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Time to Ban Airline Miles?
The Travel Critic · June 14, 2000

Oh, the lengths we go to collect our mileage rewards!

Carsten Thomsen flew from Austin, Texas, to Orlando, Florida, then did an about-face and returned to Austin on the same day - just to earn the 1,500 miles needed to reach Delta Air Lines' Gold Medallion status. "I took some magazines and good books along and spent a relaxing day picking the extra miles," he says.

John Midolo used his American Express card to make a $5,000 down payment on a minivan, counting up the miles he received just for using the card. "It was," he admits, "the craziest thing I ever did."

And Brian Pier flew from St. Louis to Dallas to New York to London - and promptly returned via New York, Detroit and Chicago - in order to pick up a few more points. "I was an absolute zombie by the time I arrived in Detroit," he recalls. "I am still not certain why I did not fall asleep and miss a connection in Chicago."

The behavior seems all the more irrational when put into context. Fewer than 10 percent of travel-related rewards points are redeemed every year, by many estimates. That's probably because turning the miles into tickets is often impossible with all the blackout dates and restrictions that are placed on them. Is it any wonder that there are close to 4 trillion unused miles - yep, that's trillion with a "T" - among the frequent flier programs?

I have actually used miles to fly, but often find that I've had to work my schedule around the airlines' instead of vice versa - a complaint I've heard from other travelers, too. The only thing I've been able to get without any trouble are magazine subscriptions, and they weren't what I consider choice titles.

I imagine many of the 61 million other mileage junkies in the United States are ticked off about that, too. After all, if they want to get put to sleep by bad writing they can do that for free by trying to read an in-flight magazine.

Is it time to eliminate these elusive rewards programs?

Interesting idea, but it's not going to happen, says mileage guru Randy Petersen. "These programs are simply too powerful to ever go away," says the publisher of InsideFlyer magazine. "We've all learned to live with the bomb."

But some travel suppliers are quietly distancing themselves from the traditional mileage scheme. Southwest Airlines, for example, offers you a free trip when you collect 16 Rapid Rewards "stamps" - each representing one flight segment. At the Hawthorn Suites hotel chain, frequent guests earn "Auction Dollars" instead of miles that can be cashed in for everything from a cruise to a television. The Adam's Mark chain of properties actually gives its best customers money in place of miles.

Nonetheless, a vast majority of rewards programs still let you accumulate intangible - and highly addictive - "miles" for renting a car, taking a flight or staying at a hotel. And many of them are in dire need of an overhaul, to hear people like Hal Brierley talk about it.

"There are programs out there that aren't competitive," says the Dallas consultant who helped design American Airlines' pioneering AAdvantage program almost two decades ago. "In order for them to be effective, they have to be kept fresh and innovative - not dismantled. The first one to do that would be in trouble."

Perhaps. But if these pockets of resistance - the Hawthorns and Adam's Marks rewards programs of the world - prove workable, then we might see a shift away from the mileage racket that makes travelers do strange things, like take flights without reason or run up tremendous credit card bills. That might not be such a bad thing.

The new programs might make earning travel rewards more sensible. Which would be good news for mileage addicts like Wil Postle, who's already collected more than 20,000 rewards points by buying cartons of Diet Coke. "Whenever there's a family gathering I always get the Diet Coke products so I can get the points," he confesses.

Well, Wil - and the rest of you strung out on miles - help may be on the way.

Christopher Elliott is a travel commentator and author of A Bridge to Nowhere: A Year in the Florida Keys. All e-mailed questions may be edited, condensed or republished at the site's discretion.