Originally Posted by
5khours
What a lot of you don't understand is that FF programs are not primarily about offering perks and rewarding loyalty. They're about price discrimination and you have to price discriminate to maximize profits and the best way to price discriminate is through FF programs.
People just need to be aware of what price discrimination means. It's not discrimination in the sense if how that word is usually used, for instance minorities aren't being offered different prices.
Lots of things airlines do are partly for price discrimination. One big example would be advanced purchase and Saturday stay over fares, which tend to cause business travelers to pay more for tickets. On the FF side, an example would be not giving any or full miles on some discounted tickets, so that many FFers will buy more expensive fares in order to get the miles. One could analyze this as a bundles sale too, and treat flight versus flight and miles combination as different products being offered for sale, of course at different prices.