Completely different market situations. The reason a FF program in the US has value is because there is so much competition, the same certainly was not true with Ansett, it basically had just one competitor who didn't need to do anything to acquire Ansett's customers.

Edited to add: And I see from sbm12's quote I already said this in this thread ...

Does anyone know the financial health of Air France? I may soon be booking two high priced flights to Rome on Air France using Delta Skymiles for next June. Is Delta OK financially?

Delta is struggling but if anything were to happen, a large airline like Delta will not go straight to Ch 7 but have a restructure in Ch 11. You should be okay.

A major U.S. airline going under? Or any major U.S. company for that matter? Did you forget who our President is?

If he is backing the warranty on GM cars, maybe we can get him to back our airline tickets.

At first I was 100% with you on this one. Then I thought about it a little, now if you want to ignore the fact that with the current administration, no major Airline would be allowed to file CH 7. Lets say you fly airline X to Japan and then they shut down. Even if your CC refunded you for your unused return, you would still need to buy an expensive last minute one way.

Obviously the odds of something like that happening are extremely low and if it did other airlines would probably try and 'rescue' the pax.

If you get travel insurance that guarantees you a replacement ticket then it might make sense. But the article suggests it simply for a refund, not for the replacement ticket.

As to other carriers "rescuing" the pax, that is much more likely with other US-based carriers. If you are flying off somewhere that is not straight US-based carrier service things do get more complicated, though not impossibly so.

And I'm not entirely convinced that Ch7 is off the table. There is clearly too much capacity in the domestic market still.

Trivia question to which I do not know the answer: when was the last "major" US airline liquidation that left the passengers and frequent fliers in the lurch? Eastern Air Lines?

When DL acquired Pan Am, did they honor the FF miles? The only "big" one in my frequent-flying lifetime has been TW/AA, and TW miles and status were transferred fully.

In that case I stand corrected, as an FTer I buy gum and soda with a CC. if diet coke doesn't taste right, they can expect a charge back.

There are still miles sitting in many DL accounts that were the product of flying PanAm.

In reviewing the wikipedia list of airline liquidations from the last two decades, I would note Braniff, Aloha and ATA (not sure if the last one had a programme). I think my Eastern miles were absorbed into the Continental program, and as noted above PanAm miles are sitting in my Delta account, and TWA miles are in my AA account.

However, in absence of a merger or acquisition, it is likely that your miles would be history in event of a total liquidation. Though, as I noted above, I think that scenario unlikely for many reasons but particularly because the big 4 (DL,CO,AA and UA) are probably considered "too big to fail" like the banks and auto makers that were bailed out earlier this year.

Braniff went bankrupt in May 1982, the first airline loyalty program (AAdvantage) had been launched just one year earlier in May 1981. What happened twenty-seven years ago during the infancy of airline frequent flyer programs is absolutely no indication of what would occur now.

Aloha, much like the Ansett example folks keep throwing out, is not a market comparable to that of the major US carriers.

ATA, in addition to being a relatively small airline, did not have a mileage based frequent flyer program that would have lent itself to being absorbed by most other carriers, and more importantly, they really did not have an established customer base many other airlines would be interested in acquiring since they had only operated as a scheduled airline for a few years, unlike the major carriers we are discussing here. As a contemporary example, if Virgin America were to shut down I'm not sure there would be much interest in anyone acquiring their frequent flyer assets because they haven't built up a long period of loyalty and they use a different currency than that used by most other airlines.

Except that I believe TW lifetime lounge passes converted to 3-year versions and also I believe that the TW members had to make a claim to AA to get the transfer and that it wasn't automatic. But otherwise, yeah.
Absolutely. The key is the "absence of a merger or acquisition" part of that phrase. I think that such an event is highly unlikely in just about every scenario I can fathom for the majors.

I vaguely recall needing to provide my TW number to AA to get the miles to post across to AA correctly. True, it wasn't automatic - I'm sure there was some basic name/address check in place - but it did not have the feel of being an intentionally-convoluted process (like with mail-in rebates) designed to discourage people from doing it.

I forgot about the lifetime lounge pass issue. Now that you mention it, I remember people being angry about that.

If only this "expert" had warned me before my Independence Airlines miles all disappeared :D. Needless to say I'm not going to change my burning habits.