In an article in today's Wall Street Journal entitled "The Road to Redemption - Which Airlines Are Generous With Frequent-Flier Award Seats and Which Aren't" some of our locally available airline's frequent flyer programs are profiled.
The article reports on research by IdeaWorks Company on the ease (or difficulty) with which members of airline Frequent Flyer loyalty programs are able to redeem their accumulated airline miles or points for free flights. According to IdeaWorks airlines are "killing these programs by not allowing more reward availability".
The IdeaWorks study was comprehensive making 280 different Frequent Flyer Program seat requests per airline Frequent Flyer Program reviewed (both long and short routes). This amounted to 6,160 queries at 22 airline websites.
The worst performer in the study was US Airways in which only 11% of the requested redemptions could be achieved. The best performer was SouthWest Airlines in which 99% of requested redemptions were available.
The study also included some (but not all - Air New Zealand was not part of the study for example) of the airlines that fly into New Zealand. The best performer for our locally available airline's Frequent flyer Programs was Virgin Blue's Velocity program in which 90% of requested seats were available. The results for the locally available airlines surveyed were:
- Virgin Blue's Velocity program - 90% of requested seats available
- Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer - 77.1%
- Qantas Airways Frequent Flyer Program - 72.9%
- Emirates Skywards Program - 36.4%
There are more and more airline miles chasing a flat pool of airline seats and according to the Wall Street Journal the "world is awash in frequent-flier miles partly because airlines have built a lucrative business selling them to credit card companies, hotels and others who use miles as incentives and rewards".
The volume of miles issued for things other than flying is now greater in some airlines than the miles issued for using the airline. For American Airlines in 2009 - 66% of the 175 billion miles issued were through their 1,000 partners (credit card companies, hotels and the like) who pay for them. That rate of issue together with the difficulty customers experience in redeeming them means that the balloon of frequent flyer miles outstanding around the world (currently estimated to be 10 trillion) just keeps growing.
