The article only looks at how many miles it costs to claim a free flight. It doesn't touch on the other half of the complicated mess of the loyalty schemes: how to collect the miles.<p>These days, it's rare that you get 1 reward mile for every 1 mile that you fly. Instead, there's all kinds of bonuses/penalties and scale factors based upon your ticket class. Discounted ticket types earn fewer miles, first travel earns more, and so on.<p>So you can't just say that free flight 'costs' have increased if they need more miles to claim them. Perhaps the reward miles are given out more freely than before? Or perhaps less? (I'm guessing less!) In any case, the article leaps to conclusions without the evidence.
Personally, I think loyalty programs should be broken up. Their very existence is premised on creating monopoly and cartel outcomes by round-about ways of curtailing competition; remember, that thing that our corporations pay lip-service to?<p>This may sound strange, but the best way to break up loyalty programs for, not only the airlines, but also hotels, is for someone to sue and get the IRS to start collecting taxes on income gained from loyalty programs. The hassle would not be worth it and they would die off; leading to more competition and lower rates.....actual free market competition.
I think Tyranny is harsh.<p>For a long time the loyalty programs have been a profit center rather than a cost center since the airlines sell them to credit card companies and other vendors.