My contract (and those of colleagues) expressly states they are the property of the company and can only be redeemed on business flights and absolutely cannot be used personally.

However in practice, they can't really enforce this because to do so would involve an employee opening up a personal account to them (my EC account is in my name, not the company) and we could refuse this. I maintain it is no different to the company asking to see your personal bank statements and I would refuse this too.

Also they seem to accept it is impossible in practice to redeem on many, many flights at <3 months to departure so is not really feasible either.