Much like any "deal" FF programs are based upon people not using the benefits they accrue - and to be sure they are few for people who travel infrequently. Similarly "gift cards". Apparently some 20% go unused, which is why they are so heavily marketed.

But if you're me, you get great value out of airline status and multiple FF programs. As with everything in life, YMMV...

I started becoming a miles geek in 1990 when I started having to fly in a freelance small business. Using a free or leisure-fare ticket often made the difference between a reasonably profitable business trip vs. a mere free/subsidized excuse to travel. Years later, I continued to learn from the big-league commercial travelers on FT about SWUs, alliances, etc.

For years I ignored hotel-points programs in favor of earning FF miles for hotel stays until I wised up in 2000 via an award of 20K Starpoints for opening an E-Trade brokerage account. Nowadays I much prefer to earn hotel points over FF miles because most hotel chains make it easy to get the promised free hotel rooms with minimal BS! Also, I need hotel rooms even when I travel by car or train.

In conclusion, the main thing I find scammy about FF programs is that, several months in advance, an airline will readily sell >=9 seats at the lowest revenue fare, yet say with a straight face that NO Low-miles seats are available!

Ignorant versus savvy could be the title of thread. Wow.

Airlines know that the the vast majority of travelers will have limited use of the few miles they accrue. Most restrict pooling, place a number of restrictions of redemptions, and charge exorbitant fees. And therefore it makes sense for them to push their mediocre credit cards (like Delta with the 25k) accompanied by rhetoric about being able to get a free flight, when in reality, it is simply another way for them to earn more. So yes, mileage programs are a scam for the vast majority of airline FF members. And it only isn't so for those of us who know how to game the system or for those who actually fly a hell of a lot.

A lot of loyalty programs seem to exist simply to annoy the customer. For many people, sure, it's a scam. The airlines apparently do not know or care that if you make people jump through all these hoops, you have effectively barred many older people, busy people, etc. from being able to use the benefits. I have benefit but it's a lot of work. My family and friends have expressed to me their feelings of being cheated by their airline loyalty programs. Some have apparently NEVER cashed out a free trip. Not once. Ever. If I did not manage my husband and my best friend's accounts for them, they would have never cashed out any free trips. And that's enough work for me. I can't take on the job of handling the account of everyone I know! So, while I think the article is just SEO link bait, trying to create a false controversy to get a lot of links back to his site, I also recognize the grain of truth there.

We who are very knowledgeable about how to use miles don't remember how difficult it was to learn how to earn and also how to burn. Frankly, for most people, the time spent managing a miles or points account might be better spent on a project that allows them to earn cash rather than miles or points.

Which is actually one reason I like the SPG program... you can get a meaningful award for as little as 1200 points (category 1 C&P), whereas with a US-based airline program, you need a minimum of 25,000 miles. The first time I ever stepped on a commercial airline flight, I was visiting colleges. My travel agent said I should sign up for a frequent flyer program, and my thought was "yeah, whatever... I'm going to fly three times a year, at 2k-3k miles round trip, earning 6k-9k miles per year. It's going to take 3-4 years for a simple ticket. Is it even worth it?

Your comment leads to a joke, although it's not all that funny: What's worth more: A UA mile or an AA mile? Answer: Neither. A mile in any program is worthless. Now, if we're comparing the value of 150k miles in either program, that is an interesting conversation :)

Yep. There is a travel board I frequent and there are often complaints about US Airways card, those 25K points and unpleasant discoveries about how hard it is to get that free ticket.

I wouldn't go as far as to say that is an interesting conversation, but it is certainly a more useful one.

In response to the OP:

I used Southwest's Rapid Rewards program before I started really getting into maximizing credit card bonuses and such. Even though I accrued miles slowly, it was nice to get a free round trip every 18 months or so. Southwest is pretty easy as you can book any seat with miles at any time and the miles required are tied to the price of the ticket. And you really just have to put in your Rapid Rewards Number when booking or input your prior confirmation numbers every once in a while. In my experience, WN's Rapid Rewards program is highly worthwhile even as a casual traveler.

More on topic, their current bonus offers 2 free flights or 50,000 miles. This is really worth more than two free round trips in my experience as most of the round trip flights I take end up being 20-22k miles. And as mentioned before have no blackout dates or restrictions, so points are as good as cash when booking on WN.

