Korean Air Skypass - KE 5-year mileage expiration begins next July

KE will end its 'mileage never expire no matter what' policy and will start expiration from next July. It will be 5 years, and the mileage accumulated by next June will not expired. Also when redeem, the miles accumulated after next July will be redeemed first than the miles earned before next June.

What the f.

Currently only available on Korean website:
http://kr.koreanair.com/KALMain/frm.aspx?subPage=newsEvent_20&kalContentUrl=http://kr.koreanair.com/KALMain/EtcAsp/event/200712/popup_mileage/information_mileage.gif

Finally Korean Air is cutting their service:D:td::td::td:

I'd give them a new nick name
"Excellence in filght, Stingy on the ground"

well i donno, "no matter what" part sucks. however, i kinda understand KE's side where they have tonnes of people who have less than 5000 miles, and its waste of money for them to maintain its account where there had been no activity for many years. as this being introduced, those miles can now be redeemed by adding up milages with other family members. Well for me I don't know, as soon as I use up all the miles, I will be going to NW or CO's program!

its waste of money for them to maintain its account where there had been no activity for many years

With the cheap price of computer hard disc memory it probably costs them less than US$ 0.000001 to store a kilobyte or so of information for an inactive account. That means one million inactive accounts will maybe cost them US$ 1. No way are they wasting money in storage costs by this move. It is simply greed because they know a lot of people travel very infrequently and their miles will expire before they can use them.

It is simply greed because they know a lot of people travel very infrequently and their miles will expire before they can use them.
They are called "frequent" flyer programs...

well i donno, "no matter what" part sucks. however, i kinda understand KE's side where they have tonnes of people who have less than 5000 miles, and its waste of money for them to maintain its account where there had been no activity for many years. as this being introduced, those miles can now be redeemed by adding up milages with other family members. Well for me I don't know, as soon as I use up all the miles, I will be going to NW or CO's program!

yeah...i mean it would suck if I save up just few miles short of award miles and expire...I'm probably gonna do same thing as kalfa - change program to CO or DL

They are called "frequent" flyer programs...

But lumped in with the infrequent flyers affected by this new rule will be the frequent flyers who only fly short hops and are saving up for a big award. If miles expire after 5 years of no activity that is one thing. Miles expiring after 5 years regardless of activity is another.

Anyways the term "frequent flyer program" was not something created by KE and doesn't appear prominently if at all in their website description of their Morning Calm program that I saw. What they and various other airlines did was make a program that suited both frequent and infrequent flyers. They are now pulling the rug out from under a group that they previously catered to.

With the cheap price of computer hard disc memory it probably costs them less than US$ 0.000001 to store a kilobyte or so of information for an inactive account. That means one million inactive accounts will maybe cost them US$ 1. No way are they wasting money in storage costs by this move. It is simply greed because they know a lot of people travel very infrequently and their miles will expire before they can use them.

okay, its not the matter of data in KE's computer. sure, storing computer data don't cost a lot, but you know how much it is to send out those e-mail and mail news letters where "infrequent flyer" people will prolly just throw it away not even reading it? you know how much is the actual cost for making a plastic card for those "infrequent flyers"? (meaning they been on KE only for once or twice in their whole life) since KE had no expiry rule in the past, Koreans (who takes most portion of skypass members) tend to sign up for skypass not even thinking how loyal they will be in the future.

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that KE will introduce more ways to redeem miles for those with not much milage point. - like how other airlines do.

okay, its not the matter of data in KE's computer. sure, storing computer data don't cost a lot, but you know how much it is to send out those e-mail and mail news letters where "infrequent flyer" people will prolly just throw it away not even reading it? you know how much is the actual cost for making a plastic card for those "infrequent flyers"? (meaning they been on KE only for once or twice in their whole life) since KE had no expiry rule in the past, Koreans (who takes most portion of skypass members) tend to sign up for skypass not even thinking how loyal they will be in the future.

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that KE will introduce more ways to redeem miles for those with not much milage point. - like how other airlines do.

Well if the members are inactive there's no reason for KE to be sending them anything in the mail and I doubt they do. If they continue to send mail to people who haven't flown them in many years and likely won't in the near future then they're just stupid. It takes nothing to modify their software to filter out mailings to a select group based on last date of travel or some other criteria. E-mails, like computer storage, costs totally insignificant amounts of money. They can probably send out millions of emails for pennies of computer time/electricity/internet usage.

I doubt people signing up for the program give any thought to expiring miles. Especially with the term being five years I don't think it will make one bit of difference in the number of new applications and plastic cards sent out. If they wanted only loyal members to sign up they'd do something different, such as charge a small fee for membership. This move has nothing to do with saving money as you say. It does have everything to do with saving money by not having to pay out mileage benefits for people who don't fly enough within five years to earn a worthwhile award.

Ah man.. what the fark! :mad::confused:

KE will end its 'mileage never expire no matter what' policy and will start expiration from next July. It will be 5 years, and the mileage accumulated by next June will not expired. Also when redeem, the miles accumulated after next July will be redeemed first than the miles earned before next June.

What the f.

Currently only available on Korean website:
http://kr.koreanair.com/KALMain/frm.aspx?subPage=newsEvent_20&kalContentUrl=http://kr.koreanair.com/KALMain/EtcAsp/event/200712/popup_mileage/information_mileage.gif

:td: This really stink!!! Non-expiration gave me some hope but there is no point of accumulating KE miles.... :(

http://www.koreanair.com/etc/popup/mileage/img/information_mileage_eng.gif

I have given up accumulating miles on KE a long long time ago!!!

Hard to earn miles and high redemption rates makes it for a bad combination to start with. Expiration of mileage doesn't help with the already bad situation.

I will only fly KE when I absolutely have no choice!

with no elite bonus miles and no ways whatsoever to extend the hard earned miles by flying at least 18 months or 36 months as in other ST airlines programs,
Skypass is finally the least attractive FFP.:td:

There has been a fair amount of criticism of KE and their FF program re awards/etc. KE has been quite "busy" flogging points to Korean companies i.e. banks/etc and limiting the ways you can redeem all those points collected. Most of this criticism has come for residents of Korea who seem to see it as give points but make sure it's REALLY hard to redeem. What a novel idea :D