Originally Posted by
VikingXNL
But there’s one angle in this whole discussion that almost no one is touching, and it’s the one with the biggest financial impact. Irrational loyalty doesn’t just affect which airline I choose. It affects how I fly. Concrete example: I purposely route AMS-CDG-XYZ because that extra segment gives me extra XP. I do this every single trip. From AFKL’s perspective that’s an extra flight that costs money to operate, but from my perspective it’s the optimal XP route.
I suspect this is so marginal that it becomes irrelevant. Since no airline I know of switched to per-trip earnings instead of per-segment earnings, it doesn't seem to be an issue. It's more of a Flyertalk behaviour than something general public would engage in.
I sometimes do double transfers not for XP but because it's the only way to force AFKL's booking engine to put me on the flight I want 😂