Originally Posted by avflyer

The logic here implies that people should fly say 2x, 3x or 4x as much in order to redeem an award because the price of fuel has double, tripled or quadrupled. In fact the OPs math is flawed. The price of the tickets (used to build award an award inventory of points) should reflect the cost of travel. The ability to earn points to be used toward award travel is an incentive to fly a particular carrier to begin with.

There are a great many things I like about flying on DL and using my AMEX card. The most important benefit for me is the ability to earn points and use them to fly when not flying for business. This usually means flying my family overseas during the kids school vacation. In exchange for this, Delta and Amex see "profitable" business from me. If Delta dramatically changes my expectations regarding this by making such travel impossible or by upping the amount they charge in either points or extra booking surcharges, then my loyalty to Delta will be dramatically affected which would be a shame since they already "own" me.