400K miles + 5 free nights from Madness, a new look at elite status from home, and more [Week in Review]

If you like the sound of getting 400,000 miles and 5 free nights, you’ll need to be a little nutty and check out posts about our Million Mile Madness below. Elsewhere on the blog this week, Greg compares earning elite status from home in two popular programs, the Cardless Qatar cards add an intriguing new benefit, and more.

This week on the Frequent Miler blog…

Miles & free hotel nights up for grabs in Frequent Miler’s Million Mile Madness 2024

Our Million Mile Madness 2024 got a little crazier yet this week: be identified as one of our three most helpful readers and you could walk away with 100,000 miles. Help the eventual Million Mile Madness champion and you’ve got a shot at at a haul of 400,000 miles and 5 free nights at any Hilton brand in the world. See this post for more about how you could pick up enough points and miles to treat yourself to a nice trip.

Million Mile Madness 2024 | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep278 | 10-25-24 | Podcast

On this week’s Frequent Miler on the Air, we discussed our Million Mile Madness challenge at length, including the basic framework, things we’ve learned over the past week, and progress updates. There was also a good bit of card news to discuss this week and all of our usual segments.

Things I’ve learned already from Million Mile Madness 2024 (On Nick’s mind)

My favorite thing about the challenges we run at Frequent Miler is the competitiveness. It’s not the winning or losing that I love, but the desire to win because it always leads us to pick up new tips and tricks as we try to outwit each other. I’ve already picked up some useful tidbits during my planning process so far and I wanted to share some of those things here before I forgot what I’ve learned (or forget to report it).

SAS EuroBonus Millionaire promo frequently asked questions [Million Mile Madness 2024]

Since launching our Million Mile Madness 2024 challenge, we’ve received a lot of questions about qualifying flights, how to find the right fare classes, whether you can book with miles, when you have to travel, and a lot more. This post answers the most frequently asked of those questions as best we can given the relative lack of clarity on some of these things.

Podcast: AA vs Alaska: Which miles are more valuable? | Coffee Break Ep30 | 10-22-24

Alaska Mileage Plan has made a resurgence over the past month thanks to putting the gas medal on the merger with Hawaiian and a number of interesting changes coming to the Alaska Mileage Plan program in 2025 (positive for some, negative for others). Is it now the better Oneworld currency to have, or does the long-standing value in American’s partner award chart make it the standard to beat?

Which program has the best game? Alaska vs. AA

In this post, Greg takes a really interesting look at the two most “gameable” loyalty programs (starting in 2025): Alaska Mileage Plan and American Airlines AAdvantage. While he determines (with sound math) that American Airlines is the better program for those looking to earn status from home, I think that the ability to earn EQMs from award tickets will make me significantly more interested in earning Alaska status. In fact, every redeemable mile earned that you’ll redeem for an award ticket during the membership year becomes a bit more valuable toward earning status than it appears on the surface. Of course, whether that matters depends highly on both the frequency with which you’ll be redeeming Alaska miles and the distances you’ll be covering, but I’m certainly more interested than ever before in flying far and wide using Alaska miles.

Chase partially tanks “pay partial” trip cancellation insurance

I’ve long put the taxes & fees for award flights on Chase credit cards for the travel protections. One of those protections that many people count on is trip cancellation insurance. In the past, you could get a trip covered just by putting the taxes & fees on your eligible Chase card (note of course that benefits vary by card). Moving forward, a partial payment isn’t going to cover what it used to. See the post for full details.

Waived surcharges – even on one-way tickets – with Cardless Qatar Card

The Cardless Qatar cards have added an interesting new feature: waived “award fees” on award tickets for travel on Qatar Airways. The catch is that you have to spend bigly on the card, but if you make one Qatar redemption per year, that will likely work out to be a reasonable return on spend — and if you make several, this could turn into a great deal.

Citi adds Preferred Hotels iPrefer at 1:4 ratio [new transfer partner]

There’s a new hotel transfer partner in town. While I made the point on the podcast that, em, i prefer to be able to book pure award stays and to be able to do it myself online, but I’m nonetheless glad to see Citi get a mitt and get in the game in terms of adding another partner to try to stay competitive with the bigger fish in the pond. This partnership isn’t as good as it sounds at 1:4, but neither is it bad for those looking for another boutique hotel program option.

How often do airline and hotel programs offer transfer bonuses?

Transfer bonuses can be a great way to get an even better deal on an award ticket. Some bonuses can look so good that you might reasonably wonder whether you’ll see such an offer again. This updated post looks at how often we’ve seen bonuses to specific programs over the past couple of years, which can be a great way to get a sense for the likelihood of seeing such a bonus return again in the future.

That’s it for this week at Frequent Miler. Keep an eye on this week’s month-ending last chance deals to be sure you catch October’s deals before they expire.

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