In any case, this is clearly just an article to drive traffic, which is why I didn't click.

This article also assumes that people have no common sense. As a student, I didn't need anyone telling me that if I generally book my tickets on one airline (AA at the time), make sure the miles don't expire, and are flexible about where/when I go, I can use them for something cool. Being a novice at the time, I was still able to celebrate graduating from grad school with a lovely vacation to Samoa and Fiji.

Things become complicated when people think that without actually flying or doing proper due diligence, that they can get credit cards and the like and pull of awesome feats. Indeed, I made that mistake with the BA card, not realizing that there were absurd fuel surcharges.

We can get credit cards/bank accounts/etc. and pull off awesome feats, but it's because we have some strain of geekery that makes us spend hours on this forum for fun and relaxation :D.

Bandana has reminded me of the "exorbitant fees!" Why should there be a $130 fee to transfer 10K miles to a friend or family member, which are worth $200 maximum in the first place?? With money, my friend & I can walk into a store together to buy a $30 item with his/her $10 bill & charging $20 to my credit card.
Another reason I prefer Hyatt, Marriott, & Radisson: fee-free transfers of points without even the white lie required by Qantas that the receiver is my cousin!

Eh. I'm one of the folks stuck nibbling at crumbs right now- long story involving identity theft and a credit hard freeze making it hard to convince spouse to do any credit card churning these days- and I still feel like the article is BS.

The credit card companies and loyalty programs aren't going to give people freebies just for the heck of it. But you can either play the churn game hard and get rewards quickly, or figure out the best passive earning options and pick up a nice bennie here and there for spending you'd do anyways.

The advertising might be a bit of a distortion, but the benefits are still very real and can accumulate into something interesting, even if you're "stuck" with an underperforming rewards card like we are.

(And now I'll migrate back to underneath my rock in S.P.A.M to look for the next Family Dollar-Coke Points-Priority Club points loophole situation.)

The article author's premise is that everyone should run like crazy from mileage programs and that simply using cash (instead of chasing miles/points) leads to more rational economic decisions. He uses unsophisticated mileage program participants as an example, but his thinking probably has some applicability to all of us. Miles/points are mostly a marketing tool. The airlines get cash from selling miles to credit card companies and the like, and they allow the miles to be redeemed for seats that would otherwise go unfilled. The redeeming passengers, in order to feel good about the redemptions, simply increase their overall travel budgets (thereby negating any real cash savings or economic benefit). Overstock.com learned long ago that selling a lamp for $29.99 and claiming that the lamp retails elsewhere for $119.99 produces more satisfaction to the customer than if the customer finds the same lamp at Big Lots for $29.99 and Big Lots has always sold that lamp for $29.99. Redeeming miles for a first class trip to Athens Greece just feels better than buying a cash ticket to Athens, Georgia (USA), even though the overall cash vacation expenditures on the international vacation are a lot more than the USA vacation. My premise is that once someone accumulates a lot of miles, he will want to use those miles on vacations that are a lot more expensive than the vacations that he would take if he paid for everything (including the flights) in cash. He effectively spends more cash than he otherwise would in order to get the full "value" out of his miles. A person who has spent funds to acquire his miles is also more willing to incur fees such as international taxes when redeeming the miles. The amount he has spent acquiring the miles is a sunk cost and he is trapped into incurring more expenditures to salvage the full value of the miles, allowing the airlines to play Gotcha - Give Us Fees to Use Your Miles. So I am not entirely certain that the author may not be correct in his conclusion, even for more sophisticated accumulators of miles. How often does someone spend less on total travel costs than if mileage programs did not exist? The experiences of international travel may well be worth it, but the true cash economic value of the miles may not be as significant as many propose. Just my thoughts, feel free to drill me along with Chris.

But you can pull off "an awesome feat" without actually flying, and Avios are awesome if you use them right.

Ah, I agree that there are awesome feats without flying, it just takes some amount of research (i.e., time on this forum). I did eventually learn how to use those Avios--for AA domestic travel--but I needed this forum to learn. My point was just that a person who doesn't know what they are doing might sign up for a card like the $95 BA one, thinking they can get two "free" tickets to Europe, when one in fact needs greater creativity.

AA 77W F to deep South America is an example, or DFW-HNL flights.