Air Miles - Use It Or Lose It

Most airline companies encourage you to apply for their mileage accounts by offering the chance to earn miles that can be redeemed for flights and many other rewards.

Generally your miles do not expire as long as your account remains active for a period of time. For accounts with no activity however, expiration times will vary but on average it is about 36 months.

United Airlines recently cut the expiration time of inactive account to 18 months, which is half of what it used to be before. While this may seem harsh, it is normal in the airline industry and Delta recently announced it would be cutting its expiration time from three years to two.

For loyal customers however, a reduction in the expiration time on air miles means you would face less competition when your redeem miles for flights due to dormant accounts expiring. It also means that the airlines would be spending less money maintaining accounts that people are not interested in keeping.

Instead the extra cash would go towards taking care of you, the loyal customer, by improving the rewards options available to you. This is evidenced by United offering five new ways to redeem miles that include air travel and hotel stays, anytime, anywhere just to name a few.

If you have a United Airline mileage account and have not used in since 1st July 2006, your miles would expire at the end of 2007, if you do not use your account by then. From the 1st of July 2006 any inactive accounts would be closed within eighteen months from the date of the last transaction.

There is no reason for alarm however, there are numerous ways to reactivate your account and it does not necessarily mean booking a flight although this is a good option if you are interested in flying. Other ways to reactivate your card include donating funds to your favourite charity, or apply for an airline credit or debit card and use it to purchase your every day goods and services.

United allows you to earn two miles for every dollar you spend on United purchases or one mile per dollar on all other purchases. If you don't get around to flying very often which is probably the reason why your account went dormant, then you can choose other rewards to redeem your miles, rewards range from newspaper delivery to restaurant certificates.

If you think you will not use your miles account in the future, you can transfer your miles to someone who flies often.

The purpose of the Airline rewards programme is to get you to purchase flights or everyday items and then redeem your miles and enjoy the services offered by the airline company.

They want to build a commercial relationship with you so that they can continue to adjust their rewards program to provide more of what you want. When no activity is shown on the miles account, this indicates to them that you do not want or need their service.

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