tassojunior

As miles get harder to get, banked miles should become more valuable as space should be opening up.

ltfly

Newbie question: what does MS-ing mean, please?

sdsearch

Manufactured Spending. It typically means buying something that's cash-equivalent with a miles/points-earning credit card, and then turning that something into money in your checking account (with as little in fees as possible) with which you can pay the credit card bill.

In the past it was easier than now. For example, a couple years ago it was easy to buy generic Visa gift debit cards at supermarkets or wherever, then take them to Wal-Mart and load them onto your free Amex Bluebird or Serve account (those being alternative to banking), and then transfer from Bluebird or Serve back to your checking account. You would out only the few dollars in fees on each such Visa gift card bought. But Amex has shut this down and Wal-Mart is shutting the remaining parts of it down.

So now you have to find a place where you can buy a money order with that Visa (or MC) gfit debit card, and that itself can be tricky depending on where you live (and a place that allows it one month may not allow it the next month).

(It's still fairly easy to buy Visa/MC gift debit cards one at a time at many grocery stores with a credit card and have it count as a purchase and thus earn miles/points. It's turning those gift debit cards into money that's getting harder.)

There's a whole forum about it on FlyerTalk:

ltfly

Thank you very much, sdsearch, it is very clear for me now.

srdshelly

You may be right, but the credit card companies advertise on the very blogs that tell people how to churn and offer affiliate links to those bloggers for nice commissions. They know the blogs aren't about tomato gardening. I'll bet there are enough people who run up a balance, keep cards and pay annual fees, or put lots of spend on a card, that it tends to offset those who grab the bonus and run (running back again in a year or two when they can).

They've cut back a lot on how much you can earn for flying, unless you buy the expensive tickets.

AlohaDaveKennedy

Manufactured Spending - an art form practiced by various Lords of the Fly.

Preacher7

I"m just glad I got in when I did...

ReallyNotFrequentFlyer

It may never be as good as it used to be (was not around) but things run in cycles. Soon enough, people will realize the miles are not worth it and will migrate to cash back cards.

When that happens and airlines see they don't really have any loyal following, and their profits are going down with their bonuses, one CEO will decide to revive their loyalty program by making it more appealing and then their competitions will do the same and...

Or maybe not.

anime333

With airlines, the trend over the past decade has been one way. But there was a time when blackout dates were rampant and redemptions, while "cheap", where very hard to find. Partner redemptions were much smaller in nature, as well. So while cost-to-fly has gone up, redemption has, over time, gotten better. In the future, I am sure you will see more systems automated and online; this will make redemptions easier, as well.

Credit companies have an up-and-down history. They use to offer much smaller sign-up bonuses. Amex has changed the language on its sign-up bonuses multiple times (going from nothing, to one year, to once-per-lifetime, to two years, to one year, to once-per-lifetime) again. Chase went from once-per-lifetime to once-per-24 months; now they have 5/24.

MS (though I am least familiar with it) is one where you can legitimately claim has been one-way for a very long time...year by year, it has only gotten harder.

pinniped

I've seen ebbs and flows both directions here.

AA and UA permitting one-way awards: huge boost to availability overall, especially for someone who plays both programs. (I know DL has enabled one-ways recently as well, although I don't really fly them nor have many miles with them.) IMHO, it's been better than simply doubling my odds: its opened up options to pair Y + J, or a paid direction plus an award direction. This was a big net flier-friendly development, even though a few stopover rules were tightened.

UA putting most *A award availability online: also a big net improvement, at least in enabling access to the awards that are there. I know this should be a no-brainer - it's 2016, so *all* award flights anywhere on earth should be bookable online - but since many other airlines still have primitive 20th-century websites, I'll give UA due credit. They've brought their tech up to at least 2005 standards. ^

Basic AA availability in general: it has gotten a lot tighter in the past decade. I used to sing praises for AA's basic day-to-day availability on anything except obvious max-peak routes. Now I find my itins are often blocked by the simple MCI-ORD or -DFW flight not having any availability.

The difficulty in finding the most simple, mundane AA seats has had a double effect on me: means I can't use Avios, since the Avios peak/off-peak structure doesn't apply to AA metal. (Avios needs to see a standard partner award seat on AA, or you can't book at all.)

