sosafan

I respectfully disagree.

sdsearch

Actually, the reason it's not any more misleading now than before is because there has never been any "obvious" meaning to airline "miles". If you ask the average person on the street (or even on the plane), they're as likely to think that if they have 2500 airline miles, they can take a flight that flies 2500 miles. So the whole meaning of miles as something that you redeem in a way that nothing do with miles has been misleading (to many) from the beginning.

You probably can't remember to how you first learned what miles meant, and so you're not from that perspective. The only reason it seems misleading to you is because you got used to miles meaning one thing and now they're going to mean something else (in some cases). But you probably forget that the meaning of miles was not obvious to you before you started into collecting them.

Meanwhile, even if you know that the meaning of miles is on the earning side rather than the redeeming side, how useful is it still, when some airlines give you cabin and/or status bonuses (that mean you get far more than 1 airline mile per mile flown), while other airlines pay only a tiny fraction of the mileage flown on the lowest fares (if any at all on the very lowest fares! ).

So if the meaning of airline "miles" was ever anything more than an arbitrary unit of (supposed) value, that must have been very long ago indeed (before anything that I mentioned in the previous paragraph started).

Kagehitokiri

its kind of following in footsteps of capitalone
and at least one airline says they want most miles to be from credit cards

after first creating award levels up to millions of miles for a flight

BUT they do still use miles for status, i guess targeting incremental/status runs

drminn

You are correct, just semantics:

Se-man-tics : the branch of linguistics and logic concerned with meaning.

BearX220

Nobody dials a phone anymore, but a lot of people still say, "Dial that number" or "Aargh, I misdialed." Hardly anybody plays vinyl records any more, but the needle-screech sound effect is universal code for disruption.

I've already wasted too much time thinking about this. Get over it.

RustyC

...Which makes the use of a term that's a unit of distance misleading. If they had just started up the programs anew with the late 2016 framework would they be calling the units miles?

Yes, it's semantics, but language matters. For example, there's a whole debate over in /PR about whether to call it "Islamic terrorism" or something else that boils down to a battle over language and what to name something, and the arguments have to do with how people react to the name and what happens as a result.

I realize there are bigger problems in the world, but in this case you've got a legacy term creating a confusion that just happens to run in the airlines' favor (via making the majority of flyers continuing to think something is distance-based when it's not, and more rewarding for most than it actually is).

Once again, if it were going the other way (i.e. holding onto the legacy term would be creating confusion that's NOT beneficial to the airlines), you can bet your bottom dollar the airlines would be more pro-active in updating it.

outoftown

I have never owned a Honda automobile since the local dealers wanted a "Limited Supply Charge" of $600 or so when I was shopping in the late 80's. Even trying to buy used models, I had to explain to owners that no, their car was not a limited edition model, there was no such thing, that it was a dealer add-on charge they paid. Explaining miles/points to the clueless is best done by saying it is an alternative currency, giving the approximate value in what they understand. I have had people think the miles are worth the travel distance, like 500 miles means they can fly 500 miles for free. To explain why I save Coke caps, I just say they are worth about a dime each (actually $.133 using Amazon $10 GC for 225 pts at 3pts per cap). Miles to me is such an esoteric term, does it really matter that it has shifted to a more points-type denotation?

-outoftown, posting from Lebanon, KY

PG

The term "miles" has been pervasive, so I doubt if it is going to go away.

For some of us who don't shell out megabucks, the new earning structure has been massively devalued so the terms SkyPesos or AirRupees seem more appropriate.

RustyC

Yep. Quite a difference from 1992 and trying to piece together inefficient itins segment-by-segment on easySABRE command lines. It was ridiculously labor intensive and hit lots of dead ends, but I'd get the occasional gem like ATL-CVG-MSP-SLC-LAS and v.v. at $202 with upgrades on all the segments.

It did occur to me then that someday the ability to do all that could get easy enough and widespread enough that airlines would shut it down (My mom even said "If they ever figure out how much money they're losing on you they'll get rid of it in an instant!") but OTOH the whole credit-card bit didn't exist then, either, and that game is still going.

Moral: You have to find a game with high barriers to entry, or with enough study and skill required that the average person won't be able to do. The more that can, the worse the deal has to be.

bernyx

what exactly do you mean you can earn distance based miles by purchasing through partners? For example?

Meanwhile, are you aware that you can still earn actual distance-based miles for UA and DL tickets that are purchased through partners, or that are bought in combination with something else (like flight + hotel or flight + rental car "vacation packages"). UA and DL either cannot or don't want to give you miles based on cost when the ticket was not bought (for a flight alone) on UA or DL ticket stock. So even in your logic, why can't they can them miles if you can still earn them based on the distance you fly, even if only under certain circumstances? [/QUOTE]

sdsearch

It's not hard to find an example. Just go to Delta site, drop the SkyMiles menu, select Earn Miles, and then click a couple times on partners and then specifically airline partners, and you get this page:
where it clearly says:
And since Delta was the first to do it, the domestic airlines that are following it tend to it similarly. But since you just asked for an example, I'll leave it as a user exercise for you to find the specific language at UA (and I don't know if it exists yet AA, which has announced something similar but hasn't started yet).

BillyBaloney

How about "Skyturds?" For example,
I flew to Atlanta and earned 500 Skyturds...

Or is the proper term "Skyterd?"

TheAJ

My experience has been that all these airlines have finally closed shop on good value redemptions, such as transcon flights. Delta closed shop on me like 4 years ago, then AA 2 years ago, and now finally United (after going through a period last year with GREAT availability). Sucks. Wish I could believe it was cylical.

Centurion

I think the airlines have converted miles to kickbacks. Obviously kickbacks are illegal in certain situations. I expect a class action lawsuit test case soon. And I expect the airlines to win. Justice is not blind but who has the most money and lobbying power.

MasterGeek

If I'm not mistaken, the alternative way to get credited real flown miles is to credit it to a partner airline, since the partner airlines know the trip distance but don't have information about the price paid for the flight, so they can only credit based on flown distance.

Am I right ?