The problem I have with little articles like this, which are not real economic studies, is that the articles assume that getting miles from flying are still the most significant source of mileage accumulation. A few hours on Flyertalk or any miles blog would have shown them that the mileage game is mostly credit card sign-ups and various manufactured spend transactions. With respect to credit card sign-ups, the most miles can be obtained from exploring a program that a person has not previously used, which creates disloyalty by the consumer.

I think there are plenty of interesting economic studies that can be done regarding these programs, namely the consequences of the change itself from rewarding frequent spending instead of frequent flying, the airlines using the selling of miles as a fixed income revenue source, and the deflationary effect of the miles that occurs when the market is flooded with them (both the obvious issue of the lack of seat availability at lower reward levels and the imposition of greater cash penalties when dealing with using miles).

Since miles from flying are not as important of a source of total mileage accumulation, I do not think that the honey trap effect of consumers choosing to fly one airline over another is as great as the authors believe.