Air miles and frequent flier programs - under threat?
Got a stockpile of air miles? Been meaning to use them up but just haven’t got around to it? You might want to get on with it. That goes for all of us, including me…
There are two big reasons to be a little nervous about your beloved stockpile of air miles.
Firstly, traditional airlines are looking for radical ways to cut costs and learn from the low-cost airline model. On the list of possible cuts are the lavish air miles and frequent flier programs that cost the airlines a bundle to operate. However, this would seem to be more of a risk in Europe rather than the U.S. where these programs seem to carry more weight with consumers and even the low-cost airlines seem to operate their own rewards programs.
Secondly, and perhaps more ominously, a legal case in Germany might pose a serious threat to the private use of air miles collected in the course of business travel. On Tuesday (April 11), a Federal Labor Court in Efhurt, Germany, ruled in favor of the company retaining its rights to the air miles accrued from travel that they had paid for. In this case the employee had amassed 350,000 points (a travel value of €9,700 or almost $12,000) in Lufthansa's Miles and More program.
We all know that the major benefit of air miles is that employees can rack up some free leisure flights in the course of jet-setting here and there for business. Ethically it is easy to see why a company may get upset about this as it may be a conflict of interest, but this legal decision could spell a big change in the current freebie landscape and upset the very heart of the logic which the airlines use to make frequent flier programs work.
The obvious tactic here is that employees are less price-sensitive when spending their company’s cash so are lured into loyalty with an airline to rack up points. If this case is an example of the road ahead then it looks like this backhander might have a limited lifespan…
There you go, two big reasons to use up your air miles pile. Get to it…
© Cheapflights Ltd Hugo Burge