Why Frequent Flyers Are Doomed
Why Frequent Flyers Are Doomed
By Joe Bob Briggs
May 23, 2002
I just know they're gonna steal my frequent flyer miles. They're gonna rob me like a drunk in a dark alley at 3 a.m.
Frequent flyer miles are becoming like an elaborate game of Three Card Monte. It's got to be a scam because people keep giving them to me. I can rack up new ones without ever getting on an airplane. It's the classic con: appeal to my sense of greed so they can take my money.
Look how easy it is. Every time I rent a car or check into a hotel, I just whip out a two-foot-long strip of accordion-file cellophane and say, "Do you give credits on any of these?" And, of course, they say, "Sure thing, we take five of those, which one do you want to use?"
A thousand miles here, a thousand miles there, I've got so many zillions of miles on so many airlines that theoretically I could start flying now and never pay for another ticket until I'm 94.
So why do I feel like a guy who had his life savings in a Russian bank account in 1991?
Because I'm convinced that the frequent-flyer mile central bankers--I picture them meeting in a sky lounge at the Frankfurt airport--are conspiring at this very moment to devalue me, inflate me, and turn my miles into Confederate money.
They're already trying to destroy the connection between the word "miles" and the words "airplane travel." A thousand miles, first of all, is not a thousand miles. For the best deal you can find, 20,000 miles can be a thousand miles, and in some cases it takes 50,000 miles to equal a thousand real miles. Joe Bob predicts: within a year 100,000 miles will be the lowest reward level.
But the airlines obviously don't want me to use the miles anyway, because they've started besieging me with offers to cash out my mileage credits in ways other than getting on a plane. They want me to use my miles to buy luggage, cosmetics, weekend hotel nights, rental-car upgrades, and all kinds of catalogue products that are the equivalent of "Take a chance on door number three"!
Why would they do this? Because the system is gonna crash. Soon. I'm sure of it. (Wanna buy some miles? It's illegal, absolutely against the rules, but we have ways. See the connection to Communist Russia? We even have a black market in frequent flyer miles because it's a currency controlled by a totalitarian regime.)
Let's look at it this way. At current airline prices, depending on the plan you have, one airline mile is worth anywhere from two cents to nine cents if you use it for actual air travel. (This is partly why the airlines sell so many miles to credit-card companies and car-rental agencies. They can make money on the spread.) So if we split the difference and say that the average frequent-flyer mile is worth 5.5 cents, then to get the total value of the whole system, we should multiply by 8.5 trillion, because that's the number of unredeemed airline miles in the world. That means there's $467 billion worth of value in frequent flyer accounts, waiting to be used at any moment
If the frequent-flyer-mile system were one of the world's currencies, it would be the second largest, after the dollar! And in some ways it's actually a better deal than the dollar, because the dollar is no longer tied to gold or silver, but the frequent- flyer currency is tied to an actual commodity: Flights!
So why am I nervous? I'm nervous because I know there's no way in hell that the airlines are going to cash $467 billion worth of free air travel!
I was one of the first members of the first frequent-flyer program--American Airlines, 1981--and even though I have "Lifetime Gold" status, even that has been devalued. Every time they get a little cranky because you're not flying American enough--after all, you're gonna go to the airline that gives you more miles, right?--they create some new status that's higher than "Lifetime Gold" status. Lifetime Platinum, Lifetime Double Platinum, Lifetime Titanium, Lifetime Uraniam 238--I don't know how many levels of mileage-hogs they have now, but it's obvious that I'm holding currency that was originally tied to a gold nugget, then a silver ingot, then a copper cuff link, and will eventually be tied to a discarded Hershey's wrapper.
But here's the other statistic that bothers me. Even though the number of frequent-flyer miles held in private accounts has risen from 900 billion in 1990 to 7.9 trillion today, the number of miles actually redeemed has been virtually unchanged since 1994. It's always about 300 billion miles a year. What does that come out to? Eight per cent inflation? Because I don't think they're adding any new flights for free travelers.
In other words, they're letting people load up their accounts with miles, but they're figuring out new and more sinister ways to prevent you from ever using them. They limit the number of seats per plane that can be bought with miles (yet they won't tell you how many of these seats are on each plane). They restrict travel dates. They require an eight-week advance purchase. (If you violate it, they just charge you 80 bucks. Doesn't seem like such a free seat anymore, does it?) And the main thing they do is keep jacking around with that definition of what a "redemption level" is.
What this means is that, sure, if you happen to be travelling from Saginaw, Michigan, to Lexington, Kentucky, leaving at 3 a.m. and changing planes twice, maybe you can get a free seat. But try cashing in those miles on the 7 p.m. flight from JFK to London. Nope. Uh-uh. "Sorry, sir, but our quota has already been filled."
No it hasn't! They forget that we've all got Internet reservations doohickeys that show us just exactly how many seats are sold on that plane so far. And I can guarantee you, some of those planes on popular routes have zero seats available for frequent flyers.
In other words, it looks like the second largest currency in the world, but it's just another Latin American junta punishing the peasants with rampant inflation. My advice? Join the new Amtrak Guest Rewards program. It took me exactly six months to earn "Select" status, entitling me to free use of the departure lounges and automatic upgrades to first class. These people are always three months away from being voted out of business by Congress, so they have no reason not to give you free stuff. Plus they haven't figured out how to cheat yet.
Joe Bob Briggs writes a number of columns for UPI and may be contacted at joebob@upi.com or through his website at www.joebobbriggs.com. Snail mail: P.O. Box 2002, Dallas, TX 75221.
© 2002 Joe Bob Briggs All Rights Reserved