how does the airlines determine sky miles. usually, how many do you have to have before you can fly for free?

Question

example if you wanted to fly to a 1500 mile destination. approximately how many miles would you have to have?

Answer 1

The airlines determine mileage from GPS as well as geographical data. Here's a site to help you figure out the air mileage between two points: http://www.usatoday.com/travel/flights/miles/calculator.htm

As for how many miles you need before you fly; that will depend on the airline that you fly with and their frequent flyer rules. Each major airline has some type of frequent flyer program with different ways to earn miles. Usually for every mile that you fly, you get one mile. There are different levels of frequent flyers, so the more that you fly, the more benefits you will get to include bonus miles. Once you start to accumulate miles, you can use those miles to fly for free. The region that you will be flying to, determines how many miles you will need to use to get the tickets as do other restrictions. I would check some of these major airlines frequent flyer clubs for more info:

United:
http://www.united.com/page/middlepage/0,6823,1136,00.html

American:
http://www.aa.com/content/AAdvantage/programDetails/main.jhtml

Continental:
http://www.continental.com/onepass/enroll/overview.asp

Northwest:
http://www.nwa.com/worldperks/

Answer 2

neeed at least 25,000 on some..40,000 on others