I was in a casino the other day and used my players card to buy a meal and beverages, and it got me thinking, why don't airlines do the same with miles?
Of course the casino has some crazy formula of like 400 points equals a dollar, but why can't airlines come up with similar?
This allows some use of FF miles without actually using them for flying...and using miles for flights isn't always easy or seems impossible at times.
Why not 100 miles to a dollar?
So you get a drink for 700 miles or so...no cash out of your pocket and the airline is doing less mileage upgrades and free flights less often and passengers are getting a new perk with their miles.
They swipe your FF card just like a credit card

Not everyone has a billion miles or is a plat flyer

Whereas this sounds like a great idea, I see some technical issues arising from it.

First of all, there would have to be a way to establish a connection between the machine onboard the aircraft and the airline's central computers, where the FF program information is stored. I know credit card machines can communicate with their respective credit card issuers in-flight, but credit and debit cards usually have overdraft protection and all of that.

Mileage accounts, as far as I know, are not real-time updated and it usually takes a few hours or even days to post mileage credits or debits to any given account. Let's suppose that someone has 5,500 miles and is taking a 2-hour flight, which will give him another 1,000 miles credit to his FF account. He decides to be upgraded and prior to departure he only has 500 miles left on his account, even though the computers wouldn't have posted the debit for the upgrade by the time he takes off -- thus still showing 5,500 miles balance. On board the aircraft, our passenger gets a few extra drinks and ends up spending more than 1,500 miles (which would be his actual balance, after the upgrade is posted). At the end, his mileage account would have a negative balance and how would the airline sort it out? Would they sell him a block of 1,000 miles and automatically charge his credit card?

Another thing is that many FF cards are plain plastic cards and don't have a magnetic strip or a chip implanted on them. So, if airline miles would have cash value to be exchanged for something, airlines would have to treat them as money and get more serious about it. Therefore, they would have to issue cards with magnetic strip and/or chip (spending money with this) and not accept paper cards to protect their customers accounts.

Like I said, overall I think it's a great idea, but I'm just trying to see it from a different point of view and learn what problems could possibly impede this from actually working.

As this concerns use of airline miles, please follow in our MilesBuzz forum. Ocn Vw 1K, Moderator, TravelBuzz.

Actually, I suspect that CC transactions on planes are handled through batch processing. That is, everyone's cards are swiped onboard, but the transactions aren't sent to the CC processor until the plane lands. Many large stores do the same thing- rather then keep sending all the transactions individually, they are batched together every hour or so and sent to the processor together.

An airline that wanted to go this route with FF miles would probably use the same batch process. Not sure though how discrepancies would be handled though.

Perhaps a better way to handle the whole issue would be to let people purchase coupons online using miles, print the vouchers out and then bring them on board. It would require some preplanning on the customer's part, but at least gives customers an option.

I'm not sure there's much demand to use miles on board. Most items being sold onboard are less then $10 or so (excluding duty free) and I generally consider my miles to be more valuable then that.

Definitely. Airlines could use upselling techniques and offer (i.e. at check in) their customers vouchers for buy-on-board food, snacks and drinks.
For those who travel a lot, their miles are more valuable to be redeemed for upgrades or flights, but for those who only travel a couple times a year, exchanging miles for BOB items may be a good deal, since many people take 3 years or even longer to accrue enough miles for a domestic reward ticket.

This could also be handled via the web when you do a web check in, you could designate that you want to buy a meal with cash or miles and the cash can be charged at the time or mile deducted at the time of purchase. Could do the same for drinks and you just print out your drink coupon or meal voucher (could be used on any flight on say 12 months). Would also help with meal planning if the flight knew that they needed 47 salads 12 hours in advance.

You can now designate baggage and pay for first class upgrades online in advance so why not food or drink? OP has a good idea.