Latinos With Passports

A beginner’s guide to earning maximum miles for your favorite airline.

Bienvenidos to our first Miles Strategy Sabado, where we will talk about the many different ways there are to earning and using your miles. Today, we will focus on earning miles to one airline only, using Alaska Airlines as our example.

Why Earn Miles to One Airline? There are plenty of reasons to have a One-Airline Only miles strategy. You might live in a city that is the hub of an airline and you fly with them often. Maybe you don’t care to have loyalty with one hotel brand and want to earn airline miles instead. Maybe you don’t live in that airline’s major hub but you want to earn those miles to redeem for international business/first class flights. Any or all of these reasons son buenas to play with this strategy.

Five Beginner Ways to Earn Miles for One Airline: Using Alaska Airlines as our example, here is a beginner’s list of how you would earn miles for one airline (of course, we do not encourage you to increase your spending for the sake of earning more miles. Always earn responsibly!):
1. Get the Airline’s Credit Card: The idea is to earn miles with one airline, NOT transferrable miles. Que significa eso? You will not be going for credit cards like Capital One Venture, Chase Sapphire Preferred, or Amex Gold. Instead, you are going to sign up for the airline’s credit card. Although the majority of these cards are not the best-earning credit cards, you are earning miles for that airline, and you will use your credit card with the airline’s shopping and dining portals to improve the miles you earn per dollar spent (more on that later).
2. Fly with the Airline and/or it’s Partners: Pretty obvious, but the more you fly with one airline, the more miles you will earn. Alaska Airlines is the only airline in the US that awards miles per mile flown rather than the amount you spent on the ticket (we hope this continues as they integrate with the OneWorld Alliance). If you are flying abroad, or your favorite airline doesn’t fly to/from your city, no worries! Fly with a partner airline and credit your miles to your preferred airline.
3. Use the Airline’s Shopping and Dining Portals: Ditch Amazon and shopping in-store. Instead, move your shopping online by using your favorite airlines’ shopping portal. Porque? The Alaska Airlines Bank of America credit card only earns 1x miles on non-Alaska Airlines spending. Using a shopping portal will allow you to earn 3, 6, 10, or more miles per dollar you spend on stores such as Apple, Macy’s, Nike, and Sephora, on top of the 1x miles you earn using the Alaska credit card. The same applies when using your airline’s dining portal. Again, the Alaska Airlines Bank of America credit card only earns 1x miles on dining spend. Using the dining portal will allow you to earn more miles per dollar spend at select restaurants in your area. Plus, you help support local businesses.
4. Share your Opinions through their Survey Portals: Everyone has 15 minutes to complete a survey or two. Will you earn loads of miles? No. Pero 25-100 miles every day will build your miles nicely. Plus, completing a survey does not require you to spend any money. Look at it this way: earning 30 Alaska miles through surveys is equivalent to spending $10 or $30 on your Alaska credit card. Alaska Airlines’ survey portal is called The Opinion Terminal.
5. Use the Airline’s Hotel and Car Rental Partners: Chances are, you will be staying at a hotel and maybe needing to rent a car. You can still earn airline miles doing both! Alaska Airlines has both a car rental and hotel portal, where you can book your car or room and earn Alaska miles in the process. Use your Alaska Airlines credit card to stack the earning further like you would on the dining and shopping portals. Booking through these portals means you are not earning points/status with the car rental company or hotel loyalty program.

There are more advanced methods to gain more miles, pero por ahora, these will help you get started. If you have questions about any of the tips above, leave them in the comments below! Share this post with your friends, and as always visit us on our Instagram @LatinosWithPassports!

Vamos viajando. The world needs to see us!