of your miles for a year (or maybe a year and a half). Then you don't have to make the decision in the next 2 weeks and can actually get the best use of your points.

I like to keep that one quiet. You can bet if you mention that on FlyerTalk or HFP it would be abused and would be stopped by AA within a week

stevie11

stoneman wrote: »

I like to keep that one quiet. You can bet if you mention that on FlyerTalk or HFP it would be abused and would be stopped by AA within a week

Surely AA must know this is being used to keep points active. I found out about it a couple of years ago on flyertalk funnily enough.

merchcon55

It's been available for quite sometime. Another option is using the AA shopping portal and ordering a book. I think you could also download a song on itunes (not sure if that is on AA, but it certainly used to be available on United)