The Future of Frequent Flier Miles

In today's Wall Street Journal, columnist Scott McCartney offers his forecasts for 2008 travel. Among his predictions, McCartney says the airlines--still trying to fly above the financial turbulence of the past few years--will likely sell off some assets, including their frequent flier programs.

What does this mean for travelers? According to McCartney:

* New owners of an airline's reward program could seek to develop more partnerships. In turn, that could result in more ways to earn and spend your accrued miles.

* The downside: Having spun off their rewards programs, airlines might make you spend even more miles for free travel--a trend that is already happening.

What can you do about this? Lower your expectations, for one thing. The days of getting a free coach ticket for 20,000 miles are disappearing quickly, if not already gone forever. Booking business class tickets to international destinations is even harder. Recently, the best deal I could find for a business class trip to Buenos Aires from San Francisco was 250,000 miles.

Also, it helps to become savvier about how you earn miles.

Example: I had nearly 19,000 United Airlines miles set to expire Dec. 31, 2007. I'd paid little attention to my United rewards program, as I don't often fly United. But I didn't want to lose the miles, and all I had to do to save them was to generate some activity on my account before year's end.

So I signed up to earn miles from Safeway whenever I shop there (which is often). And I joined United's dining rewards program, in which you earn miles by spending dough in participating restaurants. Just by doing things I always do--grocery shopping and dining out--I'm now earning United miles. Plus, I charge those expenditures on Amex, where I earn additional miles.

If nothing else, I saved my 19,000 miles from vanishing. That won't get me to Buenos Aires, but it's a start.

Comments

[Michael]

One of the things I really resent from these airlines is the fact that they continue to dictate what people should or shouldn't do with their miles. Who are they to tell people how to dispose of their own miles? Am I the only person outraged by the fact that if I don't need the miles, I can either give them away (which the airlines somewhat still tolerate) or I can sell them, a thought airlines can't stomach. I've been using sites like sellingmiles.com and www.flyhub.com to sell my miles and make some extra cash and will continue to do this rather than see them expire because I don't need them to fly, since my company flies me everywhere. I wish more frequent flyers knew of these two sites, they 'd make some money back on these well earned miles.