Clincher

....and this news item is being discussed on CNN, The Sun, DailyMail, The Independent, The Guardian, etc.

Boraxo

What incredible elitist stupidity! If anything the abolition of programmes would result in higher fares because most of the airlines make a hefty profit on their miles.
Higher fares might reduce travel by making air travel less accessible to the masses, but the same logic would apply to virtually every product. The miles do not drive additional consumption of the product.

GUWonder

Banning frequent flyer programs may actually result in the targeted population having more money to fly than would otherwise be the case.

Steve M

I remember those from when I was a kid! The grocery store gave them out at the register. I just went down the Internet rabbit hole, only to discover that the final deadline for redeeming the actual stamps (not the replacement "greenpoints") was just LAST WEEK: October 15, 2019!

RustyC

I posted some years ago that if the U.S. carriers ever merged down to one, that one would feel no need to have a FF program.

Well, it's 3 major domestic legacies and they're acting more like they're colluding vs. competing.

DL's let's-not-have-a-chart bit in particular is looking like a huge stealth devaluation in many places, way out of line with what they had previously. I'm really glad I burned all but about 75K of miles earned there from 1990-2016. Given how expensive some of the free-ticket awards are (can't comment on the upgrades), it's hard to see why anyone would buy miles pro-actively.

You can say the DL approach is one way of trying to deal with the well-known problem of too many unredeemed miles out there and fundamentally too few seats. But saving miles is like saving Argentine pesos or Lao kip.

Of course, with so many blogs out there and so many computer tools, any kind of good deal gets pounced on and burned out faster these days. Am glad I beat the bloggers by about 25 years even though online booking in the early 90s was a lot more labor intensive (command lines and green screens).

mahasamatman

I never bothered. The telephone was the best award booking tool.

RustyC

I should have been more precise. The online booking was for paid tickets with wacky itineraries that spun off the miles that led to the awards/status. Something they'd never have patience to do over the phone and would say violated their rules. Award tickets were usually more straightforward, though later on I got better at maximizing stopovers, etc.

During the great fare war of 1992 the hour-long hold times with the airlines even made the national news.

If there's one thing I'm glad to see (mostly) out of the process now, it's the telephone. Though sometimes there's still no other way with award bookings on partner airlines (e.g. AA flights using EY miles)

Clincher

Quote:

Originally Posted by SightseeMC

Was the question "will frequent flyer programs remain as lucrative as they are today" or was it "will frequent flyer programs end?" My answer, using the example of Green Stamps that was quoted above, is that no they won't as a whole, though individual programs may end. If you'd like to discuss whether they will remain lucrative I'm all for that discussion too.

Not that long ago FFP’s , accumulating miles and earning status was my hobby. I was never as knowledgeable as many of you; for which I very much admire. But I did pretty good in working it all to my advantage. Personally, not that it matters much to anyone, but I’ve not flown since February. I don’t really desire to fly anytime in the future. Part the pandemic, part I don’t have to fly for work, part the programs have changed. I have now shifted to photography and carpentry. 🙂
So much has happened in the last year that these questions may not be as relevant. However, I am curious how the frequent flier community feels about the FFP’s now.

sdsearch

But photography of what?

My hobby is travel outdoor photography (ie, photography of interesting looking outdoor places wherever they may be).

So since a number of such places I want to photograph are far across the world (even though there are plenty of such places nearby to keep me busy during this Covid era), FFPs and accumulating miles and hotel points was crucial to being able to afford as much world travel as I have done.

So FFPs and accumulating miles and points for me was only a secondary hobby, to allow for my primary hobby of travel outdoor photography.

Clincher

Even though I’m not that good a travel/photography job has always been a dream.
I have about a terabyte of travel photography for places I’ve been. I also, could have not travelled as I did without the FFP’s. There are many places yet I would still like to see but not sure that will happen anytime soon. #1 is Antarctica completing the ‘step foot on all continents’ goal.
I live int NE and have enjoyed a few staycations and discovered some local wildlife I had not seen preCOVID. I now have shots of the local Bald Eagle, Black Bear, white tail deer, red tailed Hawk to name a few. 😀

GUWonder

The US3 airlines are still devaluing the frequent flyer miles during this pandemic. Doesn’t motivate me to give them more business, rather the opposite.

They won’t end the FFPs as long as they can squeeze more money out of the banks and investors/lenders being interested in the programs.

Kagehitokiri

exactly, credit cards

Boraxo

Agree, I have zero motivation to use any cards that earn miles tied to a specific airline, and already cancelled my DL Amex (which i only acquired for the signup bonus). All my spend goes 100% to cards that earn Chase UR, Amex points, or 2% cash back, except for hotel cards offering bonus spend promos.

However airlines are unlikely to change their stripes unless it costs them money. And it won't cost them money until customers start dumping airline cards and stop using airline cards in droves.

econ

Funny how it works.

Times are good: Miles get devalued.
Times are bad: Miles get devalued.

sdsearch

Funny how it works:

Times are good. There's inflation with cash.
Times are bad. There's inflation with cash.

But the big difference I see between inflation and devaluation: People talk about a quantified degree of inflation. It can go up or down, it can be high or low or ver low, but it's pretty much never 0, which it would need to be to say that there is "no" inflation. People don't just say "there's inflation again this year", they talk about how much of it there is.

But hardly anyone ever quantifies devaluation. Are you really scared of 0.2% inflation, or only of something like 50% inflation? Well, should you be scared of all devaluation, if you have no idea of how it's quantified?

I've been collecting miles and points for close to two decades now, and I'm hard pressed to find cases where devaluation has been that high cumulatively at most programs over that time. Occasionally when a program changes radically (Southwest going from credits to points, Delta going way beyond chartless quite a few years ago) devaluation can be more sizeable, but in most cases it's just a semi-steady march, just like inflation is.

Meanwhile, I don't know if it will continue (it's already slowed down for many due to banks' anti-churning measures), but the ability to earn miles through non-flying grew at a faster pace for many years, in many programs, than the value of those miles devalued.

But if you can't earn that fast any more, that brings up another question: Will the miles you have devalue so much that it's not worth hanging onto them (but only worth it to "use them up" at a poor redemption value)? Ie, you have to compare the amount of devaluation to the poorer redemptions you can do right now, to evaluate that question. But if all you know is that there's devaluation, but you can't quantify it, how can you make rational decisions about how to react to it?