Comments on: More Reasons to Dislike Delta’s Pay With Miles Program

By: Short hops — March 3, 2008 — Mergers, miles, and train toilet obstetrics » Upgrade: Travel Better

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 20:13:47 +0000

[...] a bad deal, and that it was an other salvo in their devaluation of the mileage currency. But Gary Leff and Tim Winship have already argued this point forcefully, so I’ll let them speak for me. [...]

By: Seth

Seth — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 23:10:02 +0000

Well, as long as it is an ADDITIONAL redemption opportunity it is hard to complain too much about it, especially for folks who don’t really work at maximizing the value and want to travel when they want to travel. And considering Delta’s already started restricting their double-miles reward inventory, this is an interesting approach that might play well in some markets (though I can’t think of any offhand).

That being said, I tend to agree with Kiwi Flyer that this is just going to embolden other carriers to shift the paradigm of the reward schemes to prevent the higher redemption values of long-haul premium cabin travel. If that sticks then the entirety of the miles game may just pack up and go home.

By: Kiwi Flyer

Kiwi Flyer — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 22:57:00 +0000

I don’t think it is a non-issue. More and more programs are moving to this method instead of the old style double points for availability.

Air NZ Airpoints awards, when redeeming for Air NZ flights, are almost all of this variety. (The only exception are business class longhaul awards for elites.)

Air NZ however, has a twist in that these redemptions can still be upgraded. But, like Delta, they do not earn anything (thus slightly worse than cash).