Originally Posted by Steve M

Fascinating thread. I'm replying only now because I didn't see this until today (reference by another thread). I would assume that this is kaput.

But I can infer one thing from the fact that such a program even got to the trial stage: Amex recognizes that there's a major perceived issue with USA MR having two of the three major legacy carriers not participate, and was trying to find some way to address that problem. There's no way that such a program could get even to the trial stage without them knowing that there was potential for abuse (well, at least arbitrage) that would kill the program. They took it to trial anyway. Even on a limited trial basis, such an undertaking would cost at least in the low millions of dollars to put together, and that's not counting the potential liability if enough people figured out ways to maximize the value. They had to have thought that it was an important-enough problem to be worth spending the money and taking the risk of a trial. And considering that we've not heard a peep of it since, I would guess that the trial ended up as we'd guess: enough people figured out how to maximize the value to make it too expensive to roll out on a wider basis.