I'm going to have to be on their side on this one. While it's not as generous as any other program out there, I don't think that's their point. It's just a program to reward those buying the last minute higher fare tickets more than the "cockroach" crowd. When I can pay $330 for a ticket and get 37K miles in my account (not a mileage run -- this was a standard vacation trip I planned 6 months ago and some bonuses came up since then), the airline is asking for trouble. Having a revenue based model more accurately reflects the awards based on the revenue someone has given to the airline. I get the same thing on my rewards points at the grocery store -- it's not how long I sit in the store or which brands of cereal I buy, just the amount of money I spend.

For your average person, that's very easy to understand. We might all be experts in going to the Great Circle Mapper and figuring out the exact mileage for our routing to ensure we hit whatever goal we're looking for, but face it -- we're severely in the minority. They want something easy for your everyday traveler to understand. I didn't see if they did, but family pooling of points would get them even more family leisure travelers, so that's definately something they should do.

The 12 month limitation is probably a message from their finance and accounting group. I get the same thing from mine if I have any outstanding liabilities that are going to be hanging out there for too long -- they want to make sure these will be cleared off the books within 12 months whether used or not. There's nothing too restrictive about it -- someone flying enough (since they don't have any other partners at the moment to get points another way) to get a free ticket is flying enough to use it. It makes perfect sense in this program to use your awards as soon as you get them (or as soon as you get two if you want long-haul when that comes available).

I know it's not like the other programs we run into, but that doesn't necessarily make it evil. People will take less benefit to have something they can understand. I think we've all seen that when trying to explain to people why they should sign up for whatever program they'll be flying with, and they just complain that it's too hard.