Even if you’re travelling with a school or organization, you can often collect frequent flier miles for your trip. If you’ve never gotten frequent flier miles, you’ll have to open an account with your airline or one of its partners. Make sure you do this before you leave - airlines won’t give you miles for trips that happened before you opened your account.

Most airlines in the United States have partnerships with other airlines. The largest airlines are members of worldwide airline alliances - Skyteam, Star Alliance, or Oneworld.

  • Skyteam: Continental, Delta and Northwest. Delta and Northwest have announced a proposed merger. Continental has announced a partnership with United and plans to leave Skyteam to join the Star Alliance.
  • Star Alliance: United and US Airways. See above note re: Continental.
  • Oneworld: American Airlines.

There are also a number of international carriers in each of the three alliances - click on the alliance names for more information.

If you have a frequent flier account with one airline, you don’t really need accounts with any of its partners – miles can be gathered and spent all in one place. Each airline has different requirements for redeeming miles for free travel; the large carriers are typically 25,000 miles for a space-available domestic roundtrip ticket.

If you don’t have a frequent flier account, it’s easy to set one up - here’s some links for your convenience.


*You can earn Mileage Plan miles with American, Alaska, Continental, Delta, and Northwest.
**United has a special program for college students: United College Plus.