Everyone is aware of American Airlines and most other carriers elite status levels. These are the people who are invited to board the planes first, get free upgrades, and even get the best seats in the first few rows of the economy seating section (you might not have known that).

Normally in order to achieve elite status you would need to fly at least 25,000 qualifying miles in order to achieve the lowest level of Gold, or 50,000 to earn Platinum. However it is actually possible to get your upgrades with only 5,000 or 10,000 miles respectively.
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When I booked a flight on American Airlines to travel to San Francisco for my wife and myself for vacation in a couple of weeks, I had no idea the hassle I was signing up for.

I made the booking about 3 weeks ago directly on AA.com, and at the time I was certain that I had signed up for the 9:45am flight. Well, today as I was booking travel back and forth to D.C. for the next few weeks I decided to take a look at that old reservation because I’ll be traveling back from DC the night before we are scheduled to leave the next morning.

So, I opened the reservation to take a look only to discover that there is an error. The flight was supposed to be in the morning, but instead it’s listed in the evening!
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There are several sites out there that are designed to help keep track of your travel rewards programs (Points.com, AwardWallet.com, etc.).

However, there is also some free software which might work better for folks who prefer to keep all of that personal information on their own laptop as opposed to some site out on the Internet which they have no control over.
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