It seems like a simple task: a quick-and-dirty programming job should be able to code up an application to pull data from assorted airline sites. Unfortunately, most of what I found when I started searching were programs that charge for their tracking services, like MileageManager and MaxMiles. I wasn't interested in fancy premium services -- I just wanted a centralized tally of my miles. But free sites did a lousy job of it. Yahoo's Awards Tracker could only hold a small number of programs (it's since been closed down -- I think the limit when I tried it was six programs), and sites like Points, which includes a balance tracker, cover only a handful of programs from their partners.
I grudgingly signed up with MileageManager and used that for a few months, until I happened across my current solution: a desktop app. USA Today's MileTracker is completely free, supports more than a hundred frequent flyer programs (including all of the ones I use), and works quite well. It's not a Web program, so you'll only be able to access the information from the PC on which the application is installed, but for me that's an acceptable trade-off.
Having my miles centralized does end up saving me money, since I've finally started cashing them in, now that it's easier to see how many I have with each program. I've snagged two free roundtrip
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