And I believe it does show the lowest possible rates for nearly all of the 12000+ country-pair combinations it now holds data on. There may be some missing data points but it is hard to know given that Delta continues to change the numbers.

There has been plenty of (understandable) kvetching among the blogs about Delta's ongoing award pricing BS. But I don't recall having seen any blog looking at this particular angle that could work against DL:

Dynamic Pricing of Award Tickets - Can It Bite the Airlines As Well As Benefit Them?

The Gate is one of the few really good blogs on BA with consistently good content and great writing quality, IMHO.

Right idea, wrong content, in my view.

It really is very simple. When Delta is offering a fixed 1c per mile for redemptions, any sane person will move across to cashback credit cards. Even earning from flights, it becomes easy to see what the miles are worth and factor that into a price comparison. This is all bad for Delta.

Meanwhile, those J seats fly empty (no-one is paying 800,000 miles for them) and SkyMiles members are livid. Way to go.

When you take away the aspirational awards of J/F, the scheme has no sizzle. There are good reasons why there are no FT-size forums dedicated to grocery or department store loyalty schemes.

Fewer than a dozen examples in almost a year. Sounds about right.

Are the seats really flying empty? Is it all that hard to put a seat on sale - either points or cash - to fill it?

And yet there are communities around coupon clipping and they are every bit as passionate as this one is. :-:

Isn't much of online coupon clipping debate 'gamification' though? Much of it seems to be based around when you can use multiple coupons on the same product, get a coupon accepted for a different product to the one bought etc.

I know how much traction the UK Nectar scheme has online (virtually none, despite being the currency of the 2nd biggest supermarket chain) and that is down to its '0.5p per point' redemption rate.

I don't think it's right or wrong, the above and the possible award mistake fare issue are separate matters.

In any case, it was nice to see something fresh on the subject.

Not to mention, Delta has started to "experiment" with (international) buy-ups with OLCI and Kiosks. Mostly aligned to the $750 or 75K SkyMiles model. Perhaps, they will even move to a KLM model ex-AMS (and globally) where everything is upgradable in multiple fashions.

But, in any event, I still believe and the data-points seem to point to the fact that the vast majority of folks want to redeem "cheap" domestic award tickets. As long as Delta still offers some of those (perhaps via sales, even if pegged towards 1cent per mile) the 99% of the population will be happy.

Just booked this yesterday, for a week from now.

http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p...ps0ft9hmvw.png


If Delta, can find away to keep "throwing bones," like above. The general public hardly care, IMHO.


Well, there is a good reason why there are hardly any good forums dedicated to Casino Loyalty Programs. :D

Frequent Miler has some really good credit card rankings and assessments recently. As he notes still a work in progress in some areas but I found it all very useful...

http://frequentmiler.boardingarea.co...k-in-progress/

http://frequentmiler.boardingarea.co...airline-cards/

Just hate that this topic has fallen off the front page. I've been in Asia on business so I haven't been able to read as many other blogs as I typically do, just wanted to get this topic back on the front page.

This is the tagline of my blog:

An eclectic journey through the Travel Miles/Points blogosphere

Hope Travel Is Free gets back into it soon...

Enjoyed this post by PFD sticking up for MMS a bit: https://saverocity.com/pfdigest/in-p...-mile-secrets/

Is/was there a FT poll for best travel blogs, by categories (e.g. milepoints, business FFs, trip reports, etc)? I'd enjoy seeing these FT opinions quantified.

I like the photos on The Shutter Whale blog.

Me too! His pictures are excellent. Looking forward to meeting up with him when I move to Singapore next month to shoot together.