Originally Posted by
TravelerMSY
It still works, IMO, but it’s much harder on the redemption side. You’re only going to get outsized value if you’re a pensioner or work from home and can travel on slow days.
On the other hand, the earning side is much easier, with tons of credit cards and MS opportunities. I’m much better off this way, than actually having to fly for them.
One new thing is the frequent business class sale fares. Pay with bank points at 1.5 and you’re getting the award chart of 5 years ago, net of whatever points your earn on the paid ticket, And no availability issues.
I think DL is showing how not-having-a-chart can really be a significant stealth devaluation that upsets the calculations on mileage value. On the free-ticket side, I'm seeing a lot more steep increases (even for times that are off-peak) vs. cuts.
Credit cards and MS are also not the kind of thing you're likely to see the average person doing. I've always maintained that a big part of the reason the FF programs got to be successful is that the INfrequent flyers could hope that maybe they could get enough points for something (like a free trip to Hawaii) after a decade or so of collecting them. That's certainly not like it was.
So arguably we're in the worst of both worlds: Rising award levels demanded (if for no other reason than there's less transparency and less competition), far fewer RDMs for flying on most fares, yet large numbers of miles minted via credit cards still putting pressure on the unredeemed miles vs. available seats situation. Which adds pressure for even more devaluations.