Travelore Tips: How To Earn More Frequent Flier Miles

Airlines have made frequent-flier miles more valuable than ever. But they’re becoming increasingly harder to earn. This is how you hack the system.

Many domestic airlines have quietly made a drastic change to their frequent flier programs. They're now more likely to award points based on how much you spend—not how far you fly. That means your typical economy-class ticket earns fewer miles than it used to, especially for long-distance travel.

So what's the new secret to racking up hundreds of miles? Sign up for credit cards that maximize your reward points. Here’s how to get the most out of your spending. 

Upgrade Your Rewards Card

Travel rewards credit cards earn points for every purchase you make. Those points act as currency that you can redeem for hotel stays, flights, and cash credit. But which offer the best deals? Check Card Hub, a one-stop resource that compares annual fees and other member details, to find a card that fits your needs.

Just signing up for a card usually nets you a hefty introductory bonus. Among the best is the Citi AAdvantage Platinum Select MasterCard, which lands you 50,000 miles (or a round-trip flight to Europe or South America) if you spend $3,000 within three months. Capital One Venture Rewards and Chase Sapphire Preferred each give you 40,000 points once you've charged $3,000 in purchases. With Capital One, that’s worth $400 in travel credit; Chase gives you a $500 travel allowance. So 40,000 points equals $400 or $500 (in travel rewards) depending on which company you go with. 

Loyalty Has Its Rewards

If you live near an airline’s hub, get a card that earns points with that carrier. You get more miles per dollar if you pay for the airline's flight with its propietary card. Say you have United’s MileagePlus Explorer card and charge a $450 United ticket on that card. You’ll earn 900 miles. Book the same flight on Delta with that card, and you’ll only receive 450 miles.

Spend Wisely

After the introductory bonus, your purchases earn points per dollar spent. Capital One bestows the miles liberally, giving you two points per dollar no matter what you buy. But Chase distinguishes between travel and dining (two points per dollar) and everything else (one point per dollar).

To eek out maximum mileage, check to see if you can buy what you want through your credit card’s shopping portal (it’s an online store found on an airline’s website), which generally yields a bigger reward than buying direct from the retailer.

Most airline and reward credit cards make deals with certain stores to give shoppers multiple miles for every dollar spent, rather than the 1:1 you typically earn. On Delta’s Sky Miles Shopping site, you can buy from brands such as Backcountry.com (three miles per dollar), Mountain Hardwear (three miles per dollar) and Nike (six miles per dollar). Electronics, sporting gear, pet supplies, newspaper subscriptions—you can purchase almost everything on your list through shopping portals. Sign up for the Wall Street Journal through Southwest’s Rapid Rewards shopping site, and you get 1,400 reward points.

Be sure to browse the portal’s site for any holiday promotions. For example, from November 1 through November 23, Rapid Rewards Shopping is giving away 300 bonus points for every $175 you spend (up to 1,200 points max).

Contributed by Kelly Bastone

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Travelore Tips: The Travel Insurance In Your Wallet You Didn't Know You Had

(Photo: Getty Images/iStockphoto)

I recently wrote about a new air travel insurance plan called AirCare, which provides cash payouts on the spot if your flight is delayed more than two hours for any reason, if your luggage is lost, delayed or stolen, if a flight delay causes you to miss a connecting flight, or if you're stuck on the tarmac for more than two hours. There are surprisingly no obvious loopholes, and this is over and above what compensation you might collect from the airline, insurance policies or other sources, all for $25 per flight.

But soon after publishing the story, some readers pointed out that credit cards provide the same benefits for free. Do they? Yes and no.

READ MORE: New service covers flight mishaps for $25 a trip

What I didn't realize is that, yes, some credit card issuers have, buried in their fine print, contracts with rather extensive travel insurance. But not all do, and the benefits vary widely between issuers.

Did you ever have a laptop or iPhone stolen or "go missing" during TSA scanning, or perhaps in the plane? Depending on the cards you used to pay for your trip, your issuer's built-in, free travel insurance might have compensated you for at least part of your loss.

Did a traveling companion get sick just before departing on a trip, causing you to cancel? Did the airline lose your bags, and only offer a paltry $500 in compensation? You might have been covered and not even known it.

It's the travel insurance you probably didn't know you have.

Of course, the details of that coverage are going to be buried in fine print, in documents you probably threw away when your card showed up in the mail. Not to worry – it's easy to go back and check because it's all online.

There are three main categories of air travel insurance included with credit cards, although not all cards offer all of them:

Trip interruption or delay

Your flight is interrupted or delayed after departure due to a "covered reason" -- typically one or more (but not always all) of the following: illness, injury, labor strikes, equipment failure or weather. Needless to say, no card covers all possible causes of a delay. If it's not in the "covered reasons" (for example, a crew showing up late for your flight or congestion-related air traffic control delays), you're on your own.

Trip cancellation (i.e., when you have to cancel a trip before departure)

You or a traveling companion or immediate family member (definitions of "immediate" vary widely) become ill or injured before departure and you need to cancel your plans. For example, your son breaks his leg a week before your trip and you have $4,000 in non-refundable trip arrangements, many credit cards cover that. But in all cases, pre-existing conditions are not covered.

Lost or delayed baggage

The airline loses your checked bag, someone steals something from your carry-on bag in flight, or your bag is not lost but merely delayed upon arrival. Different cards define a delay differently: for some it's just four hours, for another it might be 12 hours. And in almost all cases, lost bag coverage is in "excess" of whatever you collect from your airline or any other insurance you might have, such as homeowners insurance (although if your policy deductible is $1,500 and the loss is $1,000, you might not have to make a claim if you present your policy's declaration page to the credit card company's representative).

Even computers, cellphones and jewelry are covered by some credit cards, although for no more than $500 per incident. But at least it's something, and airlines don't cover these things at all.

Cards vary in their deadline for making a claim, so in some cases if you've had a recent loss but didn't know you had coverage, you may still have time to file a claim retroactively to your credit card issuer (some claims can be made a full year after the loss). However, some cards require that you pay the entire cost of your trip on the card to qualify for coverage, while others settle for just a portion of the trip. One card we checked, oddly, only pays for round-trip transportation, not one-way trips. Some cards cover trips of up to 30 days, another might cover up to 60.

This free coverage will never be as extensive as a policy you purchase separately from a company like Travel Guard or Access America, but neither is it something to ignore, and if you've had a recent loss you even might be able to file a claim retroactively.

Are you covered?

Airfarewatchdog looked in-depth at some favorite credit card brands and found some with extensive benefits and others with paltry ones, even though the annual fees tend to be similar. Here's a synopsis of what they will and won't do for you next time something goes bump in the flight, along with links to their official contracts:

American Express

Chase Sapphire card

Citibank Aadvantage Signature card

World MasterCard

Capital One Venture Rewards

United Explorer Visa Platinum card

Contributed by George Hobica,  the founder of Airfarewatchdog.com. Airfarewatchdog features the best airfares on thousands of routes verified by a team of expert fare analysts.

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