I bet this has been debated in here in other threads, but I think it is a hot enough topic that we need to go over it again. I think something needs to be done too.

No matter what some might say, I strongly believe that all airlines and hotels should let you get the flight or the stay using either your miles or you money, with no restrictions and no blackout dates.

Let me explain (and think STARWOOD when I tell it):

If I have 25,000 miles, I should be able to get a seat just like the next guy who has $300 in cash. Provided there is a seat available in the class wanted, say, economy class from JFK to Vegas, that seat should be given, miles or money.

There should not be a limited number of mile-allotted seats!

This was once the way it was and I think they should go back to this model.

Today it may be rather easy to earn the miles using everything from credit cards to dining to buying online to blood drives, but it is sure hard to redeem them! In comparison, I kinda like the old way. You walk into the airport or pick up the phone, and if there is a seat at the right price, you pay using miles or money.

I am pretty much in the know when it comes to how and when to redeem my points, but I still had to carefully plan my ski trip from THIS Feb with much consideration. I had to start planning it and I had to redeem my miles LAST March! That�s 11 months out! I have had to plan trips to Hawaii or the Caribbean 8-10 months out! Yeah, we know the scene, but it sure would be better if I called up airline X and said, how much is that seat, and they said, �Sir, it is either $450 or $30k RT!� That would build loyalty in my mind--because I would then strive to GET miles on that airline!

But this isn�t even about that. It is not about any specific airline. It is about fairness vs. pure and simple �hook-line-and-sinker� business tactics being employed by all airlines and most hotels out there today.

The only exception continues to be one of the best, highest quality chains, and that as some of you know, is Starwood. And guess what: It is harder to earn them, but they sure have a higher VALUE in the end! And they seem to retain their high-end customer base as well. Hmmm�

Yes, miles (points in their case) or money, if they have the space, you get the room. �That�s 16,000 points a night sir, or you can spend $525 per night to stay here. We may even have miles+ money splits going on during that period and if you hold a moment, I�ll gladly check for you.�

That, my friends, is service. If the price is right for me and I�m willing to throw down coin, I am in. Fair and simple.

But in contrast, the dumb, stingy airlines say things like, �No sir, the ticket is no longer available at the 25,000 mile award level. There are blackouts and restrictions anyway. O course, you can spend double miles today and have an �ber-double-secret-rule-busting-we�ll-screw-you rate instead, if you like! You see, even though you are calling 364 days in advance, we only have 4 seats available at the 51,000-mile level and you only have 50k in your account. Sorry! There is nothing we can do for you. No soup for you. Would you like to buy our miles at the rate of $30 per thousand, a $25 fee to do it and another $25-$75 fee to have us click a button that makes them actually hit your account on time?�

Bah humbug!

C�mon people, let�s get the airlines to start to rethink all of this!

Now, some of you are reading this and thinking, �well, if they let us all onboard with miles only all at once, they would go out of business!�

Guess what: The selling of miles, credit card partnerships, dining, blood drives, and other crap that their own marketing teams think up IS business for them! It is not cash for flight business, but believe you me, they made and are making their money! They created the monster. They SHOULD be able to control it as well!

I once had a phone agent say to me, �Well sir, you ARE getting your ticket for free so why do you care there is a fee for (XYZ)!� What nerve she had! Those �Free� miles she thinks I just magically have in my account DID come from THEIR airline�s own marketing, sales, promotions and partnerships! It should not matter HOW I got the ticket�It should be worth the same thing as the next guy�s.

OK, so why should one person pay $6,000 for this first class seat whilst the guy next to him is some idiot from the Griswald family and he used some crumpled dollars and a few thousand miles he scammed off some dumb promotional gig involving box tops and pudding vouchers?

Well, like I said, that coveted high-end airline seat was also marketed to the masses through the use of all kinds of things I mentioned above. Paid for with solid currency or by award miles, it gets sat in by many people every single day. It should be treated as such. Its VALUE should be such that the �existence� of those miles is the same thing as the money spent to sit there at any given time! I mean, c�mon, are some people really �better� than others?

We have to get rid of that thinking too. It�s all about VALUE.

Thoughts? Trust me, I have a few more! ...

MM

The present system is set up the way it is for a reason. I recently flew r/t to London for $398 and due to various bonuses and promotions, I received 27,000+ miles. Forgive me for being a stooge, but I think it would rather unreasonable for me to expect a free seat to anywhere in North America at any time I wanted on the basis of those 27,000 miles. (Geeze, I can already do that trip three times and be elite, too.) I have no doubt that I will receive substantial value for those miles, btw. I just happen to also realize that it will involve using a little flexibility and know-how.

