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Frequent Flyers Face Frustration

By Dan Schlossberg
ConsumerAffairs.com

March 14, 2006
Finding free airline tickets � never a walk in the park � is becoming a task more difficult than buying field-level seats at Boston's Fenway Park.

Record fuel prices, coupled with high demand from paying passengers, has convinced airlines to make such seats scarce. There just aren't enough available seats to accommodate everyone, according to multiple industry sources.

It was once relatively simple to trade 25,000 miles for a free roundtrip ticket. That's no longer the case. Now some carriers charge 50,000 miles � usually good for an international freebie � for the same seat to a domestic destination.

Even Southwest, the discounter that continues to turn a profit while others are losing their shirts, started limiting use of frequent-flyer miles in February.

Though careful consumers can still cash in miles for seats by planning months ahead of time, others are turning to the internet for cheap tickets. They just don't want to burn miles that may have taken months or even years to accumulate.

There are ways to make free miles work, however. One of them is to find segments that will break a long nonstop into a puddle-jumper, such as New York-Cleveland-Denver-Los Angeles. Alternative airports, such as Long Beach (near Los Angeles) or Oakland (near San Francisco), might also work � primarily because potential passengers don't always have the patience to investigate.

A January report in USA TODAY indicated one of every 16 passengers bought a ticket with airline miles during the 12-month period that ended on June 30, 2005, compared with one in 14 over the same time span two years earlier. That survey, conducted by Back Aviation Solutions, included the top 10 domestic carriers.

There are four main reasons for the fall in free tickets:

• Cheap fares trump wasting miles. Many consumers prefer to find cheap internet fares, often offered by discounters, rather than burning many miles at once.

• High demand for seats. Because of fewer available seats and high consumer demand, airlines have relatively few seats designated for frequent flyers and often require more mileage credits.

• Availability of international flights. The percentage of passengers using miles for international travel has jumped over the past three years.

• Taking advantage of other rewards. Since frequent-flyer miles can be used for hotel rooms, rental cars, tours, and other attractions, passengers unable to trade miles for air tickets often seek other options.

Though many passengers complain that using frequent-flyer miles is as big a hassle as stripping at airport security lines, the airlines aren't budging. If anything, the squeeze on frequent flyers may get tighter.

According to Continental's David Messing, "We need to address the issue of fitting a growing reward base into fewer seats."

For once, the issue has nothing to do with the girth of the passengers.

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