Infrequent flier? 3 ways to get free travel

Getting a free flight on some airlines can be tough, particularly if you’re not an elite frequent flier racking up 25,000 or more miles a year. Elites tend to get to the front of the line when free seats or upgrades are available; everybody else has to pick up the crumbs.

If you’re a more casual traveler, you need to refine your game plan. You need to:

Pick the right airline. A recent study by IdeaWorks and EZRez Software underscored what many travelers already knew—some airlines are seriously stingy when it comes to giving out free seats.

IdeaWorks made 6,160 booking queries at the websites of 22 frequent flier programs during February and March 2010 to test the availability of free flights. US Airways was the worst, fulfilling just 11% of the requests for a free seat using standard mileage levels. Delta was the second stingiest, fulfilling just 13% of requests.

Southwest had the best fulfillment rate, at 99%. Among the legacy carriers, Continental came in at 71%, United at 69% and American at 58%. Alaska was the best of the regional carriers, with a 75% fulfillment rate.

JetBlue, one of my favorite airlines, unfortunately wasn’t part of this survey. But its TrueBlue program, like Southwest’s RapidRewards, allows you to accumulate miles for free seats pretty quickly.

Forget air miles. Go for hotel rewards. Many travelers are better off paying cash for their airline seats and letting frequent traveler points pay for their hotels.

Hotel programs tend to have few (if any) blackout dates, copious availability and often a better rate of “return” on your points. We recently returned from a week’s stay at a Hawaiian resort, paid for with hotel rewards points. The redemption rate was close to 4 cents a point, compare to the 1 or 2 cents you typically get redeeming frequent flier miles for airline seats.

You can speed your way to free nights by using a hotel-branded credit card so your purchases help build your rewards points. Just make sure to pay your balance in full every month; it’s foolish to pay interest rates that vastly exceed the value of your rewards.

You’ll still want to sign up for airlines’ frequent flier programs—no sense letting those miles go to waste—but if you’re an infrequent traveler you’re likely to get more bang for your buck with hotel programs.

Convert your orphaned miles. The fastest way to free travel is to concentrate your business with one airline (and its partners) or one hotel chain. But many people build up points in a variety of different programs, where they’re at risk of expiring unused.

If you don’t have quite enough miles to swing a free ticket, you may be able to buy the extra points you need. Or you can transfer them to another frequent traveler program. The Mileage Converter at Webflyer shows you the many ways this can be done.

Let’s say I have 20,000 miles with Delta. The Mileage Converter tells me I can’t transfer points out of the program, but I could transfer in points from other programs. If I have 20,000 miles at American, for example, I could transfer them to the Diners Club reward program at a 2-for-1 ratio and then transfer the resulting 10,000 points to my Delta account.

Some conversions are more generous than others. I have about 15,000 points marooned at Continental, for example—not enough for a free ticket. Those miles transfer directly, at a one-to-one ratio, to the Amtrak Guest Rewards program, and are enough to score a free roomette. That works out to a redemption rate of about 3 cents per point. Sweet.