Frequent flier Friday: Early holiday gifts from Delta

Why spend money on plane tickets when you can take to the skies for free? Even if you only fly a few times a year, it's easier than you might think to travel at your airline's expense. This week, Delta has come out with a couple of offers that will end up saving me $85 - and will put my frequent flier account over the threshhold for the once-in-a-lifetime trip to South Africa I've been saving for. All I'll have to do is spend about $150.

Let me show you how this works. The first offer came through e-mail, offering a 10,000-mile bonus for flying any trip on Delta by the end of January. (This promotion appears to have been targeted to American Express cardholders, but seems to have been widely distributed.) That's an incredibly generous offer, considering that I could get the bonus just by flying to Cincinnati this weekend for $118, including all taxes and fees. For that trip alone, I'd earn 1,000 base miles, plus the 10,000-mile bonus, plus 1,000 miles for booking online: that is, 12,000 miles (or about halfway to a free domestic ticket) for $118. (When I go to Florida, I'll probably spend about $150, and earn about 13,400 miles.)

Gentle readers who aren't eligible for the 10,000-mile bonus could sign up for a SkyMiles American Express card instead. Delta's now offering a 10,000-mile enrollment bonus, plus the first year without an annual fee. So that same flight to Cincinnati, purchased on your new Amex, would earn you 12,236 miles (2,000 miles for flying that trip, and 236 miles for buying it. Psychological bills for spending the weekend in a red state will be priced separately). Then, take an hour of your day for a free consultation with an American Express Financial Advisor, and you'll get an additional 3,000 miles. (If anyone's done that, I'd love to know whether it was worthwhile.) So now you'll be over 15,000 miles, having flown Delta just once.

The last piece of the puzzle is Delta's new mileage transfer program. This allows you to shift between 5,000-10,000 miles to a friend's account, for $10 per thousand miles plus a $25 fee. That's a very good deal, compared to the cost of buying those miles. So if "Rob" (to make up a name) spends $125, "Brian" could give him 10,000 miles, putting him over the 25,000 miles he needs for a free ticket. And his total expenditure for that second ticket would be $243 - much less than the value of the miles if he uses them wisely.

I won't need to use mileage transfer to get my account over 120,000 - where it needs to be for that trip to Africa in Business Class. But I will surpass the threshhold with 13,000 miles for a flight to Florida, plus 3,000 miles for financial advice from Amex. Since I'll have met my mileage goal, I'll be able to cancel my Delta Amex, saving the $85 annual fee. Instead, I'll be hanging out on the beach, planning where to go on my next free trip. And when it comes time to order drinks, I'll be able to earn American miles with the MasterCard I'll start using for my everyday spending. That'll get me closer to yet another free ticket. And the cycle will continue. (Yes, frequent flier miles are like Prada shoes. Once you start, it's hard to stop.)

But piling up miles in your account isn't enough, of course. They're not worth anything unless you can actually turn them into a free ticket. So the other side of the frequent flier equation is how to maximize the value and the flexibility of those miles, given a limited number of seats available for award travel. With my Delta account for example, I could fly to Africa on South African Airways. And with your 25,000-mile balance - remember, you've just flown Delta once - you could take your next trip on Continental or Northwest. For free. Not a bad holiday gift! Just be sure to send Delta a thank-you note.