For years, Premier members of the Mileage Plus program have received "500-mile" coupons...that upgraded your North American flights from coach to first class. ...If you couldn't use your 500-milers, they'd expire after one year, but all was not lost: They converted to 500 redeemable frequent flyer miles in your account.

...In another "enhancement" of the Mileage Plus program, 500-milers won't convert to frequent flyer miles upon expiration anymore. They'll just expire worthless if you don't cash them in.

United Airlines nickel-and-dimes elites, devalues Mileage Plus even further [Upgrade: Travel Better]
(Photo: Maulleigh)

But I guess our six bullet points weren't enough for him. Manic completionist that he is, he's updated his own site with no less than 8 addendums tips, tricks and points. For example, the downside of the 331 Day Rule:

Let's say you call 11 months before your desired departure day, and you snag seats for the outbound. Unless you're coming back the same day, your return ticket won't be available for booking yet. Again, this is where the hold function is useful.

If you combine our How-To with Mark's footnotes, the only free ticket you won't be able to attain will be one from Xanadu to Zembla.

Using your frequent flyer miles: A followup to the Consumerist [Upgrade Travel]

You're broke. Your woman has left you. But bigger than your heap o' troubles is a pile of Frequent Flyer miles, sitting in neat, invisible little stacks, to be exchanged for a trip to Hong Kong, Amsterdam or any other far-flung clime with easily accessible and cheap companions.

But with Frequent Flyer programs becoming increasingly impenetrable; with free tickets being harder and harder to come by; with airlines increasingly trying to parlay free ticket requests to be used for hotels and restaurants... how can you guarantee a posh seat on a free jumbo jet?

For your perusal, a six point How-To on securing a coveted free ticket. It's not fool proof. You might have to steel your gaze and bluff; you may very well have to adamantiumize your sack. But this'll get you as close to a free ticket as we can get you.

1) Remember the 331st Day Rule. When trying to exchange your Frequent Flyer miles for a free ticket, the inner-most junta of savvy travelers darkly murmur of the infamous 331st Day Rule.

What is the 331st Day Rule? Essentially, that you will be most likely to get one of the small numbers of Frequent Flyer seats on a flight on the first day bookings are available, which is generally 331 days before the flight you want. This is completely arbitrary, except that it appears to be a loose industry standard for the furthest day out possible that you can realistically book a ticket.

2) Do your research. Need we say that, whether you are turning in thick wads of your own cash or the ephemeral, easily deflated currency of Frequent Flyer points, a responsible consumer does their homework?

Your first step when trying to find that juicy, much coveted Frequent Flyer seat is the same as if you were buying it flat-out: do an Internet search for tickets. Check fare aggregators like Kayak, Farechase, Mobissimo, whatever you prefer. (For a great review of the usability of these sites, click here). Find all the flights that are within your airlines' Frequent Flyers partner program. Print them out. Keep them on hand.

3) Now pick up the phone. According to Better Living Through Miles, "When you do a free-ticket search on the web, most airline websites will only search their own, most-direct flights, and not their partners' inventory or quirkier connections. If you use the phone, the agent can manually search a number of alternatives, such as partner airlines, alternate connecting cities, "open jaw" itineraries, and flights with free stopovers."

While you'll have to pay an extra $10 or $15 for the service of talking to a human, an agent will be able to search a larger variety of connection options for you than a website can. You remember that list of possible flights you printed out? If the agent comes up with nothing, don't be afraid to rattle off flight numbers... Better Living Through Miles knows from personal experiences that some agents slack, and can be jarred by a knowledgeable consumer.

If you can't get a ticket even 331 days out, you've got three options left.

4) Book any free ticket you can get, then reschedule. It's that simple. You may have to pay a $50 or $100 rescheduling free but if you're scheduling an expensive trip, that's as close to free as you can get.

5) The four week rule. Was Number Four too risky for you? The Frequent Flyer Junta have another rule, in secondary importance: four weeks before your flight is a good time to try to book a free ticket. Cancellations and reschedules happen. Furthermore, airlines usually open up their inventory as flight date approaches.

6) Just show up. This is another variation on Number Four, but if you book any old free ticket to the cities you want to travel to, then show up on the day of the flight and ask to be put on the plane. Again, you'll be $50 or $100 shorter, but it worked for John Ewolt of the Star-Tribune.

And that's all the advice we can give. Like most of life, it's largely a crap shoot... the trick is in knowing when to roll.

(Much, much thanks to Better Living Through Miles, whom is knowledgeable about the ins-and-outs of the consumer end of the airline industry almost to the point of sickness. He is an absurdly helpful and informative cat, and we can't thank him enough for his help. Read his blog, click on his Google Ads, buy him dinner!)

When checking the status of his Continental Frequent Flyer miles, Upgrade Travel discovered that he had been subjugated to a cattle car with the rest of Continental's social refuse, a tattoo brand of 'Non-Elite' scrawled across the skin of his metaphorical forearm.

Rejected terminology for Continental Airlines' base level Frequent Flyers?

Pleb
Riff-raff
Reject
Hose beast

And that's just to get you rolling. Come up with your own!

Continental Wants You To Know Your Place

The Washington Post has a look up at the Frequent Flyer mile wheeler and dealers who are totally gaming the system. Like Ann Scharpf of Maryland, who will buy $5000 worth of groceries for her and every single person she knows, then pay it all back in the same month for a free trip to St. Petersburg.

Of course, even the Washington Post can't ignore the absurdity of people going through so much bother to get Frequent Flyer miles at a time when it's almost impossible to turn them in. What they don't say is that it's largely because of people like this that it's almost impossible to redeem them. Not that we're criticizing — hey, they're working the system, and we admire them for that. Just keep that in mind next-time you get frustrated that you have to spend four hours trying to redeem a free flight to Papua New Guinea from that Porsche you convinced Nick Denton to reimburse you for.

Shop Till You Fly [Washington Post]

But there's some other interesting statistics in the sidebar about frequent flyer programs, one of which we (like Upgrade Travel before us) thought worth highlighting.

• If travelers converted all their miles into free travel simultaneously, airlines would be liable for 27 million free trips.

The mind boggles. Twenty seven million free trips are owed to consumers right now, yet airlines are making it harder than ever before to get just one of those. Talk about an industry stretching itself thin as a wafer.

Frequent fliers turn a skeptical eye to the skies [USA Today]

Apparently, it has become markedly more difficult to trade your Frequent Flyer miles in for free seats. Not only do the airlines claim that they can't spare the seats anymore due to demand from paying passengers and soaring fuel costs, but they have doubled the amount of miles required to secure a free ticket.

They have some tips on how to still cash-in your Frequent Flyer miles successfully, although these tips seem to be less on how to get the airlines to give you a seat and more on how to successfully rout your trip months in advance through Buttfuck, Nowhere.

This is something we've been considering a lot lately: consumers expect cheap airfare, yet airlines can't seem to turn a profit despite the fact that there are more people flying than ever before. In this case, airlines are crunching down on the perks they grant to loyal, repeat customers to make ends meet. Does anyone have any thoughts on alternative ways airlines could increase their profitability while not screwing over customers? We'd be interested in hearing them.

Frequent Flyers Face Frustration [Consumer Affairs]