Is it time to give up on frequent flyer miles?

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Bill is busy blogging about soccer for the next few weeks, so let me step in to be the one outraged by the way airlines are treating us now. As my colleagues Richard Zoglin and Christine Lim report:

One category of flyer is still getting the shaft this summer: the estimated 120 million U.S. travelers who are members of airline frequent flyer programs. Flyers who want to redeem their miles for free trips are finding it increasingly hard, and in some cases next to impossible, to do so… Unless you book months, or even a year, in advance, seats on the most traveled routes and times are almost never available… A study published in May by IdeaWorks, a consulting firm, showed that, for travel dates from June through October 2010, award seats aboard Continental were available 71.4% of the time, followed by United (68.6%), American (57.9%) and Delta (12.9%).

I recently tried to cash in miles with Delta. The first available tickets were for September. I’d like to take my summer vacation during the summer, but thanks anyway.

I can’t help but start to wonder: is it time to give up on frequent flyer miles?

In general, I am not a fan of rewards programs. They tend to be a way for companies to trick us into buying more than we would otherwise. (If that’s not how the math worked out on average, then why would companies keep offering them?) As a wise person once quoted another wise person as saying, you’re never going to spend your way into savings.

But frequent flyer miles have always had a weird soft spot in my heart. Maybe it’s because airline tickets are so expensive. Or maybe I just really like strategizing ways to fly out of Newark in order to preserve my Elite status on Continental.

Increasingly, though, it seems more of a hassle than a joy to cash in miles for that well-earned ticket. I mean, there are now entire web sites designed to help you manage  your frequent flyer miles. Should it be this hard? More and more, airlines are handing out miles that expire. Classy. And don’t get me started on the maze of code-share and partner-airline rules that keep us in the know about the differences between Y, M and G fare classes.

How did this happen? As Richard and Christine report, one theory is frequent flyer mile inflation:

Some compare the situation to an inflationary monetary system: with the profusion of frequent flyer deals, consumers can now earn mileage by signing up for credit cards, refinancing their homes, joining Netflix and more. Like paper money, the more miles that are “printed,” the less value they seem to have.

That’s a fascinating comparison that leaves me with just one question. What’s the frequent flyer equivalent of gold?