Originally Posted by ani90

My opinion is that miles do not need cessation of an airlines operations to become worthless- Indeed I would argue that the majority of miles in circulation are already worthless - they will never be exchanged for airline flights, cannot be exchanged for cash, cannot be bartered for other products and will disappear into oblivion when the holder dies.

Many of us have miles here and there in different FF accounts, much similar to having several bank accounts, but you cannot consolidate your miles to spend them and little quantities of miles standing alone are of no use as they cannot be exchanged for flights or goods. Even those with large quantities of miles do not necesarily use them and there are numerous flyers on this board who have had balances in excess of 500K, some with acconut balances running in millions, for several years running.

While the airlines accept miles as currency, they make it very difficult for flyers to spend miles unless the flyer is ready to adapt his/her itinerary to whatever rules the airlines prescribe. These rules are constantly revised in a way that ensures only a minority proportion of miles will ever be redeeemed - as flyers adapt and find ways to redeeem more miles, the airlines adapt and make the rules even more restrictive so flyers can no longer use miles as easily. In this way the airlines control the amount of miles that are redeeemed, and yet can continue to dish out millions each day knowing the miles cannot and will never be redeemed. Is that not a big scam? It is like being given a cheque you cannot cash.

If miles were simply exchangeable as cash in any transactions with airlines, then the true level of the scam will be realised as the airlines will collapse because they will not be able to honor the trillions of miles they have put in circulation. They cannot redeeem the trillions of miles in circulation because they never intended to do so. So the solution is to make it as difficult or near imposiible to redeem the miles.

Last year I made 5 attempts to use miles and was only successful in one. But I am not complaining though - personally for me the benefits of an FF program are not the miles but the benefits associated with being an elite. Nevertheless, unless one has a very adaptable or flexible life, I would agree there is great similarity to the unwitting customer accumulating miles in an FF program and the investor in a pyramid scheme, both are investing in schemes where there is really no desire or strong intention (on the part of the airline or scheme) to see your investment succed.