Gettin Somethin' for Nothin'

I'm not sure why I haven't played a bigger part in this before now, but I've recently done what many pilots have been doing within the company for a long time.

Rewards programs.

We frequent hotels on a weekly basis and many of these hotels we stay in have some sort of rewards programs. Many of them can be set up to earn you flat out Aeroplan miles at the same time. Now while in the past I've shunned the idea of signing up for these miniscule little programs, I'm now seeing the errors in my ways when I hear of pilots getting huge gift cards or even flights off of the rewards programs.

Our company foots the bill for all of our hotels and they have no interest in these rewards programs, so us pilots when checking in simply give the front desk our program account number (The blackberry is very handy for holding all sorts of information just like this) and then it gets entered into their system and we are credited the points for the stay. I know of one pilot that has 15 different rewards programs in current use - crazy!

I've decided to just go for the main 2, plus an extra one that's going to add up big time for me in the very near future.

Best Western's Gold Crown Club program is a very common one, as we stay there quite often. They offer 250 Aeroplan miles per stay. Not too shabby, because these add up over time quite quickly.

Trip Rewards is a very large program that is shared by many hotels that we frequent (Travelodge, Days Inn, Super 8, Wingate, Ramada, Howard Johnson.. etc).

And finally I've signed up for Hilton Honors which is for obviously Hilton's and their counterparts like Embassy Suites (which is where I'll be staying while in Dallas for 20 nights).

So for the 20 nights in Dallas I will earn 25,000 Hilton Honor points PLUS 2,500 Aeroplan miles. That's nothing to snub a nose at! And considering in the past few months I've been spending more than 10, sometimes 15 nights in hotels, it won't take long to start racking them up.

I also have a fuel rewards program that is from a US based program that gives points whenever you fill up with an associated fuelling company. There are a few airports that we go to all the time in the states where these points can quickly add up (Scottsdale AZ, Palm Springs CA, Spokane WA and many many more). Every 5000 points and I get a cheque in the mail for $50. Once I start flying the jet, simply 2 stops in Scottsdale will put me at 6000 points, so I'm looking forward to some extra spending cash.

All of these programs should net me somewhere in the vicinity of $500 worth of free stuff per year at the bare minimum. So.. not too bad for having to do nothing at all.