Understanding Spirit’s Miles
Like many things with Spirit Airlines, their frequent flyer program differs from most other airlines.
Your Miles Expire in Three Months, Not One Year
For the majority of hotel and airline programs, if you are inactive for a year, your miles with them with expire. With Spirit Airlines, it’s only three months. So keeping your Spirit miles from expiring can be a bit of a challenge, especially if you don’t have their credit card.
What we did was enroll in Spirit’s dining program “FREE SPIRIT Diningâ€. It works the same as every other dining reward program. You register a credit card, you go eat at one of the participating restaurants, you use your registered credit card to pay, voila you get miles and that will keep your Spirit miles from expiring. Yes, the annoying thing about it is you have to do this at least once every three months if you’re not flying with them very often. The nice thing is it doesn’t matter how much you spend at a restaurant, so I usually find one of the cheaper near-by restaurants, buy something for $5 and call it a day.
Another option is buying miles to keep your miles from expiring. You have to purchase at least 1,000 miles which costs around $30 (sometimes they have “sales†so YMMV). I don’t like doing that, especially with Spirit, since I don’t think the miles are worth that much. But it is an option if you choose to do that.
Spirit also is partners with the rental car companies Avis, Hertz, and Budget and Choice Hotels. You have the option when renting your car or staying at one of these hotels to earn points with Spirit instead of the hotel or rental car company. While I wouldn’t rent a car or stay at a hotel just for this reason, if it’s already in your plans it may be an easy way to keep your points from expiring.
Different Rates for Reward Flights
Most airlines have different “rates†for redeeming miles based on when you travel. Spirit does too. However, credit card holders have a different, more generous award chart than non-credit card holders. Spirit promotes their card at the end of most of their flights. They will tell you how you can get 15,000 miles with the first purchase and that’s good for up to three round-trip reward tickets. That is true, if you have the credit card. If you don’t have the credit card, it takes 20,000 miles for just one round-trip ticket in the same region. When I look at the flights I can redeem for my 20,000 miles, they’re usually the flights I can purchase for anywhere from $40 – $70 round-trip. In this case, I’d much rather pay for the cheap flight than use my miles for it.
You Cannot Purchase a “Big Front Seat†With Miles
At one point in time, you could redeem more miles to purchase a “Big Front Seat†for your reward flight. That is no longer the case. Reward miles can only be redeemed towards regular seats. I can still find on the internet their old mileage redemption chart that shows how much redeeming for a “Big Front Seat†will cost, so if you see that, know that is the outdated chart and no longer applicable. This is their current redemption chart from their website.
You Cannot Transfer Your Miles
While you can purchase and gift miles to other people, you absolutely cannot transfer your miles to another person. However, when you redeem your miles for reward travel, you can redeem a ticket for another person. The form will auto-fill with your information as the traveler so you will need to make sure you input the correct person’s information.
Miles Can Only Be Redeemed for Flights
This one may seems obvious, but since Spirit offers so many different types of vacation packages I think it’s a valid question. You cannot use miles towards any of their vacation packages. They can be redeemed for flights only.
So far I’ve managed to keep my Spirit points from expiring. Even though I don’t think they’re the best value out there, there may be a time in the future where I need to use them and I’m glad I have them. If you fly Spirit infrequently it may not be worth it for you, so as always I recommend figuring out what’s best for you and your situation and doing that. It’s not a mortal sin to let your airline or hotel points expire if keeping them current is more trouble than they’re worth.
For more on Spirit Airlines, check out Tiff’s comprehensive guide!
Everything You Need to Know About Spirit Airlines
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You can also keep your points alive through their survey portal deal. It’s not fun but I do it about one every month or two to keep them renewed.
You can redeem your miles for stuff like magazines but the flights are the real secret value here. It’s like Greyhound. Not fancy and not fun but cheap 🙂
That’s true about the survey portal deal, I should have mentioned it.
I never suggest redeeming miles for magazines since I don’t think that’s a good use of miles (even Spirit’s)! 😉
You can use your Spirit miles for magazines!
https://www2.magsformiles.com/
Hello, do you know if I book an award ticket for me on Spirit at the Off-Peak rate, can I book one for my wife, using my miles, at the Off-Peak rate as well. The Spirit Credit card would be in my name and not hers. Or would her ticket need to be booked at the Standard Rate and not Off-Peak? Thank you. I have really enjoyed reading your Spirit articles.
at the end of my flight they also gave us 2,500 free spirit bonus miles. the document states to register within 45 days after apploying for the Spirit MasterCard. When I went to do so, the site said the 2,500 miles expire 90 days from registering. What?! I dont think there is a way to keep these points from expiring right??
