A L S O +T O D A Y Are you more tempted to have a romantic fling while traveling? Bare all in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk Informed Sources Online ticketing vs. travel agents: Which is better? (01/12/98) Tip of the Week Hong Kong's new electronic travel card (01/12/98) R E C E N T L Y In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great By Michael Wood Tracking Alexander the Great through the Hindu Kush (01/08/98) The Inuit Olympics By Mary Roach Inuit Games: Head Pulls, Knuckle Hops and other madness (01/07/98) Mayan dreaming By Douglas Cruickshank Mind-bending visions in the Yucatan (01/06/98) History and hallucination By Jan Morris Gdánsk stands as a symbol of enduring truth -- and stirring resurrection (01/05/98) Wires and buyers and scares -- oh my! By Don George Some questions about the year in travel (12/24/97) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Your virtual travel agency - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Road warrior archives		BY DAWN MacKEEN | Randy Peterson says he's not a junkie. Even though he has accumulated more than 8 million frequent flier miles, has become a member of 70 mileage programs worldwide and has gone to great lengths to get miles -- including taking up new addresses in other countries that would normally exclude him because of his North American residency. The rest of the world would call this addiction, but not Randy. He just says he's the frequent flier industry's biggest fan. The editor and founder of InsideFlyer, a monthly magazine that gives the official word on frequent flier programs around the world, Peterson knows almost every trick in the book on how to earn miles and points. He should. He's been following the industry since the early '80s, when frequent flier programs were almost footnotes in airline brochures -- a far cry from today's market, which has grown to include one out of every 10 people in the United States. In the past year alone, according to Peterson, the airlines gave away more than 10 million free tickets. Salon spoke with Peterson by telephone from his office in Colorado Springs, Colo., about the best ways to earn frequent flier miles, what to do when miles are about to expire and the inside secrets the airlines don't want their passengers to find out. What do you recommend for getting the most out of frequent flier programs? One of the major mistakes people make is to assume that all frequent flier programs are the same. Oftentimes people find out too late that the program they chose at random isn't right for them. For instance, I know some people who wanted to go to Hawaii for free, so they signed up with USAir's program -- only to later find out that USAir doesn't have a free Hawaii award. If they had picked the program based on what they wanted to get out of it, they would never have joined USAirways. But they didn't learn this until they were 17,000 or 18,000 miles into the program -- a little late to start all over again because they were close to their first award. The first thing people have to do is decide what they want out of their frequent flier program. It can bring you free travel, but is that what you want, to fly somewhere for free? And if so, where do you want to go for free? If you want to go to Africa, then choose a Delta program because not every airline flies to Africa. If you want to choose an award just for the domestic United States, TWA and AmericaWest start their domestic awards at 20,000 miles, whereas American, Delta and United start at 25,000 miles. That's a pretty big difference, which could take you three, four or five months to earn. I think the half hour or hour you spend before joining programs will return hundreds of thousands of miles and hours of free benefits. What are the biggest misconceptions about frequent flier miles? That they're God-given. The major problem with frequent flier programs is that there are a lot of new people joining who aren't heavy-duty fliers. They've flown once or twice, filled out an application because the stewardess has given it to them, gotten an award and then they think that their miles are like money. Well, they're not. Just because you've got enough miles for a free award doesn't mean that you can always go wherever you want to go, when you want to. How long do you recommend booking in advance? There are two bits of advice: Book early or book late. Domestically, it's three months in advance and internationally, it's six months. This "book early" philosophy is still sound but the newest advice to pop up is to book late. It always befuddled me how airlines could fly a plane at 33,000 feet without wires hanging from the sky, but yet didn't know how many people they had on the plane. Today things have changed somewhat: Airlines have invested a lot of money in new technology, and within the last week before a flight, they know how that flight is selling and they'll actually make more free seats available. It's common to call three months in advance to go to Europe, be told there are no free seats available and then try four or five days before that date and find out there are seats available. People do change their minds a lot and if you really want to get an award, you have to be pretty persistent and call every couple of days. Through technological advances, they can now e-mail that information to you, whereas before it was difficult to send you a letter or even phone you -- they didn't have the manpower. N E X T+P A G E+| Earn miles on the ground