It is my belief that Flyertalk's population includes a lot of people like me. We learn the system and -- let's face it -- we exploit it. Airlines can put together very attractive programs that appeal to large masses of people because they know that there aren't all that many people with the time, flexibility and deep-seated desire to do what we do as an avocation. (Having a few of us out there is probably even a good thing; sort of like Publishers Clearing House needing to have a few winners.)

If you spend a lot of time on Flyertalk, it might be easy to believe that there is quite a large group of people who are doing what we do, but I'm sure it is rather small percentage in the broad scheme of things. (Just spend a little time explaining your antics in a group of normal adults and judge for yourself the percentage who think there is something wrong with you. There is a reason that many of us don't talk much about this stuff around the office.) And as attractive as a simple system might seem, there is an even more attractive "gaming" aspect to the present, convoluted system of fares and rewards that makes the whole thing rather compelling. So the heck with simplified fare schedules and straightforward "using miles like cash" anytime you want.

There should be free pony rides.

Airlines make plenty of money from people who never redeem their miles. It's free money to them. It makes economic sense to them to make it as hard as possible to get a free seat. As soon as one get close to the free seat, they raise the mileage needed to attain the seat. For many people, the airlines are selling pipedreams to paradise. Much like a lottery ticket. If you are savy, you patronize those that make the most seats available and avoid sleazebag airlines who prey on their frequent flyers.

[This message has been edited by sergio (edited Feb 24, 2004).]

Bravo Marathon Man - I completely agree.

I agree with all the above and thank you for getting into it. And, I see why it is what it is, but I sure don't like it. I understand that we "know," and our office co-workers have no clue or think we are crazy for wanting to know about deals, but maybe we should still push for more value for those miles and make it less of a lottery or game to begin with. Then it, and flying in general, becomes more of a NORM. Right now, many are anti-flying and I wouldn�t be surprised that some of this lack of business has to do with the lack of service given to the layman. (I also think there SHOULD be free pony rides!)

You see, the whole problem with this somewhat tricky business model is that is clearly preys on people's inability to follow mazes that are made to rip them off. Consider the rebate coupon:

The computer company who makes you tear off the box top, send in the yellow copy only of your receipt, clip the UPC code, and use 2 stamps mailed only from Ohio between March 2 and 5 and sign it all in blue ink and not black ink, knows that 99% of the people are going to somehow drop the ball on this one.

Is it the layman's fault to have bought into the near-unethical babble about FREE and $20 off or "get the rebate when you buy it" legalese? Or is it a total rip off that we, the consumer--even the savvy ones--allow this to exist in our world?

I often think the latter! It gives off the wrong impression of business in general and makes us all waste our time on trying to sift through and figure out deals and steals. It is not fair. I hate it. You hate it. Sure we are kind of good at it, but whenever we think we've stumped 'em and found some cool offer or hole in the system that works out like Charter One or BofA money orders, Ebay mile-award selling, and pudding deals, the big ars airlines go plug that hole, take away the miles from the person they view as a shammy, secretive criminal, and beef up their rules because of "security reasons!"

Sounds a bit like the lifestyle one must lead in order to mimic that of a card counter (read that great paperback book about the M.I.T. geniuses who made huge coin in Vegas)

Yes, I am pretty savvy when it comes to miles and flights, but sometimes you have to fight just to get the thing they promised and you KNOW they do not want to give it to you! You have to play into their game so much it's almost ludicrous! And sometimes you still get nothing but you DID pay dearly for it along the normal path of progression.

I keep thinking of all those times I have had to call back customer service about this or that and fix some problem they ultimately created! When you win, it took so much energy, you want to give up, but it's a good thing you didn't--and those co-workers who overhear your phone conversation still think you're nuts. (It's like telling the manager you finally get to speak to that the CSR who told you about a certain bogus offer was named Tanya S from L.A. and you dealt with her at exactly 10:43am on June 22 in a 3 hour phone conversation complete with emails and faxes to back up what you are saying. Once you do this, that manager finally begins to believe your claim and starts to award whatever it is you are trying to get for said company.)

This kind of thing, my friends, is one MORE concept the entire airline industry must change for the better in order to have happier, safer, richer, more upbeat willing customers. If not, they are digging their own hole and we are all going to not want to fly. No wonder they are losing money! Not that he is the best guy out there, but we kind of need a Ralph Nader for the airlines! NOW.

MM

First of all, there is nothing ethical about the way the airlines do business. Entering this game with that as an expectation will only leave you disappointed. They play hardball. We learn to play hardball with them.

MM has a great point about SPG though. Starwood lovers know that the points are harder to get, but they also know that they are more valuable than points in other programs. I get the (unscientific) sense from this board that SPG honks are intensely loyal - driving nearly all of their high-cost business stays to Starwoods - whereas Marriott/Hilton folks tend to play the field a bit more, always looking for the next bonus and always looking at the other chains.

