sfosenkid

Here is a link to a recent article on Spiegel Online about the tremendous growth of the combined mileage account balances of all frequent flyers... The author claims that airlines might not have the free capacity for all the award flights that people might to claim -- and that they would consequently make miles essentilly useless.

This article is in German only... but I'm sure enough people of this message board are German and can read it

What do you all think of this?

--sfosenkid

http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/0,1518,195326,00.html

ralfkrippner

Scary. I hope it's not as drastic as they write...

Das torkelnde Meilen-Monster

Eine neue Währungs-Krise könnte schon bald die Ersparnisse von Millionen Menschen ruinieren. Misswirtschaft und verantwortungslose Manager drohen das zweitwichtigste Zahlungsmittel der Welt zu entwerten. Nein, die Rede ist nicht vom Euro - sondern von Vielfliegermeilen.

...

Geschätzte hundert Millionen Menschen haben sich inzwischen 8,5 Billionen (8.500.000.000.000) Meilen erflogen und diese auf ihren Konten gebunkert.



Hoffnungslos ist hingegen der Fall jenes britischen Verlagsmanagers, den der "Economist" zum ultimativen Vielflieger kürte: Der Mann ließ die komplette Portokasse seines Unternehmens über seine Meilen produzierende private Kreditkarte laufen. Die angehäuften 25 Millionen Meilen wird er vermutlich nie wieder los.





[This message has been edited by ralfkrippner (edited 05-10-2002).]

The-Longhauler

SAS recently made an official statement about the value of points by the customers...
and the problems of cashing them in.

Check this posts:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum42/HTML/000612.html

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum42/HTML/000615.html

HajoFlyer

Plain plagiarism!

Sounds directly copied from the Economist article last week.

Akki

Rather a lot of coverage lately:

Economist (printed edition): May 4th, p. 68
"Fly me to the moon - The earning and spending of frequent-flyer miles has become a big business—perhaps too big"
http://www.economist.com/business/di...ory_id=1112721

Economist (online edition): May 2nd
"Frequent-flyer economics - One of the world's main currencies is heading for a fall"
http://www.economist.com/business/di...ory_id=1109840
(subscribers only)
[both with reference to InsideFlyer]

And some general notes on ff programs in
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: May 8th, p. R4
"www.vielflieger"
[with reference to - among others - "Spoons of the air" at http://www.loeffel-der-luefte.de/ ]

FAZ.net: May 7th
"Meilensegen für die Mailadresse"
http://www.faz.net/IN/INtemplates/fa...-C0F29652AE27}


Not to forget the Spiegel article sfosenkid started this topic with.

peter42

There was an article too in the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung" on 12/05/02 and an interesting evaluation of M&M in this month German Business Traveller magazine.

sfosenkid

I think LH is better positioned than
most other mileage programs -- cause
the miles of their base members
still expire after 3 years.

However, it's hard to say what percentage
of miles comes from base members and
what percentage from status members
(whose miles don't expire)...

Uli

i also have no general problem to book LH awards flights as a SEN. very simple. also they actively help you on getting seats on their partner airlines.
i would suggest to anyone not to grow their mileage account to the max limit as for sure the value of miles will gradually decrease over the next time. there will still be some occasions in which we can accrue miles very quickly, but we should not wait too long before spending them.

peter42

Devaluation already took place for upgrade e.g..

curt

... which was offset by the higher mileage earning ability! Please peter, don't flock that old, dead horse again!

peter42

Not quite Curt, C->F Asia went up 100% in 2 years (from 30k to 60k), mileage earning increased by 25%...

Another example is the * award chart, AU-NZ in I went from 35 to 45k etc.

WaltherVonDerVogelweide

IMO, it became much more difficult to get LH award seats recently (especially F to the US).

flysurfer

Really? There was plenty of availability throughout the year at the beginning of 2006. I have 3 F award legs between MUC and LAX in April 2006 and January 2007, all booked or rebooked this January. But with the soccer carnival and summer travel season approaching, it's actually not so easy to find cheap revenue seats. Flights are packed.

weero

Isn't this about the third time, Der Spiegel comes up with some apocalyptic
scenarios on how the FFPs, the nuke, and the Internet will end civilization
as we know it?
The redemption rates have been very constant, at least LH does claim so.
Three years ago they claimed that the FFPs allocate about 8% of the capacity,
so I don't reallt see where the risk should come from.

Unlimited lifetime of the miles, however were introducte to lower the pressure
on the airlines for redemption. Most US carriers claim that they have less
complaints (obviously) and lower peak redemption thanks to the unlimited
lifetime.

So except for the annual LH rip-off festival, I don't really subscribe to the
scenario.

andre1970

Very good insight weero. Unlimited lifetime should not ne viewed as a perk only. It also helps the airlines to better manage award allocation.