How to Earn Free Flights with points: save 1000’s $$$
Free Flights you say? with reward miles? yes you can. How do I know? I’ve been flying back and forth to Europe (and one epic trip to St. Lucia) for free for the last several years!
In just 5 short years, I’ve earned enough miles to fly to Europe, during high season, TEN (10) times!!!!
Do you need me to repeat that? That’s TEN free international flights in 5 years! Do I have your attention yet??? and guess what, that’s my account! My husband has earned almost as many free flights!
Read this article to find out how you can earn free flights!
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We use American Airlines loyalty program. Each airline has its own loyalty program. If American isn’t your preferred airline, I would urge you to read through this, familiarize yourself with the way this works, and then check with your preferred airline to see what comparable benefits they may offer.
American Airlines
I’ve checked from time to time and I haven’t really found any airlines that are comparable to American Airlines when it comes what you get for our points. I’ve checked Delta and United and it seems that both require more points for a flight but don’t take my word for it, check for yourself!
Table of Contents
Here’s how we earn points for Free Flights
Here are 6 ways you can earn points so you can fly for free:
Earn points, option 1: sign up for a loyalty program, and earn miles when you fly.
Airline will give you miles or points just for flying with them. You’ll need an account to start accumulating miles. Here’s a link to American Airlines Advantage Program. As a member, you’ll earn miles every time you fly. We don’t fly frequently, so we look to other ways to earn points.
Earn Points Option 2: Book Travel through your Airline website
I moved this one up on this list because I’ve been earning some crazy miles by booking my hotels on the American Airlines website!
You could earn several thousand miles for a single night! Put it on your partner credit card and you’ll earn even more!
Earn points option 3: Earn points on purchases through a Shopping Portal
You can seriously multiply points through American Airline’s shopping portal. We have earned almost 25,000 miles in the last year, by shopping through the portal alone.
How the shopping portal works
American partners with different stores, and you are then rewarded for purchases. It isn’t uncommon for stores to run point reward specials of upwards of 10 points per dollar!!!!! In addition to points, they often have coupon codes available.
You can either shop through the portal site, or add their eshopping button to your browser. If you have the browser button, you will automatically be informed about available points and coupons when you open a partner site in your browser. You can explore the program here: American Airlines Shopping Portal.
- Shop the portal first. If I need dog food, I purchase from Petco or Chewy through the portal. Auto parts? same thing…anything I can buy online through the portal, I do. Christmas shopping last year felt a little like playing the slots at the casino. I could hear the “ding ding ding,” as points were racking up fast and furious!
Earn points option 4: Use partner credit cards to accumulate points on everyday purchases, and for paying your bills!
My husband I each signed up for the American Airlines Citi Card. Here are American’s current card offers where you can compare cards and submit an application.
Check with your airline to find out which cards they partner with.
Most sign up bonuses offer somewhere around 50,000 bonus miles. You can usually get a round trip flight from the United States to Europe for around 60,000 miles but sometimes less!
After meeting Citi Card’s enrollment terms and conditions, (you may need to make a certain amount of purchases on the card in a certain period of time but sometimes it’s just a single purchase, for instance buying a cup of coffee will get you a free trip to Europe! ) It’s that easy.
I use this card to pay every single bill we have. If they accept a card as payment, I use it. Everything goes on the card, from food to entertainment, and everything in between. If I buy so much as a pack of gum, I use my card.
We then pay our cards off at the end of each month. I know a lot of people don’t like to use credit cards (SMART!) but you don’t have to carry a balance. We don’t pay any interest, because we pay the balance monthly.
Card benefits:
- Baggage fees: When you pay for your flight with an American Airlines partner card, you get your first checked bag for free. That’s $35 per flight (online charge), so $70 if you are flying round trip. That almost pays for the yearly membership fee right there!
- Earn a $125 American Airlines Flight Discount after you spend at least $20,000 in purchases during your card membership year, and renew your card. (Not that hard to do if you are paying all of your bills and literally everything with the card!)
- MAJOR PERK FOR INTERNATIONAL TRAVELERS: No foreign transaction fees on purchases!!!!
Travel Perks
When we first signed up for these cards they had lots of great travel perks (travel insurance type perks) but they have since gotten rid of them. I keep the card just for the points earning potential but I also have a Chase Preferred Credit card that does include all of those perks, including rental car insurance! I also purchase travel insurance policies from Travelinsurance.com. An important step if you want to protect yourself and your trip from the unknown!
Earn points option 5: Get a second (or a third!) card.
