Originally Posted by
tangey
I wonder in the case of children, might a fairer system be that the ticket purchaser be given the option as to whether a particular flight accrues against his account or the account of the child. If would allow the loyalty to be more directly applied to the person showing the loyalty, and might for example, offer the opportunity to hit a lifetime gold or whatever, which would be a long term reward.
The conventional approach of frequent flyer schemes has always been to reward the person who's travelling, not the person who's buying the ticket. While there are obviously arguments for rewarding the person who's choosing and paying rather than simply the person who's flying, which have long been debated, it's always been recognised that the passenger may not be the person making the choice and that hasn't deflected the bulk of FF schemes from sticking to the conventional approach.
Every argument for rewarding the person making the choice is one that applies in exactly the same way to more than those choosing for and paying for the travel of children. It applies (probably most of all) to those whose companies or clients choose and pay for their travel. It also applies to many spouses and partners, because in many households one spouse will have responsibility for choosing and paying with the other one not knowing and/or not caring. It also applies to those who have responsibility for booking travel for groups, or for elderly relatives, etc etc etc.
There doesn't seem to me to be any good reason for singling out the parents of children for a special rule.