by George Hobica
Airfarewatchdog.com
In addition to making frequent flyer miles harder to spend, airlines are expiring miles, if there's no activity in your account, faster than ever.
But one easy and painless way to make sure there's activity in your account is to do some online shopping using the airlines' "shopping malls." Even if you spend just a few bucks, you'll keep your miles safe for at least another year. And in addition, you can add some serious miles to your account.
For example if Continental is offering four miles for every dollar spent with the Apple Store, one of their shopping partners and you buy a $2500 iMac computer, you get 10,000 miles. That's a huge bonus. And there are often bonus offers on top of the bonus miles. United might offer an additional 2,000 miles if you spend over a certain amount.
Generally, these online shopping partners offer at least one mile per dollar spent, but sometimes they award 10 miles or more. And if you use your airline affiliated credit card, you get an extra mile, but the credit card miles pale in comparison to the shopping miles you can earn.
Scores of well known retailers participate in these airline malls, including Brooks Brothers, Circuit City, The Container Store, Dell Computer, Drugstore.com, Sears, Target, and Walmart, to name but a few.
Keep in mind that although the airline shopping sites listed below work with many of the same retailers, American might be offering 4 miles with a particular retailer while Delta could be offering just half that, so you've got to shop around while you're shopping around.
Links to airline shopping malls
Airtran
American
British Airways
Continental
Delta
Hawaiian Airlines
Midwest Airlines
Spirit Airlines
United
US Airways
Virgin America
And you may also find these shopping sites useful:
Marriott Rewards
Amtrak
One note is, even tho I love flying on Spirit, it is difficult keeping any amount of miles with them since you have to keep earning at least 2,000 new miles every 6 months, otherwise they all expire. I could understand 2,000 miles every 18 months or something, but 6 months is too difficult to achieve [especially since I live in Chicago, not FLL, MYR, DTW, or ACY]. Even then, Spirit only credits 50% miles flown for nonrefundable economy tickets. The only real way to keep miles on Spirit is use their credit card.
@Matthew