The article only looks at how many miles it costs to claim a free flight. It doesn't touch on the other half of the complicated mess of the loyalty schemes: how to collect the miles.
These days, it's rare that you get 1 reward mile for every 1 mile that you fly. Instead, there's all kinds of bonuses/penalties and scale factors based upon your ticket class. Discounted ticket types earn fewer miles, first travel earns more, and so on.
So you can't just say that free flight 'costs' have increased if they need more miles to claim them. Perhaps the reward miles are given out more freely than before? Or perhaps less? (I'm guessing less!) In any case, the article leaps to conclusions without the evidence.
Comments
The article only looks at how many miles it costs to claim a free flight. It doesn't touch on the other half of the complicated mess of the loyalty schemes: how to collect the miles.
These days, it's rare that you get 1 reward mile for every 1 mile that you fly. Instead, there's all kinds of bonuses/penalties and scale factors based upon your ticket class. Discounted ticket types earn fewer miles, first travel earns more, and so on.
So you can't just say that free flight 'costs' have increased if they need more miles to claim them. Perhaps the reward miles are given out more freely than before? Or perhaps less? (I'm guessing less!) In any case, the article leaps to conclusions without the evidence.
Waaaa! People aren't giving me enough free stuff! Waaaa!