I tend to disagree with what you said, at least generally. I think the main purpose of an airline loyalty program as far as crediting for flights and giving benefits while traveling is to encourage that for those flights that do occur, that they happen on the airline in question. That is, they're NOT primarily designed to create air travel that otherwise wouldn't occur but for the loyalty program. We know that the latter category does happen, and the carriers I'm sure are aware of it to some extent and certainly wouldn't discourage it or be unhappy about it, but I doubt it's any significant input into their planning models.