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Comment by kadabra9 | Hacker News Reader

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kadabra9·

This is why I always, always tell people to burn and churn those miles and points as they accrue them.

Airline and hotel partners will NEVER make miles more valuable, they only get less valuable over time.

Miles and points don’t earn interest. Use them.

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I thought it was well known that free miles are a scam. You'll end up flying the same airline just to get more miles when if you just chose the best fare you'd save way more than what you earn in miles. Even if you don't chose by fare, you also end up limiting your options. You want to arrive at 5pm but the airline you've signed up for only arrives at 9pm but you talk yourself into it "for the miles" etc...

Your error is assuming people care about spending more money. Most people serious about collecting sky miles are spending someone else's money to build up their personal miles balance. And this is precisely what makes skylines so valuable to airlines.

Not every program is like this. Most are though, so I agree in principal. But rarely there are programs that don’t have restrictions and are direct point to cent conversion

Airline and hotel partners will NEVER make miles more valuable

I don't think "NEVER" is accurate. It's just very very very very rare.

I looked up awards flights on the airline I have miles with at the beginning of COVID, and it was offering crazy discounts just to get people in seats. North America to Japan for something like 10,000 points and ~$200 in fees.

I only use them for upgrades because I worry that, when overbooked, airlines are more likely to bump people on cheap tickets. I have no idea if this is true.

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