We each signed up for a Barclay card, who partners with American Airlines, as well. After meeting their terms, we were awarded another 50,000 points each.
We kept those cards for a year, and then canceled them. Since we already have one card that charges a yearly membership fee, the benefits of keeping a second card were outweighed by the $99 per year membership fee. I am not recommending you do this, but if you have very good credit like we do, you might consider it.
I applied for a 3rd card!
My sister-in-law message to let me know that American Airlines Citi Card was offering 70,000 bonus points for applying for a new card. The terms: one purchase over 2? months, and they waived the membership fee for the first year. AWESOME! but I already have this card 😒😒😒
She told me to try applying anyway and I did…they gave me a second card! So with almost no hassle, I earned another round trip flight to Europe!
How does this effect my credit?
Signing up for multiple credit cards can effect your credit. Because I pay off my card balances monthly I have an exceptional credit rating. I also space out my card applications over months or even years. I wouldn’t recommend applying for 2 or 3 cards at one time. You an read more on this subject at Experian.
Earn points option 6: Register with Simply Miles from American Airlines
While researching this article, I found a new way to earn miles! When you register a Mastercard with Simply Miles you earn more points with your purchases. How it works.
- Register your card.
- Search through current offers
- Activate the offer
- Complete the purchase, earn more miles!
Other benefits of using miles:
Use your local airport instead of having to drive or fly to a major airport hub.
If you live very far from a major airport, like we do, using points can save you hundreds of dollars. For example: An international flight from our local airport to Frankfort Germany, would run us $1451. To fly to Frankfurt from Chicago is only $602, a significant difference.
Here is where your points come in. A flight from Chicago to Frankfort? 30,000 points, a flight from our local airport to Frankfort? 30,000 points, same points no added “expense!”
(Google Flights is my absolute favorite place to compare prices. When you find the best option for you, go book direct with the airline.)
Book one-way flights without having to take out a mortgage on your home!
One way flights can be ridiculously expensive. Say I want to fly to Frankfort, pick up a car, make my way to Paris, and then fly home from there. A one-way flight from my airport to Frankfort Germany, $772. A Flight from Paris to my airport: best price: 1,500. So total $2,272 OUCH.
BUT if you book the same trip with miles: 30,000 points from our airport to Frankfort, 30,000 points from Paris back home. No additional “cost!”
Total for this trip: $2,272, OR fly for free? Hummm, tough decision? Not for me!
Last year, we flew from our local airport to Edinburgh Scotland, then from Edinburgh to Dublin, and then flew home from Dublin FOR FREE and saved thousands of dollars!
Here’s us enjoying our trip even more, because we saved thousands on airfare.
Top: Dingle Peninsula, Middle: 400 year old tavern, 1,500 year old chair Bottom: afternoon tea in York, Loch Ness
How many points does it take to book a trip?
When we first started booking through AA with miles they had a set point schedule. 30,000 to Europe one way in high season, 22,000? in the off season. Well AA has since went to dynamic points pricing. Now you may pay more than this, or you may pay less. It literally depends on what day you are doing your search. This is why I always lock something in and then keep checking back on “prices” later.
rebook whenever points go down
One of the benefits I love of booking with points is that if your plans change, or points for your flight go down you can cancel and rebook in just a few seconds!
I do this often. Whenever I have a trip booked I like to recheck to see how much points they want for my flight and if it goes down I just rebook for lesser points and then cancel my old booking!
Also good to know about airline points:
- Points can be used on things besides airfare: hotel, rental car, etc. However, I find that the airfare is the best use of the miles.
- Miles can, of course, be used for flights in, and around, the United States. However, I find that I get the biggest bang for my buck using them on those costly international flights.
- Important to know when booking flights with points through American: American partners with other airlines, like British Airways, in order to increase your flight options. For flights to Europe, they partner with British Airways. There is a significant difference in the amount of taxes and fee’s you will be required to pay when booking with points. The last time I checked a flight, fees for booking an American flight to Europe: $5.90. Fees for booking a British Airways flight: $195! (and those are per “way.” You’ll be booking your trip in one way segments, making it easy for you to fly into Frankfurt, and out of Paris!
conclusion
Next year, we are hoping to take all four of our adult children to France and England. We have accumulated enough points to fly us all, that’s six people, FOR FREE!
When traveling internationally, airfare is a big chunk of your expense. If you can get there for free, it becomes much more affordable. I’ve given you some tools. Now get out there, start earning miles, go out and see the world, and let the airline foot the bill!!!
Additional Reading
Here are my tips for planning travel: Planning your dream vacation, where to start.
