Your airline miles may have expired and you may not even know it.

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Because I was moving so often, my airline miles programs got lost into the wind. Actually my mom started recieving a few of them at home in hawaii. After collecting the mail over a span of a month, I get a letter from my mom, from Continental that I had about 15 thousand miles about to expire and I didn’t reply in time to prevent that from happening. The lesson here is that airline miles policies are changing and you need to keep tabs on them. One way to do that is to put your miles on yodlee It doesn’t tell you when your miles expire but it does tell you how many miles you got. The way I keep tabs on them is I have a word document with all my miles and the last date that I remember getting miles on them. I also write down the expiration date for those miles.

So what can you do to prevent your miles from expiring? Any kind of activity can usually prevent your miles from expiring. As long as you have some sort of activity on those programs, your expiration date will be extended. There are some airlines that this does not apply to. Airtran, JetBlue and Southwest does not apply. What kind of activities?

Buy something from a partner company from the airline website. If you go to each of the programs’ websites, you will find that many of them have a partnership with many other companies from car rental companies to flower delivery to hotels. Some websites have great deals on cell phones.

Redeem your miles. Another way that you can renew your miles is to redeem your miles. If you buy a ticket with your miles and when you travel, your expiration date will be renewed. You can also redeem your miles for other things as well. Continental offered me to renew my expiration date by getting free magazine subscriptions. If you have few miles to claim a free ticket and you don’t fly a certain airlines anymore, this may be a good alternative to doing nothing and letting your miles expire.

Use points.com to create a new activity for yourself. I was actually told about this program from a US airways customer service representative when I told them that I wanted to find ways to keep my miles from expiring. This is an okay program to change your miles for miles in other programs or for gift certificates. You lose a lot of miles however, because if you look at their website, you will see that your miles don’t get you that much. However, if you sign up for their program with a mileage program that is about to expire, it deposits to your miles program a few free miles. This is considered a new activity and your miles are safe from destruction. That is pretty much the only thing I did with this program but it saved my 23,000 US air miles from expiring.

So what are the expiration dates for the various airlines? These are the expiration policies for major airlines:

AirTran A+ Rewards: Credits expire after 12 months.
Alaska Mileage Plan: Miles expire after 3 years of inactivity.
Aloha AlohaPass: Miles don’t expire.
America West Dividend Miles: Miles expire after 18 months of inactivity.
American AAdvantage: Miles expire after 36 months of inactivity.
ATA Travel Awards: Points expire after 24 months.
Continental OnePass: 18 months of inactivity, continental reserves the right to close your account.
Delta SkyMiles: Miles expire after 2 calendar years of inactivity.
Frontier EarlyReturns: Miles expire after 2 calendar years of inactivity.
Hawaiian Hawaiian Miles: Miles expire after 36 months of inactivity.
JetBlue TrueBlue: Miles expire 1 year after the date they are earned.
Midwest Midwest Miles: Miles expire if none are earned in 36 months.
Northwest WorldPerks Miles expire if none are earned for 3 calendar years.
Southwest Rapid Rewards: Credits expire after 24 months.
United Mileage Plus: miles expire after 18 months of inactivity
US Airways Dividend Miles: Miles expire after 18 months of inactivity.

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