How to Earn Airline Miles Without a Credit Card: A Simple Guide

Raise your hand if you wanna start earning air miles.

And now raise your other hand if you feel like you’ll never be able to, because how can you even earn airline miles without a credit card??

Do you have both hands up?

Okay, that means two things:

1. This post is perfect for you. It’ll tell you exactly what you want to know.
2. You look like a numpty with those hands up, so put them down before someone else sees you. 😝 You’ll need them down anyway, to read this post and start earning air miles (yes, you can make a start on it today, even if you aren’t flying anywhere!)

This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please read our Disclaimer.

Here’s a little bit about our journey, if you are new here! If you know us, feel free to skip this part.

After leaving our old life in Scotland in March 2022 (it rains too much there), we travelled full-time for almost 2 years. Sounds fancy, doesn’t it? Well, it was. If you think that carrying overpacked backpacks in 45°C heat around streets that aren’t even on Google Maps is fancy. And that’s just 1% of all the fun we had! 😆

During the 2 years we volunteered in Italy and Bulgaria (free travel while learning new skills, anyone?), explored other amazing European countries and backpacked Southeast Asia. Btw, even our secret wedding was more of an expedition than a wedding. 😅

And, of course, we researched and planned everything ourselves, because you gotta keep the budget low, right? If you are like us, you’ve come to the right place, because we want to share all the useful travel tips and info with you!

Excited? Good. Let’s get into it so you can go on your own epic adventures too!

How to earn airline miles without a credit card

Let’s start with a little warning.

Because there is a bad way to earn airline miles.

Fear not though, we’ll explain how you can avoid making this mistake.

Don’t make this mistake

Whatever you do, don’t go signing up for different airline loyalty programmes willy-nilly.

That’s kinda what we did at the start and you know what happened?

Our airline miles were spread thin, between all of these accounts and we had no way of combining them.

And unless you fly a lot with one airline, you’ll never earn enough air miles to actually be able to use them, if you have so many accounts!

Disaster all around!

Another problem with earning airline miles

If you sign up for many airline loyalty programmes, you won’t just be spreading your air miles thin.

You are also likely going to lose them.

Why?

Most airlines put an expiry date on their points/miles.

Meaning if you don’t use them or top them up (by flying more or by purchasing more miles), you’ll lose them at a specific time in the future.

A real life example

When we were full-time travelling Southeast Asia, we went yolo and took an American Airlines flight to the USA to see 2 gigs. Crazy stuff, we know.

The other crazy thing we did though?

We created new accounts with American Airlines’ loyalty programme, AAdvantage. Meaning the miles we earned on our USA trip were added to it.

Sounds okay, right?

Not quite.

We later discovered, that we made a big mistake.

You see, American Airlines are part of the same alliance as, for example, Qatar Airways. 

And we already had Qatar Airways accounts, collecting air miles there.

Is this not making sense?

Let us explain.

The 3 main airline alliances

Basically, there are 3 main global alliances that group airlines together.

Like a mother hen and her chicks.

The 3 alliances are: Star Alliance, SkyTeam, and Oneworld.

This is, technically, all you will have to care about.

Here’s how it will work for you.

What you should do

Basically, you only need 1 account per alliance.

That’s how simple and easy it is.

Just 3 accounts in total.

Why?

Because each alliance lets you earn air miles (without a credit card!) from all of their chick airlines on the same ONE account.

How this works

Using the story we shared with you earlier about our American Airlines flights.

When flying with AA, what we should have done is put our Qatar Airways frequent flyer numbers into the booking, rather than creating new accounts with AA.

Both airlines are from the same alliance – Oneworld, so our AA flights could have counted towards our Qatar Airways miles.

With our mistake though, we had 2 accounts each (one with AA and one with Qatar Airways) and our points were spread thinner.

Why do 3 accounts make sense?

If you need more reasons why you should be collecting on just 3 accounts, rather than having one per each airline, think about this:

• You will earn air miles much faster this way
• Your miles will be less likely to expire as it will be easier to top them up – by flying with any of the alliance’s airlines
• You will have far fewer logins and passwords to remember and manage (anyone else feel like half of our life is spent guessing passwords for all our accounts??)
• You can redeem your air miles across the alliance too, so you are not limited to one airline’s benefits!*

*A little disclaimer here, always check the T&Cs and any disclaimers from the airline. It’s not always as straightforward as just redeeming your miles with another airline.

If you are not confused yet, good.

The really confusing part comes now.

The confusing thing about earning airline miles without a credit card

We told you there are 3 main alliances.

And that’s true.

The thing is, they don’t offer their own loyalty programmes.

Oh no, that’d make it too easy for you.

Instead, what you have to do is pick one of the airlines from each alliance. And sign up for their loyalty/frequent flyer programme.

Easy, you think?

