Airlines Offer Deals as They Try to Sell More Miles to Consumers
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It's rarely a great deal to buy miles directly from an airline. But several carriers in the Americas are offering big discounts, so it's no longer such a bad move to top off your account. Just remember: Miles almost always lose value with time.
For many U.S. airline customers, earning miles by flying is more challenging than ever. Nearly every airline allots them based on how much a customer spends, rather than how far the passenger flies, so a cheap ticket to Tokyo nets thousands of miles fewer than it once did.
Still, in some ways, it has never been easier to acquire miles. Often, consumers earn them as a bonus for buying things, whether that's points with credit card purchases or extra miles for staying at hotels, booking car rentals, buying flowers, or signing up for Match.com. Consumers can earn hundreds of thousands of miles this way, and airlines capture margins as high as 90 percent, according to a recent report from Stifel analyst Joseph DeNardi.
Selling miles to companies that use them to reward customers long has been a profitable business. That's still the key place airlines make money with their frequent flyer programs, but carriers increasingly sell miles at attractive rates directly to consumers.
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