My old pal Joe Brancatelli runs Joe Sent Me, a website about travelling, mainly by air. With utter candor, he and his columnists cover what's up with the airlines, airports, hotels, etc. You need to be a member to access most of this, though there is some valuable free material available.
Even without a sub, you may be able to read his latest article. In case you can't, I'll summarize: Frequent Flyer programs are bad and about to get a whole lot worse. Over the years, the airlines have quietly modified terms and changed reward levels to make it less and less likely that you'll be able to cash in all those points you think you have to get precisely the free flight you want. Effective in December, Joe explains, Delta takes it yet another level and this is my paraphrase, not his. Their new rules seem to essentially come down to: "No matter how many points you accumulate, when the time comes to cash them in, we'll tell you what you can have and how much it will cost you, and many of our flights will not be available to you for points, no matter how many of them you have."
Joe thinks the new rules will make Delta's plan largely worthless to Delta Frequent Flyers, and that if they get away with it then all the other airlines will follow and that such programs will be useless. I was already thinking in that direction. I have points racked up on about a half-dozen airlines. More and more, they seem like more trouble than they're worth. Between e-mail and paper mail, I receive a steady barrage of reminders that my miles are about to expire and I need to do something with them, a.s.a.p. U.S. Air is always after me to swap them in for magazine subscriptions. Other airlines are offering me travel deals in which I cash in more points than I have, plus I pay $200 and I get a flight that I can purchase for $210 without the miles.
Even before Delta's new strategy to not give you anything free, I was feeling that Frequent Flyer plans were not worth the trouble. The few times I've tried cashing in mine, the bureaucracy and poorly-defined rules discouraged me. In this age of the Internet, I'd kinda like to just make my reservations instead of sending for a rewards certificate that will pay for that reservation on that airline if I qualify, if they honor their own rewards program and if I don't find a better deal at some other airline, which I probably will if I'm not paying for it with miles. I'm sure there are some freebees out there but they don't seem to be worth the hassle. So I'm looking around for a good charity where I can donate all my miles to fly soldiers to bang their spouses or something of the sort. It's not so much that I want to support some worthy cause. I just want to get rid of those points so I don't have to think about them and fret that I'm wasting something valuable.