“With airfares skyrocketing because of oil prices, summer travelers with frequent flier miles to burn are hoping to redeem them.
Just yesterday I booked a flight on American between MSP and Washington, D.C. using frequent flyer miles. I did get a flight requiring only 25,000 miles, but I was shocked to learn there was a $50.00 fee attached to booking the trip using miles. I feel lucky to be able to use the miles.
Some summer vacation travelers may have sticker shock if they’ve looked at airfares lately, and those higher prices are prompting more consumers to try to cash in frequent flier miles.
Tom Parsons, CEO of bestfares.com, warned Wednesday that some Twin Cities travelers could pay double what they did to fly last July. Northwest Airlines and other big carriers have been raising fares in response to record oil prices.
Travelers have been sitting on a mountain of frequent flier miles that can be turned into millions of free tickets. But many chose not to redeem those miles when they could buy round-trip tickets to the East Coast for as low as $200. Now that some prices have doubled, using the miles makes more sense.
“If people want to avoid buying a higher fare, perhaps they are more likely to turn to their miles as money in the bank to redeem,” said Jay Sorensen, who just completed a study on frequent flier programs.
At Northwest, Bob Soukup, managing director of WorldPerks marketing, said frequent flier redemptions are up about 10 percent in recent months. “As the fares are going up, WorldPerks miles do become more valuable,” Soukup said.
The increase, he said, has been driven by a program introduced in February called PerkChoice, which allows a customer to pay for a trip half in cash and half in miles.
“We are continually trying to improve the program, to make it easier for our members to earn their miles and burn their miles,” he said.
Enrollment for Northwest’s WorldPerks Visa card program, which generates airline miles for purchases made with the card, is up 19.3 percent this year — another indicator of strong consumer desire to earn miles.
Northwest and American, the world’s largest airline, both indicated that about 7 to 8 percent of their passengers typically are traveling on award tickets from their frequent flier programs.” ( via ) by LIZ FEDOR, Star Tribune
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