<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Efrem:
Expecting airlines to maintain current award levels for current miles is like expecting a store to maintain its current prices if you use a gift certificate you already had when the price went up. Neither makes sense. If you buy a $40 gift certificate to get a coffee maker and its price goes to $45 before you get it, do you get upset? Of course not. It's the same with airline miles.</font>
While I agree with MOST of your statement, I think this is a bad analogy. It is "reasonably" safe to expect that the cost of the coffee maker will be influenced by the general market value of coffee makers in the market. In the case of FF miles, there is no necessary correlation between the "price" of a reward in FF miles and the general market price of the same trip/upgrade in real dollars. So the airline is not constrained by the price they are offering to the general market and are free to inflate the cost in reward points while remaining competative (or even slashing the price) in dollar terms.