Just wait till you find out that every airline has different benefits, different rules, different ways to collect… Yep. It’s not easy at all.

How to pick the right airline loyalty programme

There are 2 pretty good ways of picking which airline from each alliance you should sign up for:

1. Your most used airline

Is there an airline you already fly with frequently? Or perhaps the airport nearest to you has one airline which offers the best connections? Chances are, you will be flying with that airline the most, so check their frequent flyer programme and if it seems okay for you? Sign up.

2. Do a bit of research

Compare the different benefits and rules of the frequent flyer programmes you are considering.

You can either google this or use ChatGPT or other chatbots (although double-check your info if you get it from AI, always).

It helps if you already know what your main must-have is. For us, for example, how quickly the air miles expire is the most important thing, because even though we travel a lot, we try to fly as little as possible, overlanding instead (it’s one of our crazy travel habits people judge us for).

How to earn airline miles: step-by-step

In the intro we told you you will be able to make a start on earning airline miles without a credit card today.

Here is what you should do, step-by-step:

1. Look up each of the 3 main alliances and see what airlines belong to them
2. Choose one airline per alliance to create an account with
3. Sign up for the loyalty/frequent flyer programme with that airline
4. Forget your password. Reset your password. (Or be smart and save it/note it down)
5. Next time you fly with any airline, google which alliance it belongs to
6. When booking your flight, remember to add your frequent flyer number from that alliance to the booking
7. Collect your airline miles and feel like a pro traveller
8. Forget your password again

There you go! You’ve just taken the first steps (no. 1-3) towards earning air miles without a credit card! Go you!

The problem with earning airline miles without a credit card

The sad truth?

Unless you are:

• a frequent flyer
• who buys higher class tickets
• and flies long distances

It will take you a long time to earn enough miles to be able to get a significant benefit.

We managed to, so far, only redeem our air miles twice.

One time, we scored a 5-day holiday in the beautiful Slovak mountains for the price of 1 night – we explain how we did that in this post.

The second time we managed to exchange Daniel’s miles for an actual airline ticket, so he only ended up paying some small fees instead of the full price.

The way we did that?

We boosted his miles (which is why we could only redeem Daniel’s and not Mirka’s miles).

How to boost your airline miles

There are some random ways to give your miles a boost, like the travel nightmare that happened to us or doing things like airline surveys – Daniel got sent one by Qatar Airways and got quite a few extra points for filling it out. The catch? Mirka never got the survey and so, suddenly, our air miles didn’t match up.

The more reliable ways to earn more airline miles

Here are the things you should do if you want to collect your airline miles faster:

• When you choose the 3 programmes, have a look at their websites and see what they say about earning miles. This is the best starting point.
• Then, do a quick google search/ask your favourite chatbot for extra tips on how to earn miles for that airline/alliance.
• Poke around every time you are booking something. We are trying to get into the habit (forever keep forgetting) of either checking for cashback or for earning miles EVERY TIME we buy or book something online.
  
  There is a third option (Option 1 is earn cashback, option 2 is earn air miles,) which is joining a loyalty programme of the website/company and earning some points there, but basically, every time you are shopping/booking online, you should be getting something extra (provided it’s a bigger brand, of course, not if you are buying honey from your local farmer. Don’t go asking them about airline miles. Although you never know, these days so many people have loyalty programmes, it’s always worth checking!)

Don’t miss out on this

The big mistake we made?

Yes, other than signing up for multiple airlines from the same alliance. Contrary to the popular belief, even experienced travellers still make mistakes. 😅

The big mistake we made when it comes to earning airline miles without a credit card is wasting SO MANY POINTS through Booking.com.

Let us explain.

When we checked years ago, it wasn’t possible to earn points on Booking.com by staying in hotels and then redeeming those points through an alliance.

The catch?

Things constantly change. And so did this.

Now you can collect Avios points by using Booking.com and then use those points in the Oneworld alliance.

By the time we realised this, we had booked sooo much accommodation and yet earned no points for it (we were full-time travelling at the time, so literally spent thousands and thousands on hotels and guesthouses).

The best thing for you to do?

• Follow travellers who share travel hacks, tips and news (we are not saying you should follow us, but do follow us too!)
• Sign up for newsletters from your chosen airlines and actually open them when you get them – you never know what new changes might benefit you!
• Always try to get something extra when booking/buying online from big brands. We talked about that here. All big brands offer some sort of loyalty programme these days, so make sure you take full advantage of that. If you are not earning points/miles/other benefits, you should be questioning whether you are missing out.

And there you have it.

This is the easiest, simplest way to earn airline miles without a credit card.

Now, if you want to ask a question, you know where to find us – in the comments below, or on our Instagram.

And if you feel like “WTF did I just read”, maybe book a call with us and we can talk you through it in a way that will make sense to you. Because we want you to be earning those miles and not making the mistakes we made!