While most of us continue to travel only after checking outcheap traveloptions such as cheap airplanetickets, cheapfares, cheapdeals, discount hotel rooms, discounttravel deals, and cheap vacation packages,frequent travelers continue to highly value the ability to travel for freevia frequent flier programs.
Most of us do our best to accumulate frequent flier milesthrough flying, through credit cards, and through any promotion we can find.
Unfortunately the airlines have stacked their frequentflier programs against their customers and the house always wins. The following are dirty little secrets offrequent flier programs, according to Ed Perkins:
Thefine print in frequent flier programs are the most one sided contracts you willever make. Members agree that theairlines can change the rules any time it wants without any input from members.
Theairlines actually own your miles even when it offers incentives for membersto buy miles. Often that means thatyou cannot transfer your miles to anyone else without paying a fee of more thanthe miles are worth. On some airlines,you are not even allowed to bequeath them to a surviving spouse. If a member does something that an airlinedoes not like, such as repeated use of hidden city or throw away tickets, itcan kick that person out of the program.
Mostlarge airline programs favor business travelers. Elite frequent fliers usually earn miles at amuch higher rate than most frequent fliers. Recently most airlines changed their reward programs to award milesbased on the cost of tickets vs. the number of miles flown. That move disproportionately rewards frequentbusiness travelers who travel often and pay top dollar for last minute tickets.
Freeairline tickets are often hard to find. A recent survey of major North American airlines found reward seatavailability ranging from 91 percent on Air Canada, 87 percent on JetBlue, and80 percent of Alaska; to 75 percent on United, 67 percent on American and 58percent on perennially low scoring Delta.
While these figures do not sound so badfor most airlines the real world situation is quite different. Reward seat availability was determined bylooking at direct domestic flights in coach between large airports. The success rates are much lower in businessand first class, particularly on intercontinental trips, and on connectingflight awards with acceptable itineraries.
Rewardawards are frequently hidden, particularly award travel on partner airlineswhere it is frequently not displayed. Miles required for a seat on any given flight sometimes varies dependingon which of the airlines booking engines is used. Often the only way to check true availabilityis to call the airlines frequent flier department. Even then, members sometime find that afterbeing told no by one agent, the answer is different when calling back a fewminutes later.
Changefees to award tickets that used to be free often results in a change fee of $75to $150. Cancelling a trip completelycan result in a charge of as much as $150 to redeposit miles in your account.
Internationalaward trips on most airlines, including Air Canada, headquartered outside theU.S. are no longer free. Most of theseairlines charge an expensive fuel surcharge or an airline imposed fee onaward travel. These charges can varyfrom a few hundred dollars to almost a thousand dollars on a premium classtrip.
Miles valuevaries depending on how earned/redeemed. Experts tend to value miles between one to one and a half cents which isbelieved to be about the price airlines get when they sell miles to banks forinclusion in credit card programs. However airlines tend to charge over three cents to members who want tobuy miles. They even charge up to oneand a half cents per mile to transfer miles that you already earned orpurchased.
Elitestatus is not what it used to be because airlines are handing out elite statusmore often, while they reduce the number of first class seats on typicaldomestic flights. Today the real valueof elite status is access to special check in lanes, reduced baggage fees andspace available no charge upgrades. Unfortunately only the super platinum types can realistically hope foran upgrade.
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