Free Travel 102

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Following last Monday's Free Travel 101 with an "exciting" syllabus full of accumulation and redemption strategies, we graduate to Free Travel 102!

Stopovers If booking a trip through air mile redemption, what airlines don't tell you is you can make one stopover for free. The Catch? It has to be along the continuous line toward your destination. For example, if you're flying to London from Vancouver you could stop over in Montreal for a few days, whereas you couldn't stop in Brazil---that's a little off-course. Two trips in one, bonus!

Loopholes Check out your preferred carrier's mileage reward chart to find discount seasons or low mileage business class upgrades. For example:

• With Cathay Pacific, 50,000 air miles gets you business class from Vancouver to NYC---an overnight flight you'll *want* the option of lying flat.
• American Airlines includes the Caribbean in its domestic mileage allotment during part of hurricane season {sept 15 - nov 15}. 25,000 points to the Caribbean is a travel steal, given it 'costs' approx 40,000 - 60,000 miles to get there the rest of the year. Note, the ABC islands are outside the hurricane belt.

Who Else The beauty of airline alliances means {read: most airlines are part of a major alliance} that you don't have to apply your miles to the airline you've used to collect your miles. Using Alaska Airlines as an example, use your Alaska miles on Cathay Pacific and a host of other airlines.

Conversion Finally, maximize your air miles by converting your travel credit card reward points into miles. Warning: this method comes down to math! Most cards have at least one affiliated airline mileage program for conversion of points into miles. For example, TD Visa Travel Rewards Infinite allows you to convert 100,000 credit card points into 25,000 American Airlines AA Advantage miles. If left unconverted, these miles are worth $500 of travel. If you can find a flight that costs more than $500 {before taxes, since you'll still have pay them on a reward ticket} but only requires 25,000 miles, then you're ahead.

Related Free Travel 101 Going The Distance With Your Air Miles

[photo taken by @tripstyler in the Whitsunday Islands]

Free Travel 101

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{Editor's Note: Happy Halloween. Don't miss our 2011 round-up of the best jetset costumes!}

If you're a fan of free travel---and I don't know anyone isn't---following last month's Going The Distance With Your Air Miles, we're doing a two-part series about free travel. I know, it's a h-o-r-r-i-b-l-y cheesy title. Maybe we should have called it gratuit travel instead? French makes everything sound better!

Today we look at strategy and accumulation techniques used by free travel fanatics, and on Wednesday at exchanging air miles/travel points and too-good-to-be-true mileage redemption reward chart loopholes.

{Note: Three years ago I started getting serious about travel rewards points and air miles accumulation. Since then I've taken a ton of 'free' trips redeeming my Visa's travel rewards points as well as my air miles {from airlines}. Case in point, I'm currently in Curacao (hotel pictured above) because I redeemed my American Airlines miles to fly from Vancouver to Aruba (Curacao is 50 miles east). More on Curacao later this month.}

Be Strategic If you're strategic about air mile and travel rewards credit card points accumulation, you'll travel for free. Period. For example, if you put the vast majority of your spending on your travel rewards credit card, how much and how frequently you spend will determine whether the free trip is local weekend escape, or Tahitian getaway.

Concentrate Applying the same strategy to flying and the air miles gathered at 35,000ft, savvy travelers try to choose one {or two at most} airline alliances to focus their mile accumulation. You'll amass miles quickly if you're loyal to one carrier/alliance. If you always fly different carriers, it'll take years to accumulate enough miles to redeem a 'free' flight.

Accumulate The best way to start accumulating is to determine a} the airline you fly with most and/or b} your home airport's major airline, then always look to them first when flying. It's incredible how much faster you can redeem miles for a free flight when you concentrate your dollars and loyalty to one airline {and its alliance}. Unless you book a super-saver seat not eligible for air miles, most airlines will issue air miles {usually one air mile per 'mile' traveled}. The catch? You must sign-up for their loyalty program and add your loyalty number to all bookings for mile accumulation! Note that no-frills carriers like Allegiant do not issue air miles.

[photo credit: Kura Hulanda Hotel, Curacao]