Free Hilton Gold Status

Gary from ViewFromTheWing points out that the free Hilton Gold Status is still available. As I have pointed out many times before, free Hilton Gold Status gets you free internet and continental breakfast, and it is great to use for getting a status match to other hotels!

Link To Gary’s Post

Earning Miles On Reward Flights

Back in January, I helped book my parents 2 tickets to New York using their British Airway Avios that they had earned from Chase’s 100,000 British Airways promotion two years ago.

Although a lot of people complained about the changes to British Airway frequent flyer program, I personally have found it beneficial for domestic travel on American Airlines. Since British Airways frequent flyer program is now distance based, a flight to New York which is typically 25,000 reward miles, is now only 15,000 Avios with British Airways.

So for 30,000 Avios I booked two tickets for my parents to New York City and thought nothing of it.

They took their trip to New York City a couple weeks ago and as I was updating AwardWallet this week, I saw that my mother’s British Airway account had activity.

Her British Airways Credit Card had been closed for over a year, so there shouldn’t have been any activity.

I logged into her British Airways account to see what this mystery activity was and to my surprise, American Airlines credited her account for the reward flight to New York City.

I’ve never seen anything like that before so I thought it was a fluke. I logged into my father’s British Airways account and they had credited his account too!

Not only did both their accounts get credited with miles for the flight, they also both got Elite Qualifying Points!

I did a little research and it looks like this is a glitch in their system!

ViewFromTheWing and MillionMileSecrets both have earned miles on Premium award tickets when they booked American Airlines flights with their British Airways Avios!

Talk about an added perk!

I now kind of feel dumb for not including my British Airways number when my entire family went to Hawaii last December using Avios on American Airlines. All 4 of us could have each earned 8,400 Avios for the flight. Using British Airways household account feature to pool all those Avios together would have netted a cool 34,000 Avios FOR TAKING AN AWARD FLIGHT!!!!!

Looks like my mistake is your gain!

So next time you book any award flight, especially one on British Airways, be sure to include your reward number!

To do this:

• When booking your award flight on BritishAirways.com, just add in your BA frequent flyer number to your booking.
• If you have already booked your flight, then just log onto BA and see if you can add your BA number to your itinerary (MillionMileSecrets has screenshots on how to do this). If this is not possible, then call BA and have them manually add your BA number. Remember to add everyone’s BA number to their ticket, and not just yours!!
• As a fail safe, when you check in with American Airlines, make sure your BA number is included. If it isn’t, have them add it.

Has anyone else earned miles on award flights? Please share your experiences!

-Parag