Yup - classic bait and switch strategy. Allow customers to earn lots of miles and then devalue them drastically (130K for a 6 hour flight to bangkok - are you kidding me?!?!). Have written about this before. I have close to a million EK miles that I haven't been able to use ...

But then again - that's the flavor of the day. Heck - even the US Government (or, more exactly, the Fed) is doing it to anyone holding US$...