<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Tino:
Here's a thought:
The absolute worst outcome is if UAL gets broken up somehow, and another airline would like to acquire their FF accounts, but not at the full value (of X trillion miles).
The acquiring airline takes the FF accts, but then offers a 5-to-1 or a 10-to-1 conversion into their existing program. AwardGuard buyers lose both their money and almost all of their miles.
Even valued at a penny or less apiece, this liability is MASSIVE. For an airline like American or Northwest, obtaining "FFlyer loyalty" at the potential cost of billions of dollars is a sucker's bet. If the flying public decided to cash out at the pre-conversion rates, even at standard awards, the planes would be flying full of freeloaders.</font>
The fatal flaw of your theory is that you forget that award seats are capacity controlled, so there's not much chance that an airline taking over the miles would have planes full of freeloaders unless they wanted it that way ...