I know once you get the MasterCard you have to use it at least once a month to keep your miles from expiring. As long as you do this, it should keep ALL your miles from expiring.
I think the 90 days expiration is because it’s the standard miles policy with Spirit. If you aren’t approved for the card, you can keep your miles up-to-date with the Free Spirit Dining program.
http://www.freespiritdining.com/
The Spirit miles club is a waste of money. They advertise on their chart a flight from Minneapolis to Orlando in March would use 17,500 miles from March 26th – April 9th but when you enter the dates it populates 27,500 miles. The attendant says it is due to the dates being a WEEKEND. Nothing I have read indicates they can jack up the redemption requirement due to a weekend date. Anyone else have this issue with them? Any remedies? Thank you
@Kyle Schenck
I was having the same issue trying to book a flight during their off peak season. What I found was that if I had 18,084 miles and the flight I wanted to book cost 20,000 miles, the miles I already have ARE NOT put toward the flight. Instead, I needed to click “buy miles” and pay $53 for an additional 2,000 miles to bring my total miles to 20,084. I hope this helps!
I am a frequent flyer mile Virgin. I applied for the spirit credit card and now have just over 15,117 miles. However imagine my SHOCK when trying to book a flight for next month to fly from Detroit to New Orlenes, ( Spirit does not fly much cliser to my folks who are in Flirida) and saw that Spirit wants 10,000 flyer miles to get there and 25,000 miles to get back. WHAT?!
I am trying to book a zone 1, off-peak, round-trip using a BoA/Spirit MasterCard, which according to the Spirit skymiles chart should cost only 5,000 miles. Quite a deal. But when I enter the flight into and click the ‘pay with Spirit miles’ dialog box, the cost auto-populates at 50,000. Ten times more!
I note the cost populates BEFORE it asks me which credit card I am using (the BoA card is a requirement), but after I enter the card info the cost info does not change.
What hoop do I have to jump through to get the advertised off-peak rate?
Thanks!
I’ve noticed this, too. I’d say this is false advertisement. They specifically say that during off-peak times, you should be able to redeem flights for a certain amount of specified miles depending on the zone you’re flying to.
However, all of the “off-peak” times that I’m searching for, even way into the future (in January), they all are advertising 10,000-25,000 miles per one-way, instead of 2,500 as advertised. Why do I even have this stupid credit card, if I have to spend $25,000 to get enough points for a round trip flight from Minneapolis to Denver?
I think somebody needs to sue Spirit.
I just flew from Houston to Chicago round trip, and each way is 925 miles. But when I checked my account statement, I only got 462 miles credit each way, so 925 total instead of 1850. Does anyone know why this is? Of course, there’s NO POSSIBLE WAY to get in touch with an actual human being at this crazy airline!
Yeah I noticed this.. so you only get half. Wow!
You’re right, it is confusing. This link (https://customersupport.spirit.com/hc/en-us/articles/202097756-How-can-I-earn-miles-in-the-FREE-SPIRIT-frequent-flier-program-) has a chart that explains that if you’re not Elite or VIP level with them, you accrue only 50% of the miles flown.
can i use my points towards baggage or standard seats ?
I won 5000 bonus miles during a flight in March. The stewardess said I just needed to register it within 90 days but don’t have to travel within 90 days. So once I register it do I have 90 days from registration to book a flight? I’m not able to take time off till November so is it possible to be able to use it then? I don’t have a spirit credit card my husband used to or may still we were confused with how to use miles so we may have let it go. I can’t reach a live person spirit to ask questions
I’ll agree it’s become a ripoff the milage chart says a flight from Chicago to Orlando round trip is 5000 miles not 30,000 miles for bank of America members. I think they are deliberately booking or over booking flights so you can’t get on the plane I’ve been with them for 6 years and it has not been like this before. the are flooding their site with low fares and filling the planes and making less seate available to spirit mastercard member so we can’t use our miles.
then when you do see a deal it’s something crazy like(example: Chicago to Orlando departs at 8pm 1stop in Washington d.c. 5 hour layover arriving next day at 8:30 am. forcing you to pay instead of using your miles.