New York – Airlines Risk Ballooning Frequent-Flyer Payout

New York – Frequent flyer reward schemes have ballooned over the years and accumulating points has become as common as buying a carton of milk. Carriers now risk paying a high price for the glut.

Airlines have awarded more than 19 trillion frequent flyer miles over the past 25 years — roughly equivalent to circling the globe 760 million times — and more than 14 trillion of those miles are unredeemed. The rate of awards is increasing annually, according to frequent flyer site WebFlyer.

While many of those miles may never be swapped for trips or merchandise and they expire more quickly than before, that overhang of unredeemed miles represents a risk for airlines.
Many belive Frequent flier miles are the airlines’ own Social Security time bomb waiting to go off in their faces. read more here. [reuters]