Curves in the Road to Redeeming Miles

Feb

“DAVID BORAK, an environmental policy analyst fromWashington, has 300,000 frequent-flier miles with United, but for five months now, he hasn’t been able to use them for a family vacation in Rome next summer.

While his dates are flexible, he said there were no seats available for the so-called Saver price of 50,000 miles.Exasperated, he posted a message on FlyerTalk.com, a Web site where travelers share tips about getting the most out of loyalty programs, venting his frustration: “I could not even find one lousy award ticket (economy or business) for IAD-FCO for the next 12 months!” he wrote, using the airport codes for Dulles and Leonardo da Vinci Airports. “What gives?”

There are similar gripes about nearly every frequent-flier program. “I’ve been looking for standard coach seats IAH-HNL for the 1st week of August since last October,” a Continental OnePass member recently posted, referring to the airports in Houston and Honolulu. “No luck whatsoever.” A Southwest Rapid Rewards member who couldn’t find any award seats from Virginia to Denver asked in a post last December, “Is this a trend?”

In a word, yes. Travelers have long complained about the difficulty of booking frequent-flier tickets, but now it’s becoming even harder. One issue is the airline load factor. Seats filled with paying passengers averaged 80 percent in the year ended October, up one percentage point from 2006. The industry considers that level a near-capacity load factor, and as a result, airlines have less incentive to offer award seats on planes they can easily fill with paying passengers.Meanwhile, airlines are issuing miles on credit card payments for everything from groceries to rent, resulting in a glut of miles competing for a shrinking number of seats. On top of this, airlines have been tweaking their frequent-flier programs, making miles both harder to redeem and cheaper in value.”( Via NYtimes.com)

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