Finally, I don't think it's any accident that SPG has created a system where 1 point has greater value than 1 FF mile. Although points and miles are totally apples and oranges, there is a perception there that SPG points are the premium currency to hold. Fill out a survey for 500 HHonors points? Yawn. Fill one out for 250 SPG? Gimmie that link!

United lets you do just what you're asking. That's what "standard" awards are - you can redeem them out of the general pool with no blackout dates or restrictions - if there's a seat, you get it.

On the other hand, people generally want to use saver awards as they're a lot cheaper in terms of miles.

You can't have it both ways!
EDIT: Sorry, didn't read yoru post too clearly.

OK - in your case of 51K awards when you have 50K miles, you're able to buy miles at a reasonable price (for a small number) so that problem is solved.

Additionally, you really shouldn't expect those discounted awards to be available without blackouts. As some have already posted, you often earn enough miles for a discounted domestic award for less money than it would cost you to buy low-availability domestic tickets - it's just straightforward business sense.

Then add into the mess that I paid $720 on United for a BOS-BKK trip that's going to net me 85000 miles due to promotions (100k miles if i was 1P/1K). When things like this go on, you can't expect then to give away all their availability to low-cost awards

[This message has been edited by lessthanjoey (edited Feb 24, 2004).]

indeed, my friend!

and I missed you in here lately--or was it just me.

as for SPG, I recently was able to transfer a bunch of family 250 survey points into my account and then into airlines where I actually needed about that much to reach an award level... You know, for an award I will probably never be able to redeem. But it was that, or paying up the $$$$ fee to buy miles from the scammer airlines.

Anyway, We need the FCC to step in here and devalue the currency or something. It is getting so out of control, that whatever you earned back in the day when it WAS a good thing to collect miles is now a hostage-holding nightmere of me trying to beef up old accounts, redeem the awards, and get out fast!

I am actually attempting to do this very thing and only have 2 main airlines with any points in them of any real significance as we speak. the rest is useless in my mind.

good for business? If everyone thought like me, they may change this mess

hope so! MM

United is who I flew in my example. 11 months out and there were only 4 25k award seats avail. Something is wrong. the plane sits 100 in econ. There should be 100 seats avail. Using extra miles would be dumb.
we must go back to how it once was.

The biggest problem with going back to how it once was is that the airlines are now completely drunk with promotions, bonuses upon bonuses upon bonuses, and more and more easy ways to earn miles.

In the old days, you could probably get that 25K seat anytime you wanted it. But...you'd actually have to fly quite a bit and pay higher fares for those flights (in real dollars) than we pay today.

IMHO it's far easier to earn 50,000 miles right now than it was to earn 25,000 miles 10 years ago. Heck, I'm earning 10,500 miles this month from meals I would have eaten anyway, thanks to bonuses! My AA account has grown by 41,000 miles THIS MONTH and I've only taken two cheap domestic roundtrips - MCI-ORD and MCI-TPA.

So I agree with you that the old way may have been better in many ways, but the monster is out of the cave and there is no way to get him to go back.

So I keep playing the game, looking for my "saver" awards. On AA, I usually get them because I'm generally route- and date-flexible. But, a couple of times I've just said to heck with it and ponied up 100K for 2 tickets to the West Coast (with some of the segments in F, some in Y, last-minute no-capacity-control awards). What the h*ll...getting that 100K was easy, and there's another million miles where it came from. And thousands more coming in every month, and this from a guy who doesn't even fly all that much.

In short, the system works BETTER now for people who know how to play the game well (like anyone who has actually found this board). It sucks for people who just fly once in a while and think of miles as simply something you get when you buy plane tickets.

I should start with the disclosure that I haven't redeemed miles for an award (yet). So my impressions are based on stories from others and not my own experience. They are based on my sense of how things should work, however.

I think that blackout dates are completely reasonable for an airline. I don't expect to be getting a saver award before or just after Thanksgiving or Christmas. And it's just unreasonable for me to expect that. While I may be disappointed at that, it's just good business from the airline's point of view to get whatever they can for these premium seats.

The same goes for a trip to the Carribean in the wintertime or to New Orleans during Mardi Gras. The fact of the matter is, if we want to go somewhere popular at a popular time of year, we should expect to pay more. And, I must say, a ski trip (to just about anywhere) in the wintertime certainly falls into this category.

I don't like paying more for stuff, any more than others do. But I accept it as a reality of the airline business.

