Were you thinking of flying somewhere for the holidays? If you were, you may have changed your mind as soon as you looked up the airfare for the trip. While holiday travel is always expensive, this year it has completely gone through the roof.It's a combination of factors that have caused the problem. Part of it is high gas prices. Another part of it is that the airlines are struggling in tough economic times and therefore increasing fees and making cuts anywhere they can.If you are like a lot of people, this may have priced you right out of a ticket, or so you thought. This is when you need to get better acquainted with the best airline mile credit cards.Airline mile credit cards are literally cards that offer rewards in the form of miles on airlines. Once you get to a certain number of miles, you can redeem them for a free flight.While you may be thinking there is no way you would have enough time to sign up and save up enough miles to get a flight for the holidays, you need to have faith. Many of the best airline mile credit cards have great incentives to start using them. Some offer first time users 10,000 miles or more just for signing up. Others offer bonuses to purchase items through their partner vendors and almost all of them offer bonus points for booking a flight through them.Once you start using the card, you may be amazed at how quickly the miles can add up.Learn the PerksThe best way to see those free tickets come faster from the best airline mile credit cards is to know how to get bonus miles. All airline mile credit cards have bonus mile offerings. It could be from using their partner companies, taking advantage of special offers or any of a number of other things. Don't spend where you don't need to, but if there are things you were going to purchase that you could get extra miles by using the card, use it.Partial Free FaresIf you get closer to the holidays and have not been able to rack up enough miles for a complete free trip, see if you can still get a partial discount. Many airline mile credit cards will allow you to cash in miles for one half of a trip and then you can pay for the other half. This could cut your travel costs in half.