Questions and Answers

From Lucky’s trip reports this year, it seems like every trip has been in all business or first class. I was wondering when the last time he flew economy (or even premium economy) on a longhaul flight. I’m pretty new to the points/miles stuff, but it’s really surprising to me that he’d manage to avoid a single trip in longhaul economy, when even the best credit card signup bonuses seem to only give enough miles for a one-way longhaul business class ticket.

The same answer from any of the other OMAAT writers would be appreciated as well!

It’s been…awhile. But then the focus of the blog is reviewing premium products. He’s taken advantage of several good business class fares lately and as a premium member of frequent flyer programs he earns more than 100% of miles flown for every paid flight, which also includes positioning flights within the US. He also takes advantage of mileage sales to stock up for future flights.

For those of us who don’t fly all that often, some of us will generate points & miles via manufactured spend, which is the (slowly dying) practice of buying things (often gift cards) with points-earning cards and quickly converting those back to cash to pay off the credit card.

Well, how far is longhaul? We both end up in economy domestically fairly frequently, and those can be long and uncomfortable, but generally not interesting enough for other people to read.

Keep in mind that we pay for [I]a lot[/I] of travel as well — we both earn Executive Platinum on American each year, which requires ~100,000 miles worth of paid travel. We do most of that by purchasing discounted business class fares on partners, or buying cheap fares on American and using our systemwides to upgrade.

We earn more miles because of that flying, so have more to spend. We also buy miles when they represent a good value. Combined with credit card bonuses it ends up being a very good stockpile of miles.

I think this post by Ben illustrates his earning well: [URL]http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2015/01/21/earned-miles-2014/[/URL].

[USER=4]@Lucky[/USER] or [USER=7]@Tiffany[/USER] would you consider doing an update for 2016. It would be interesting to see an update and any changes.

I’d be interested to know Lucky’s strategy for 2017 with all the recent changes in award programs.

[USER=1566]@Gia[/USER] — We’d be interested to know our 2017 strategy ourselves! It’s complicated, for sure.

[USER=79]@Gaurav[/USER] — I would, but the past two years really haven’t been any different. Next year will be more interesting.

I’d like to see some long haul PEY reviews in 2017. Now that it is on AA it would be useful. But, maybe that is just Daniel’s thing