Cashing in frequent-flier miles for the flights that you want can be devilishly difficult. Ways to overcome the barriers…

Use different airlines for different legs of the journey. In the past, frequent-flier trips essentially had to be round-trips between two destinations on one airline or its partners—that’s how the programs offered awards tickets.

Today most airlines offer awards tickets per flight. So if you can’t find both the outbound and return awards seats you want at the frequent-flier price you want on one airline,

you can search for a flight for each leg separately on two different airlines, assuming that you have enough miles on both airlines.

Add a third leg. On some airlines, you might be able to add an extra destination without increasing the number of required frequent-flier miles.

For instance, on Delta you could fly from New York City to London, then a few days later, from London to Paris on the same airline or one of its partner airlines, and then from Paris back to New York City.

However, airlines are increasingly phasing out this practice.

Participate in the Southwest, JetBlue or Virgin America frequent-flier program.

These airlines do not impose limits on the number of available awards seats on a flight. Any seat that is available for cash also is available for frequent-flier miles.

There is a downside—the number of miles required for an awards ticket increases with the cash price of the ticket.

Still, participating in one of these three programs is a great way to ensure that you can get an awards ticket even to popular destinations and/or during busy travel times.

Call a reservations agent. Airlines now impose fees for booking awards tickets over the phone—usually around $25 per passenger for the entire trip—but calling an agent can make sense when you’re having trouble finding the best ticket.

Good reservations agents not only know the ins and outs of the awards seat booking system, they also often have options available to them that are not available to customers through the airline’s Web site.

These include cobbling together trips using partner airlines…changing planes in less obvious airports…or perhaps even unlocking seats that are not listed on the site as awards seats.

You pay nothing if the reservations agent can’t find a solution that satisfies you and you don’t book a ticket.

Book early, book late or book holiday flights.

The single best time to find an awards seat is 330 days before the flight, when these seats first enter the system.

However, additional awards seats often enter the system within two weeks of departure.

Awards seats also tend to be plentiful for people willing to travel on Christmas or Thanksgiving Day rather than during the week before or after.

Redeem British Airways miles on the airline’s partner, American Airlines. British Airways (BA) now charges extremely steep fuel surcharges.

A “free” round-trip flight between the US and London could cost upward of $500—on top of the frequent-flier miles required. That includes unavoidable taxes, but it’s mostly the fuel surcharge.

Many other foreign airlines charge fuel surcharges, too, though most are nowhere near as steep as those of BA.

To avoid these massive surcharges, redeem BA miles for flights on American Airlines, a BA partner airline that does not impose fuel surcharges.

Source: Tim Winship, editor-at-large of SmarterTravel.com.

He has spent nearly 25 years in the travel industry and helped develop and manage frequent-travel programs for Singapore Airlines, All Nippon Airways and Hilton Hotels.

Up for a vote is Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s “Paying A Fair Share Act” which would make it so millionaires and billionaires paying lower tax rates than the middle class would have to pay a 30 percent effective tax rate.1

Already, the support for this bill has been huge. Earlier this year we delivered over 50,000 petitions to Sen. Whitehouse in support of his bill to tax the ultra-rich. And new polls show over 73 percent of Americans support the Buffett Rule — a rule making sure people like Warren Buffett don’t pay a lower tax rate than their Secretaries.2
But it’s not Sen. Whitehouse and progressive champs like him that we need to convince. If we’re going to make the Buffett Rule the law of the land, we need to convince moderate Democrats and even some Republicans.

In addition to your letters, a number of our affiliates will have secretaries and other 99ers deliver petitions in person to Senators’ district offices to send the message home.

Right now, a dozen Senators are already signed on as sponsors. Many more agree, but haven’t signed on yet.

Help us get the cosponsors we need to break a filibuster and pass the Buffett Rule. Every letter you send helps because whether your Senator fights for the 1% or the 99%, they all know that if you’re willing to write them a letter, you’re willing to talk to friends and family about why the ultra-rich should pay their fair share.

And in an election year, showing politicians that we know their voting record and are willing to speak out is the best tool we have to make change.

Sincerely,
David Elliot
USAction / TrueMajority

The constant justification for giving more to the rich gets to wear thin when the rich caused the economic meltdown we experience over and over. When they choose to send the poor off to fight their wars.

The poor didn’t create this mortgage crisis. Nor did they profit from it like wall st did. Did wall st ever have to give back the profits? Did any actually get prosecuted or more than a slap on the wrist.

Now we make the case to give more tax breaks to the rich that seem to bend and abuse the moral compass at every turn only to forgive and forget every time they get caught with their hand in the middle and lower class cookie jar.

Do we want a right wing radical such as Rick Santorum to be our nations moral compass? Is that what the GOP best of the best has to offer? or Michelle Bachmann… all these candidates claim that God speaks to them personally or through them?

That is the stuff for evangelical side shows that part the fools and the weak from their money… the elevated live off the poor.

This is not the back bone of America. The Middle class.. the less than 1 percent that is America. and the rich keep asking for more, more, more…..