Need a read? - Seduced by a Mile
 

Do frequent-flier plans manipulate the passenger? A book says yes...

By Tom Belden
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

If you're a business traveler, you probably view airline frequent-flier miles as an entitlement -- a modest perk for spending time away from your home and family. Most companies with traveling employees see the wildly popular frequent-traveler programs the same way, and allow their people to keep the miles earned for flying on business trips.

But there's another, more sinister question for the millions of us who cherish frequent-flier miles. Are we just foot soldiers in a relentless effort by the largest airlines to stamp out competition from small, low-fare carriers, especially in cities where a big airline already dominates?

That view, and other provocative information about business travel, is offered in the book Seduced by a Mile: How Frequent Flyers Have
Been Exploited to Outflank Corporate America and Increase Airline Profits.

The book's author is Greg Moore, a former corporate travel manager for DuPont Co. and Electronic Data Systems Corp. It was published in the fall by Integrated Technology Research, the Wilmington firm where Moore is a business-travel consultant.

While the book is largely a technical research report, with footnotes for
each chapter and a bibliography, Moore decided that a fictional story line was the best way to convey his message.

So Seduced by a Mile became a novel, tracing the work life and business education over 14 years of the fictional Steve Perkins, the travel manager for Sure Fire Corp., a made-up power-tool manufacturer based in nonexistent Stanley, Pa.

The book opens in 1998, with Perkins overhearing a conversation among several Sure Fire travelers about the ways they increase the mileage in their frequent-flier accounts by bending company policies designed to
lower air-travel costs.

Seduced by a Mile then goes into a flashback, tracing how Sure Fire officials never thought much about the effect of frequent-flier programs when they started in the early 1980s. As every carrier copied the first
program, that of American Airlines, many businesses thought the schemes would fade in importance because they didn't seem to bring new customers to an airline; they just helped the carrier hang on to those it already had.

But as the book portrays it, the programs were seen by a handful of purchasing or financial-accounting managers around the country as a form of bribery that encouraged travelers to take extra trips just to build up miles.

As the book proceeds, Sure Fire becomes increasingly dependent on fictional Mega Airways, which begins to dominate most of the routes used by the company's employees.

In real life, of course, airlines don't agree at all with the book's premise about frequent-flier programs. Their official view is that the programs simply reward loyal business travelers, who decide to use a particular airline primarily because of its flight schedule and convenience, and only
incidentally because of a frequent-flier bonus.

But as the airline executives portrayed in Seduced by a Mile point out, as airlines have grown and increased their hold on key business-travel routes, frequent-flier programs have become more attractive.

The programs have "helped consolidate the airline industry," Moore said in an interview.

The book's cover price is $24.95 and is available from online booksellers Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com, or directly from the publisher, at 1-800-596-7727.

Was that a commercial, or what?

...it was a book review in the Philly Inquirer, and thought someone may enjoy it. I have no connection with anyone associated with the book..

as I already said under the "photo" posting two days ago - sometimes I mind looking at me in the mirror ...

There are many serious issues raised by the book, but I doubt if they would be popular topics in FlyerTalk. WebFlyer OO also had some comments on the book, but I got the feeling that the WebFlyer reviewer had not worked for a big corporation (which I have).

To win a battle, one must know their enemy.

Airlines, any business for that matter, is not in business to run country clubs for it's members. It's in business to make money for it's shareholders. As much as I try, like the rest of you, to maxamize mileage, want better service for loyality, etc, FF programs and loyality programs alike have to be cost effective on the whole for the company to administer. Remember, these programs are for the benefit of the company as much as for the customer, it's a mutual relationship and we all are "rewarded" for conducting business on a regular basis with a particular company, but the "rewards" can only go as far as the bottom line allows.