I always thought the official take in the U.S. was that no one owns the miles because the miles have no value. They aren't an asset, a currency, or a contractual promise of a future flightshare. I don't know what they are...a shapeless, odorless grey blob, perhaps...but I thought the U.S. government had taken care to not define them as a commodity with an attached value or exchange rate into a hard currency. (Probably for everyone's benefit, including enthusiasts like us who make a point to know and play the game to the best of our advantage.)

But then again...I have heard other cases where employers claim them, they are part of divorce or estate settlements, etc. So obviously they become "assetlike" in some cases.

Can you tell that IANAL?

Wow, I can't imagine the airlines would respond positively to a court decision which says "200,000 of Mr. So-and-so's miles now belong to Ms. Ex-So-and-so, so transfer them from his account to hers". Have they really done that?

Federal employees get few perks, so I am glad they get this one.

in previous discussions of this, people have said that if you send a death cert, and are the beneficiary, they will xfer the mi's, but, the al's can discontinue their program at any time....mrs clacko & i have the mi's and some other wording in our wills...

as others have said, a simple search will find info...unfortunately, i don't seem to be able to do a simple search...

Courts can make even airlines do things they would rather not do. But rather than order an FFP to transfer miles from the account of one person to another, a divorce court would usually "monetize" those miles, that is impute a value to them, and throw that amount into the balance when dividing up marital property.

That situation was heavily debated by the bureaucrats in DC. On the one hand, you don't want government employees benefiting from frequent flyer programs when the taxpayer is the ultimate source of payment.

On the other hand, the Federal Government is the single largest purchaser of airline tickets in the U.S. And probably the world. That spending power creates a certain level of stability in the airline industry. Plus the Federal Government played an important role in helping airlines recover after 9/11.

Does it make sense to let all those frequent flyer miles go unused and completely wasted? Ultimately, the decision was to allow employees to retain their miles. Overall, I think that decision was a good one, because it encourages people to help out the economy by traveling, which generates more spending and more tax dollars in the long run.

For some reason, I always assumed that the Federal Government negotiated airfares directly with the airlines. For most routes, they got some sort of discount and therefore weren't "buying" the FF miles to begin with.

Being virtually impossible to fire or lay off and possessing gold-plated health and retirement plans that don't ever get reduced in value are perks that MILLIONS of Americans would love to have.

Yes, I know wages for federal employees in the midrange and below are a little less than those in private industry.

But federal employees toward the top of the wage scale do pretty darn well. I know a bunch of them.

Not exactly correct. This was NOT the action of "bureaucrats" in the Executive Branch. It was CONGRESS itself that authorized Federal employees to keep and use frequent flier miles earned on government travel, under an amendment included in the fiscal 2002 Defense Authorization bill, which passed in December 2001. Sens. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., and John Warner, R-Va., added the amendment, arguing that allowing Federal workers to keep their frequent flier miles would help federal retention and recruitment efforts. The law allows civil service, military, and Foreign Service employees to use frequent flier miles obtained on government travel for personal use. The benefit was made retroactive, allowing Federal employees to use miles earned prior to the bill's enactment.

Previously, Federal employees were not allowed to use their frequent flier miles because of the 1994 Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act (Public Law 103-355), which prohibited Federal employees from accepting promotional items they received while traveling at government expense. The miles simply were lost because the government could not have its own FF account.

Congress has always been able to use frequent flyer benefits -- even while they banned other Federal employees from doing so between 1994 and 2001. They were criticized in the press for not practicing what they preached until they changed the law to give the same benefits to all Federal workers.