I had some time on a plane so I wrote up a quick feature request for Kayak. I don't really know anyone at the company so I thought I would ask HN if someone ha

I had some time on a plane so I wrote up a quick feature request for Kayak. I don't really know anyone at the company so I thought I would ask HN if someone had a contact they would be willing to pass it on to. The content should also be of interest too this group; with some ingenuity it's possible to get a greater $ value of free tickets than you spend earning the miles. Roughly it's economical to spend the time to learn how the system works if you currently take at least 2 transatlantic/transpacific or 4 transcontinental (across the USA) flights per year. Glossary of industry slang used in the deck: Fare code/fare bucket: For each flight a number of tickets in each bucket are made available for sale. Each bucket (identified by it's letter code) has a different set of rules and prices. The bucket for a ticket also defines how many miles you will earn for taking the flight - generally (but not always) cheaper buckets earn fewer miles. EQM: Elite Qualifying Miles, miles earned (usually by flying) that count towards elite status for the next Elite Year. You can earn between 0 and 1.5 EQM per mile flown for United Airlines. Elite Status is useful, so the value of this kind of miles is in earning pain-free travel for next year. RDM: ReDeemable Miles, miles earned (in a bunch of ways) that you can spend on travel. You can earn between 0 and 3 EQM per mile flown for United Airlines. You can trade in each mile for somewhere between $0.01 and $0.15 worth of free flights, which is why they are valuable. (My last trip exchanged 125k miles for a ticket that would have cost $14k in cash.) FF: Frequent Flier UA: United Airlines DL: Delta AA: American NZ: Air New Zealand TK: Turkish Airlines LH: Lufthansa AF: Air France