Frequent Flyers Are Not Being Able To Use Their Airline Miles Credit Card
Airlines are looking for whatever they can do to cut cost to try to keep their airplanes in the air. There has been a small amount of airlines that have been able to get by this mess without laying any of their staff off, mainly Southwest Airlines which is still profitable. The major airlines like American, Northwest, and Delta have all had to layoff a large amount of their work forces. A direct result of this is that the number of flights being offered has been cut back. The major airlines cannot keep going to smaller cities because its starting to spread themselves thin. The profit to be made is much smaller and the flights are not as full. No point having two flights out of a small airport air day that are half full when one flight that is full will make it profitable.
The main reason behind all of this is the rising cost of jet fuel and the economy. People are not traveling as much themselves due to job layoffs and this housing mess. Middle class America makes up for a large number of travelers in the friendly skies and when they are not flying then the airline industry has no choice but to scale back.
So after the restructuring of their employees where are the airlines going to look next for cost savings. Most have already eliminated the free peanuts or pretzels. Some have stopped offering a free beverage and before you know it a glass of water is not going to be complimentary either. Who knows how much money the airlines save by cutting back on all of these freebies, its probably in the million over the span of the year but its probably hurting them more in the customer service area. Now, most passengers are going to have to just realize that this is their bus and to sit down and shut-up for the next 4 hours.
Okay, so now the food, I mean snacks are not free anymore and a bag of pretzels that costs $.50 at Sam’s Club is now $2 on the plane. Well, the frequent flyers are going to start feeling the pinch next. The airlines are realizing that if they want to have a frequent flyer program or get into the credit card industry and make some money off of interest that they cannot have black out dates. A black out date is when the airlines say you cannot use your frequent flyer airline miles credit card for certain flights or on certain days. These are usually the days most people travel like a Saturday morning for example. Ticket prices are always higher because most travelers take a week off of work and vacation on a Saturday to Saturday schedule. If you ever pay attention to airline ticket prices you will see that the price of an airline ticket is sometimes 100% more on a Saturday than a Friday. The airlines know your schedule and can raise prices because you are not flexible in your traveling times.
So the airlines no longer say they participate in black out dates but know they just limit the amount of free flights aboard a particular flight. You have to look at it from the airlines point of view. They could charge $500 for a plane ticket to let’s say 100 people traveling to Cancun, Mexico and make $50,000 in revenue from that flight or let as many people that have one of their airline miles credit card and use it whenever they want cutting into per flight revenues. So the same flight that had 100 full paying customers now has 50 people all cashing in their airline miles at the same time. Now the flight is only going to get $25,000 in revenue which probably barely pays the flight crews salary, the loan on the plane, fuel, and other things to get the plane there. The airlines just cannot absorb that big of a revenue cut on a flight. They must spread this over a bunch of flights because this flight is their money maker. Remember if you fly out on Friday the flight is probably half the price and the airline would rather you fly then so they can charge full price the next day to make up for your cheap seat the day before.
You are not going to hear how many seats they are cutting but estimates are that each flight is now going to have half as many flights designated to people with frequent flyer miles programs. Its not that the airline does not want to honor your miles its just theat they cannot afford to have a bunch of people cashing them in at one time.
So what does this mean to the person who used their airline credit card for their families family vacation? It means that you are going to have to be flexible. Try not to save you air miles for that one big trip a year if you make many trips through out the year. No point in saving them all thinking you are going to be able to fly your family for free and get everybody on the same plane. Too much risk doing that right now. Be willing to travel on off days. The airline credit cards are based on what ticket prices are for that day so if you travel on an off day like a tuesday morning you can probably get your free flight and still have some air miles left over for your next flight.
Flexibility is going to be the word of the future in the airline industry. This is going to be the only way that you are going to make sense out of your airline miles and still think that they are worth it. It does make sense to have a air mile credit card but now you need to be smart with it.
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