How to Use Your Air Miles for a Car Rental
The travel industry really wants your business. To entice you to fly with them repeatedly, airlines offer air mileage programs. For each paid trip, you earn the amount of miles that were traveled with the airline. The miles are banked in an account and can be redeemed for airline tickets once you reach a pre-determined number, such as 20,000 miles. Many airlines also allow hotel stays and car rentals to be paid with air miles--even before the traveler has reached the magic number.
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Instructions
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Get the Most Out of Your Miles
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Ensure your airline mileage plan allows you to convert air miles to car rentals. If it is allowable, calculate your air miles.
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Airlines that allow conversion to car rentals, lodging or other travel services generally apply a dollar amount to each air mile. If you want your car rental completely paid for with air miles, make sure you have enough banked to cover the cost.
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When you book your car rental, provide the name that appears on your airline mileage plan account or card and the membership number.
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Keep your airline mileage membership number handy when you pick up your car in case the information did not carry over from the reservation.
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Tips & Warnings
Closely read your carrier’s mileage credit rules and conditions.
Airlines credit accounts within eight weeks of a qualifying trip.
Some airlines provide credit cards that keep track of miles and allow for quick and easy conversion to cash credit that can then be used to pay for car rentals.
A hot thing in travel is the bundling of rewards. That is, airline miles, credit card bonus dollars and other rewards program points can be bundled together as miles or funds to achieve maximum buying power. Investigate whether your chosen carrier and rental company allow this.
Check out your airlines partners. For example, Alaska Airlines partners with American, Delta and British Airways, among many others. That means Alaska will redeem your miles earned on flights with the partners. This extends to Alaska’s car rental partners, which are practically all the national brands.
Many airlines have partnership deals with select car rental agencies that only allow air miles to be converted with those companies.
It is generally required that the name of the person making the car rental reservation match the name on the airline mileage plan.
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