I agree, however, with the notion that offers are too convoluted, and sometimes border on fraud. But to my mind this is a consumer issue, not a company one. The airlines could write their rules in plain language. They could make things easier for the consumer to understand. But they won't, because most of the time when a customer makes a mistake or gets confused it's to their benefit. Rules are fine, but you have to make it reasonable for a customer, in good faith, to understand and follow them. This is the type of practice which is so heavily regulated in many other industries (just think of sweepstakes and contests in the USA) and is how the airlines fleece their customers. I think the only way to solve this problem is with government regulations which demand that the airlines use plain language and easy-to-understand terms, like nutrition labels, credit card term-and-condition grids, or sweepstakes rules. And that, I'm afraid, won't ever happen.

those who think you get miles only when you get plane tickets are the ones at the office who have no clue. But they are also the ones not getting in trouble at work for printing out miles stuff or being on the phone all the time with CS about lost bags, etc. Not that I have lately, but we spend SOOOO much time on this stuff--even setting up or maintaining and updating promos and idines and deals and registrations, that it is costing us elsewhere whether we know it or not.

How humbling it was to hear of a friend of mine, a man in his 60s who knows more about skiing and places to go in the world for the best trips, be unable to get a decent trip to Utah when he tried to use his miles he has been accumulating for several years. Sure, it's not his game. Skiing is. He can tell you all about that just like we can tell him all about this, but he was pissed and cannot take his trip, but i can still walk into a store and no not very much about the sport, but get a decent deal or pretty good gear and not necessarily get ripped off in the process. I just have to know a little bit and maybe have some inside info, but for flying and miles, you have to read a darn book on the subject!

(someday i will tell you why skiing is better than dating--it starts with the fact that you can have as many pairs of skis as you want--in any size or color too!)

MM

There is an airline that does have the if there is a seat on the plane you can use an award for it. It is Southwest. Aside from a few blackout days you can pretty much always get a seat, even if it is only a few days out.

I think their program is exceptionally generous, and doubt the other airlines would match their policies. However at a minimum the airlines could at least set aside their deep discount tickets to be available for either purchase or for miles. For example on Delta, if you see a flight you want to take is available in their L class, you should be able to use your award ticket for it.

Perhaps if the airlines didn't have so many fare types and simplified it more like Southwest they would be in a better position to honor their award tickets. I don't expect 122 award tickets to be available on a 122 seat plane, but there should be availability. If they are offering say 20 deep deep discount tickets that inventory of 20 should be available for award redemption, or for purchase. That would be a more ethical way to do business. Unfortunately many of the airlines have been so poorly run they have forgotten to take care of their customers, and are off cutting fares so they can't make any money which makes their situation worse. I don't think a plan of offering fares that range between $199-$1048 for the same one way ticket is the right way to do business. They have backed themselves into a wall, and gave out millions of free tickets and now don't want to honor the tickets because they are desperate to collect $158 for a ticket that they should be giving to people who have spent thousands to get the free ticket.

For the most part it is just a poorly run industry who does know how to pass blame to everyone else, but can't run a business. Every business has circumstances beyond their control that can cause earning problems, but the airline industry is the only one that constantly complains that they would make a profit if only a)fuel prices would go down b)unions would cooperate with cost cuttings or c)the economy would pick up. They just rotate the excuse like a child who forgot to do their homework. When one problems clears up they blame it on the other.

It may be too late but if they ever admit their business model is flawed, and the world they are living under has changed since the day of regulation, they have a chance for survival.

And getting back to the topic, maybe if they took care of their customers they would have some loyalty and could ask for a small premium for their service.

The fact is there is only one sky and one FAA and one industry of airlines out there, and when you run one, you become corrupt. On the highways, there are many routes and many officials to work with or take care of things. But in the air, they treat it differently and it is not fair.

I know a friend from Bulgaria who says that her country is doing poorly because every time a good man comes to power with the intent of fixing things, he too eventually becomes corrupt and ends up doing the same stuff his predecessor did.

Well, one day we hope that place gets better and maybe it has, but like it has been said in here, the industry is well routed and has forgotten the good ways to conduct business. All they are is big, needed, unregulated and full of ways to trick people. Sounds like a former communist block country to me!

Unlike driving and traffic, there is no real police to check on itself or talk to other states or agencies. There is only the FAA, which could be, in my above model, the USSR head of state! I am not saying they are, nor am I saying the industry should split up even further than it already had in years gone by, rather, I am saying that everything changes too slowly and nothing good ever seems to come out of it that benefits us peasants - lots of money and miles, or no.

I used to think the airlines were like the Titanic, what, with all the classes, rules, do's and don't and attitudes that they are the best and we suck up to them. Now I think things are changes. With Southwest and ones like it popping up, it may be possible that we can get a better flight elsewhere, but right now none of these new guys fly internationally. And, what to do with all those miles we already amassed? Should I toss them, take the QE2 to London, and fly Southwest here or Easy jet over there for all flying in my future?

Maybe! My hope is to burn up my miles and try something like this.