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Two major US carriers are to change they way they award air miles to frequent flyers from the distance flown to the amount paid for a ticket.
Delta Air Lines, which will introduce the change in frequent flyer point rewards from January 1, said the change is intended to “better reward our premium customers”.
United Airlines, which will make the same change from March 1, said passengers with premium status will “earn even more”.
The Times reported that US travel blogs have been “buzzing” with complaints.
Writing on boarding-area.com, a blog for frequent fliers, a user called ‘nycman’ suggested that Delta’s SkyMiles programme should be renamed “SkyDung”.
On the same site, ‘Beavis’ said: “I’m very scared that the other airlines will follow,” and a user called ‘Nick’ said the scheme was changing from a loyalty programme to a fixed-percentage rebate, adding: “The average consumer has no incentive to give these companies any loyalty.”
Brian Kelly, founder of thepointsguy.com, a website dedicated to loyalty points, miles and travel, said that while elite business travellers whose companies pay the full fare for them to travel first class would clearly benefit from the changes, most people travelling for work would lose.
“There’s a big misconception that business travellers are paying full fare but a huge number of them are travelling on the cheapest tickets available. They are the ones who will be squeezed by changes like this,” he said. “With industry consolidation and less competition there is less reason for the airlines to think of the consumer.”
However, he said that wider changes in the business were creating new classes of beneficiaries because most miles are awarded through credit cards that allow users to accrue miles with named airlines as they spend.
The AAdvantage mileage programme formed by the merger of American Airlines and US Airways has no plans to link miles to money spent, according to the newspaper.