Personally, I will not be sad to see these awards go away. While I have a great deal of appreciation and respect for Randy Peterson and Inside Flyer, I have always disagreed with what the these awards actually meant.

These awards were more of a popularity contest and measure of the programs PR success than a rational comparison of benefits or performance of the programs in relation to each other. Only those who have flown similar amounts on a vast number of airlines can have an accurate idea to how those airlines compare. Only those who have held similar status on several elite programs can truly understand how those status benefits compare.

With the Freddie awards, those who flew "their airline" mostly and occasionally flew someone else, the majority group of frequent flyers, were asked to vote for who had the better program. Either the voter would be happy with "their airline" and vote for it or they would vote for an alternative program they had little (but very positive) experience with. Who knows if those few experiences were normal or not? Who knows if those voting for their primary program realize what status benefits exist on other airlines or how their treatment on the airline they voted for was better only because of their status, what they are missing out on that they would highly value and what they have that they would really miss if loyal to a different carrier?

IMO - the Freddies did a good job of determining who was most popular and who had best succeeded in the PR department in the minds of the common frequent traveler. The Freddies were not a reasoned voice to who actually had the best programs/performance - only voters with similar amounts of experience across many programs could begin to speak to that. IMO - the awards would have been far more meaningful if people gave value scores to all entities being compared in several different areas and the opinions only counted when there was comparable experience accross the entities being compared. The fact that a Hilton Diamond thinks Hilton has the best program means very little if he is not aware of what Marriott status is, let alone the differences in benefits.