eyechip

Trolled? Whew..I haven't been accused of that since I lived in the Castro District in the early eighties!


Yes, Amex points. Which I transfer to my CO program. But I still can't keep up. I would gladly love to see the affinity card program end in exchange for a simple mileage or revenue exchange on dollars spent or miles flown. It would leave the FF programs for the people who actually fly.

I mean let's open our eyes here...the airlines have ultimitly involved us all in one of the biggest shell games in history??

eyechip

[QUOTE=cepheid;8212038]If the airlines' sole business is to fly people around, there would be no rewards.

This was what they did when the programs first originated. And it was the purpose of the programs at the start. To encourage people to fly.

It would be so refreshing today to see one of the airlines stop and say "hey...let's get back to focusing on our core business...flying people." What a concept.

pinniped

Well, regardless of whether or not you're tweaking us, welcome to FT! Now that you're here, I think you'll find people who can help you with strategies to redeem your miles. I fly about half of your volume and have found - partly with the help of this board - that it's pretty easy to amass a huge cache of miles (and no, I don't spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on credit cards ).

Check out the UA forum and the Star Alliance forum. Lots of good info in both... The one tip that I found here that has helped me a lot this year is to sign up for ANA's FF program. My balance there is 0 miles, but just by having an account I can search award availability across most of the Star Alliance. United doesn't allow you to do this - even if you hit 1K. So I use ANA to find my award seats, then use UA to actually book them.

There are other availability tools out there that can also help with Oneworld or Skyteam - search Travelbuzz or the AA/CO forums for more info.

Trust me - the award seats are out there waiting to be claimed.

This definitely crosses my mind. It's a primary reason I try to keep my overall earning and redemptions roughly in-line. Right now, I worry that I have too many hotel points - leaves me vulnerable to Category Creep if I continue to amass and don't start burning them off a bit.

cepheid

Sorry, but that's just not true. 10 years ago fares were quite a bit higher when compared to the median per-capita income. There's no way in hell I could find a non-stop transcon for $200 or $250 back then.

You want to know what's clogging the system? It's not the affinity cards. It's the LCCs and the competition they generate. 10 years ago the only major viable LCC was Southwest (and ValuJet if you look back 15 years), and it operated in a fairly limited capacity... it was no match for the legacies overall, and they only competed with one another, which meant that price wars didn't really ever get out of control. Fast forward a few years when LCCs started booming and that is where you get the passenger influx... suddenly, flights were super-cheap and passengers were flocking to the LCCs. The legacies had to drop their prices to compete, and now the fares on many routes are driven by the LCCs, even for legacy carriers.

Now passengers could afford to fly not just on LCCs, but also on the legacies, and since legacies had more flexible and more generous loyalty mileage programs, all of these passengers could now redeem award travel on these flexible programs that frequently had vastly reduced traffic (from only-legacy customers). With the huge influx of low-cost passengers eating into the award travel, the loyalty programs had to change by increasing redemption levels and decreasing availability... that's just the only way they could remain viable as legacy carriers while still dropping fares low enough to compete with the LCCs.

Sorry, it's not the affinity cards that clog up the system. It's all the passengers who demand (and therefore get) low fares. When flying became a commodity that anyone could afford, that is when the system got clogged. The affinity cards are insignificant in comparison.

cepheid

Shell games? Give me a break. You are in no way getting swindled, extorted, or gypped. You are getting not only the flight for which you paid, but points in a program that gives you stuff beyond that for which you paid (e.g. upgrades and free tickets). There is no deception involved except for the deception inherent in all marketing, namely in getting customers to believe that they are getting the best deal in the world. But a shell game? Puhleeze.

As I said, if all they cared about was just flying people, they could eliminate the rewards programs altogether and compete on amenities and pricing alone. Maybe that would be better, and maybe it would even lower costs since they could spend less money on loyalty programs and more money on improving the hard and soft product. But at the same time, loyalty programs are a fact of life today, whether it's for travel, for restaurants, for retailers, what-have-you. And loyalty programs give you things beyond that for which you paid. While it might be nice to see all loyalty programs eliminated in favor of spending that marketing money elsewhere (e.g. improving service), loyalty programs themselves serve a purpose as well, and people love the impression that they're getting something "extra" ... which they are.

So as I said, if you want an airline that focuses on the "core concept" and doesn't offer any FF program, vote with your wallet and go for it. I'm fairly satisfied with the system as it is. (And note that I am not a very frequent flyer, nor am I rich, nor do I even use affinity cards.)

Kiwi Flyer

On the assumption that Virgin America's eleVAte program works much like Virgin Blue's Velocity, the revenue model may not look so attractive after all. Sure earning is related to fare paid, but award cost is also related to available fares. Instead of double mileage anytime award you could find the last minute award costs 10 times one planned in advance.

If you want to see how FFers view this kind of program, check out the talk on FT about Virgin Blue Velocity and Air NZ Airpoints (which is what Velocity looked at before they launched).

These kind of programs work well for some flyers, but not so well for others.

KathyWdrf

Why do you keep "welcoming" the OP?

Take a look at his/her profile -- been here since August 2002! That's FIVE YEARS. Certainly not a newbie, unless he/she registered five years ago, then forgot all about FT until now. Perhaps the OP can clarify this point. Been mostly lurking for the last five years, perhaps?

Shareholder

Actually, the Four Points on Hollis isn't too bad, nor is the Westin a bit further up the harbour. I proposed to the wife at the Delta Barrington...scattered rose petals around the room, lit some candles...

Shareholder

Same with Aeroplan which has a scale of pricing for awards that pretty much matches AC's own categories of fares on each flight. Depending on inventory, an "anytime" award can be 50% to 400% more than the regular award cost.

eyechip

Hi Kathy,

Thanks so much for your post. It reminded me why I have been registered for five years but have only made a few posts. It is because of responses like yours which make one feel that unless they are part of the 'clique" they do not belong here. It leaves me shaking my head and moving on to more important endeavors. Has the mile addiction now morphed to posting addiciton? Post every day or you are not part of the elite? You are right Kathy, I apologize for dropping by every once in a while. I will go elsewhere and lurk.

SacFlyer

Regardless of the underlying merits of the argument, I found this to be one of the most interesting and amusing posts in some time. The original argument had me nodding my head and smiling, so I was kind of knocked over by the seeming vehemence of some of the responses.

Having said that, I recently took 35,000 old US Air miles (actually, these are old America West miles--I haven't flown US Air since it was P.S.A. (smile)--and booked a free round trip from Sacramento to Rome for next February (final destination: Sicily). Took me about 20 minutes to look at their on-line calendar and pick out dates that worked.

So despite my appreciation of the style in which the original argument was expressed, my most recent experience is quite different.

In the interests of full disclosure, some of those 35,000 points came from applying for a US Air credit card two or three years ago. However, I'm hardly a spender in the league of those referenced by the OP, and all of my credit card purchases have gone to Starwood for the past couple of years.

In conclusion, I'm perfectly happy to feel OP's anger at the benefits accrued by those over-the-top spenders, while trying my best to emulate them (smile).

kiwibigdave

Reading the opening post simply reminded me of a saying my Dad always quoted to me; "I complained because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet."

gleff

And therein lies the whole problem you're having finding award seats.

UAL_Rulez

There's no such street as "Central Park East." That would be Fifth Avenue.

And WRT to whingeing about the paucity of cheap award F tickets, what part of supply v. demand don't you understand?

SuperBuck27

eVIPS have been pretty easy this year. Just have to be flexible on flight times...