Originally Posted by
Spiff
Ah, not always true. There has to be some incentive for participation in a FF program beyond the prospect of a free Wed afternoon flight from Salt Lake City to Phoenix with two stops.
That's really not my problem. Delta (and many other airlines, to be fair) started printing FF currency like mad and selling it to credit card companies and others so that it can be earned cheaply and without actually flying. Now, Delta is complaining that it can't cover all the proverbial checks it wrote? Sorry, no sympathy from me.
Well, there doesn't have to be a FFP at all, and they can stop them tomorrow. Funny how on the MR forum we want five stops and when we redeem it has be be direct.
I agree. The fact that the Credit Card companies have been allowed to essentially take over the government franchise for the nation's currency and payment system for free while charging extortionate merchant fees which they use to buy off the management of the FFPs from under our nose is a problem.
It looks like the printing press and their protection agreement with Don Amex is much more valuable to DL than those flying. Covering the checks is not the problem at all, they just deflate the currency, increase the rate of expiration, add fees and surcharges, keep things relatively opaque and difficult to redeem and gradually make the consumer cost of burning more than the cost of earning, so that even those who always thought they were smarter than the suckers become suckers.
The good times have done rolled for the frequent flyer. DL can still get lots of "mileage" out of this cash cow for years to come though with the 80% of those they just bleed for non-flying revenues and the occassional flight holding out to them the carrot of never to be fulfilled dream of free travel for nothing..