Loyalty program is really bad sometime. There are so many examples about it. I booked my flight to Wellington from Auckland during this weekend. I am going to fly with Qantas, the total fares is 206NZD, which is really cheap. At this point as the airfare is really cheap I do not expect to earn any points with QF. However, I found out QF has a minimum earning rate, which means it doesn’t matter how short you are going to fly or how much you have you paid for the airfare, you will earn 1000 points minimum per flight (If I got it right). So that is a bonus for me to earn points on that cheap airfare. On the other hand, there’s Air New Zealand, NZ’s fare to Wellington from Auckland is 186NZD one way then you can earn points, and there is another low air fare, which is about $60/70 less, but you can’t earn points.(still expensive than QF’s lowest airfare) I have got both *A membership with SK and OW with QF, at this point I can take QF and NZ, it doesn’t matter to me at all. However, for those people who only have *membership what they are going to do? Are they going to take QF flight or NZ flight? To choose the cheapest airfare, cheapest *A airfare or the airfare that can earn points. I think sometimes the Loyalty program mix up our mind. I’m sure in this situation there will be people willing to pay more to fly NZ to earn points. That is a good choice or not? I’m really interesting to know what other people think about this.

I am also concerned about other airliner’s loyalty program. I’m sure there are a lot of people in the world have airline’s FF membership no matter which airline they choose. People are trying very very hard to earn airline points on their credit card, home lone, shopping and other stuff. Each month and year their airline Loyalty program balance has a big number. Simple, everyone wants free travel. And that is what airline’s loyalty designed for, and that is how they make money, lock in their customers in, if you want get free travel then you have to join in our program and fly with us or our partner airlines. At end of the day, when passengers want to redeem their points to airline tickets, it becomes a big problem for them, because they can’t get seats. For each flight there are only so many seats for reward tickets. For example let’s say on CX 107 HKG-AKL there are only 10 seats available for redeeming. And there are many people have OW membership and they are qualified for CX107 from HKG-AKL. Sometime CX107 can be really busy that means in this world who are qualified are trying to get these 10 seats. So who is getting those seats? Well not all those people will get it, but for those who have Gold or Silver membership with OW will get those seats first. I’m very sure there are more basic members than Gold and Silver members. So what is the chance for basic member/normal people to redeem free travel? Personally I had membership with CX, CA and NZ I have had free travel; ADL-AKL, HKG-XIY, FRA-TXL and AKL-BNE. However these routs are less popular and so much easier to get it, they got confirmed right away. I was just lucky because I travelled to those places. How about those busy routs such as AKL-LHR, LHR-LAX or other busy routs? May be the airline FF is not make for people like me who doesn’t travel often during year, but suddenly travel heaps within a few month. I think joined in airline’s FF is a mistake for me. I think from now on I should just grab anything cheap. These days airfares are getting expensive as oil price have gone up quite a lot, should be start to think get cheap tickets rather than expensive tickets with airpoints? I’m already having an idea, which is not to use my FF membership but only choice the cheap ticket; even got enough points but still hard to redeem them, so……

These are all my options if I said any wrong or not quite right please point it out.