Originally Posted by
cruisr
The FF program as originally designed by AA and copied by all got completely out of control in terms of numbers of ways to accumulate miles and numbers of miles out there. I personally in a 5 year period never flew DL and was able to get over 195K miles thru various other promotions. Is that the original intention of the Skymiles program. \
No question. The fact is that one of the major causes of these devaluations is the breadth of the ST Alliance and the tremendous added demand (and cost) of integrating these frequent flyers.
It has been written many times how the ST Alliance is a two-way street, how CO ff's also benefit because we can book travel on so many other ST airlines. That is, in some respects self evident, except to the extent that not all passengers require itineraries on many of the international carriers.
In other words, many passengers from ST airlines are taking CO inventory while many CO passengers, now shut out of this CO inventory will never have a need for inventory on the ST partners.