How to Prevent Your Frequent Flyer Miles from Expiring

budget adventure travel, family adventure vacation

Many years ago, a car dealer I knew told me the story about a young woman who wanted her money back on a car she bought that had blown an engine about six months after she drove off the dealer's lot.

It turned out she had never added oil to her car in all the time she had owned it, but still considered the matter to be the dealership's fault. Her reason? No one had told her she needed to put oil in her car.

There are some things in this we are all expected to know (like the fact that a car needs oil), and the world has very little sympathy for us if we do not.

An example of this is: Frequent Flyer Miles expire after a certain length of time if you do not keep your account active.

I have recently talked to a surprising number of people who are shocked and appalled that their miles have expired and the airline will not give them back. Some of these people had been "banking" these miles like an airfare nest egg for that future day when they might want to go someplace.

Yet every airline has a mileage expiration policy. They provide these programs free of charge, even though there has to be a large cost to administer them. They do so to dangle out an incintive for people to travel on paid tickets with the promise that they will in the end receive a free ticket.

So please, if you are enrolled in a frequent flyer program, find out what the airline's expiration policy is and when your miles are due to expire if you don't have any more activity in your account.

While I was doing some online research for this article, I ran across another article by Erica Silverstein in smartertravel.com called, How to prevent your miles from expiring.

She provides a lot of excellent information you should know about, so be sure to read what she has to say. But let me also add one point. Since Erica wrote this article in September 2005, American Airlines has extended their buy back program for expired miles until June 2006. To my knowledge, this is still the only program offered by any airline to get your miles back once they have expired.

COPYRIGHT (C)2006, Charles Brown. All rights reserved.

budget adventure travel, family adventure vacation