BA junk fees on awards: these have somewhat constricted the use of AA miles to Europe, as such a high percentage of inventory is on BA metal. I've had limited success using AA's German routes to connect to AB or "Niki", but having the alliance's biggest hub (LHR) taken off the board about halves the total route possibilities for many cities on the continent. Contrast to *A, where you can mix & match pretty much any airline without unusually-high garbage fees.

I can almost never find Iberia award inventory. Not sure if that was ever good, has always sucked, or I'm just looking at bad dates.

BearX220

I think that's absolutely wrong. The value of banked miles, like any currency invested at 0% interest, will always decline.

And it does not follow, at all, that more award seats will appear as earnings get stingier. Now that capacity discipline has taken hold industry-wide, the airlines will never put out more award inventory than they have to in order to keep the programs minimally credible. Otherwise, they have zero incentive to give away what they can sell.

And bear in mind that Delta has already proven you can have a ridiculous, irrelevant-to-most FF program and still run a highly profitable airline. There's your benchmark, right there.

StartinSanDiego

I agree with Tassojunior's first point... as miles get harder to accrue, they become more valuable to those who have them in the coffers. As to the second point, and BearX220's comment, I'm not sure if more award space will open up, except as a byproduct of less people having enough miles to actually go somewhere. Now, a 30, 40 or even 50K sign up bonus, is a looonnggg way from a dream trip award redemption.

I see it as a situation where fewer people will jump into the travel hacking world, it's just getting too complicated. A simple 1.5 or 2% cash back program may become a shining option for newbies, since that cash back is guaranteed, no fuss, no muss. Nothing to learn, no frustrations. The bank wins, too, because the payouts aren't as large.

My travel goals increased exponentially with the available miles and the opportunities for copious amounts of affordable travel. I didn't start out saying, "Hmmm, I think I want an international business class trip vacation at least 4x a year..." For my early reward bookings, I went to Hawaii, Peru and Charleston, SC in the space of about 2 years, and was thrilled! $10.00 r/t to go see an old friend on the east coast... wow! Then, the floodgates opened.

I'm not sure I'd jump in with both feet like I did, if I was just entering the game today. If I learned anything in the past 5 years, it's that the open doors will definitely close, so get while the getting is good. Whether it's mistake fares, The Mint, Gummi Bears, OBC, Redbirds or multiple browser methods, the clock will strike 12 soon enough.

pinniped

This is the key point... What do the airlines have to do to keep the programs minimally credible? That minimum credibility is needed in order to be able to sell billions of miles to the credit card issuers, as that's the real profit center here.

I think that's why the least-interesting awards (25k domestic) haven't been devalued over the years, while almost all other award types have. Society as a whole, whether travel hackers or total novices, now relates 25,000 miles to a "free" domestic R/T ticket. If that award exists, and is relatively bookable on Sat-Tue-Wed, 99% of users are happy. The masses aren't looking for the 10-segment 3-carrier 3-continent F/J awards like we are.

BearX220

The second is a consequence of the first. Fifteen years ago signup bonuses were relatively modest and it was not so hard to find longhaul business class awards at 75k-100k. Today we have insanely inflated card signup bonuses and J/F awards are not only more scarce, but more costly -- DL wants 300k-375k for Australia now. Think those factors might be related?

anime333

I know that personally, I rarely use miles for domestic flights, since I can usually get better cash value. Until a domestic flight gets to $600+, I would not consider using miles. As you can expect, I don't go for signups for the revenue-redemption-based programs, and only the Southwest Companion Pass is enticing. But of course, your average traveler doesn't see it that way.

While I think that your overall point is very true, I remember reading that, at least as of 2015, the vast majority of miles handed out were BIS/promotional miles. I'm not sure if this included non-American airlines...

I do think that part of the problem is that with time, BIS miles had increased tremendously. There was a whole following built around maximizing cpp (I would argue the most active subforum on flyertalk, by far), mileage runs, etc. More and more people with status, higher bonuses, airlines running promotions left and right (spreading the word via internet), the ability to earn on partners. In the past year or two, we've seen widespread adoption of revenue-based earning, barriers to status, and reduced earning on partners. That should keep future BIS miles low...