Airlines crack down on ‘mileage runs’
seattletimes.com
seattletimes.com
If it feels like you're getting a deal, that hole will eventually be closed.
This isn't as an egregious example as Wal-Mart but it's indicative of the same underlying force.
They're aligning rewards for their loyalty program with the behaviors of customers not trying to game the system. And you criticize this?
Wal-Mart employees utilizing $6.2 billion dollars of public assistance is an example of this.
And exactly upon whom do you place the blame for unemployed people who use public assistance? How much credit does Wal-Mart get for the delta increase of public assistance that would be spent if they didn't employee people?
This airline complaint is that customers who have been explicitly trying to game the system by doing things like purchase $500 airline tickets can't get the free trips or upgrades they want as readily as they could before. It cheapens your anti-Walmart rhetoric to put this in the same class of "oppression". Why would you do such a thing?
Play roulette, start with a low bet ($5) on black or white (50/50). If you win, you've profited the amount of the original bet. If you lose, double your bet and play again. Repeat until you win and you will have profited the amount of the original bet. Repeat.
This works so long as you have enough cash to keep doubling the bet. Hitting the maximum allowed bet on the table is not a problem, you just split it in half and keep going.
My buddies at one point had ~$60k on the table, and didn't have enough to go to ~$120k if they lost...
They did this for about two weeks straight, profiting something like $10k. One morning when they tried to enter the casino, the guards at the door said they were not welcome, and if they didn't leave immediately the police would be called. They assume they had been spotted on camera, or the table operator reported them.
Interesting they say that casino betting limits eliminate the strategy. I don't think that's true.
Let's say you have $100k on the table, which is the maximum allowed, and you lose. All you need to is play multiple tables with the doubled bet ($200k) split up across those tables. Once you've played all of those to conclusion (maybe even splitting again...) you will have effectively "won" the line of play that they tried to stop you when you hit the $100k limit.
If winning at casinos is your goal, you're going to need to look elsewhere.
You say you won $10k, but how much money did you have? You said at one point you had $60k on the table so let's assume you had just that - if you put the entire 60k on something which has 7:6 odds then the odds of you winning are high but exactly what you would expect given the winnings compared with the bet.
When you play with the martingale strategy your odds of winning aren't any better, you just think they are because you don't realise your entire pot of money is actually at stake.
If you are splitting your bets among players to get around table limits, they might frown on that - but that's not because you are "winning" it's because you are circumventing their table limits.
If it "works" for you, you're just the survivor bias.
That's only true in games where the only winnings are the bets of the players. Roulette, and blackjack, is different because your winnings on success are set and paid by the house.
Every time you lose, you make up by increasing the potential earning: $1 lost, $2 lost ($-3 total), $4 lost ($-7 total), $8 won ($1 total)
The only problem is that these theoretical limits are really limiting in practice ;-) In case of the GPs buddies, if they started at $15, playing at ~$60k means that they lost 12 times in a row, and if they finally won that round, they still only gained $15.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martingale_(betting_system)
EDIT: Everyone seems to have beaten me to this answer... :p
Winning $10K from a casino is background noise. It's nothing that will get you kicked out.
Even within these restrictions loyalty programs still make sense - these are people who purchase a large amount of travel per year, if you can guarantee yourself as an exclusive supplier you still come out ahead - even with price ceilings.
Someone well versed in stock exchanges, commodity exchanges, currency exchanges, insurance exchanges, rare metal / mineral exchanges etc. can chime in:
What is a good "house" (a marketplace for goods and/or financial instruments) that does not change the rules - or changes them very rarely - and has generally stood the test of time?
Can currency markets be gamed - by governments or other control bodies - so that a repeat of the Black Wednesday[1] is all but minimized?
I am really interested in how financial markets deal with these kinds of quandaries, where a Soros[2] like figure could potentially manipulate an event to his favor.
If they put in place too many fail-safe mechanisms, 'players' may be turned away and may want to 'gamble' at another house.
Too few, then the 'house' gets taken to the cleaners.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Soros#Currency_speculati...
For example, for Star Alliance flyers, until recently (yesterday in fact) you could achieve Star Alliance Gold status (priority check in and boarding, free checked bags, first to be upgraded, last to be bumped, lounge access, etc) for cheap by registering for Aegean Airlines' loyalty program as they only required 20k miles to achieve Gold status whereas most other Star Alliance partners require 50k. You could also keep this status for 3 years as long as you logged some miles each year (other airlines require you make the 50k level every year.)
Yesterday Aegean too announced revisions to their loyalty program which pretty much put an end to this. But there are still other loopholes in other airlines' programs being rooted out by the dedicated.
Bring a stiff drink and lots of spare time.
Find any non-Star-Alliance airline where you can get silver status easily; and email premiermatch@united.com. They'll probably give you gold status immediately, and you have 3 months to fly 12,500 miles to secure it through the following year.
FoundersCard right now has the benefit of instant silver status on Cathay Pacific (OneWorld), no need for any flying. (Email me if you're interesting in a referral link.)
Using this method, the only cost to getting gold status is (1) FoundersCard membership dues (easily pays for itself with other discounts), and (2) a round-trip to Europe or Asia, plus maybe a domestic flight to round up the miles earned.
For United the benefits of 1k might be much greater than Platinum (the next level down), so if you are only 5 to 10k miles away you would do a mileage run.
The article also fails to mention that United has not changed the way you earn status. It is still miles traveled and mileage runs (assuming you have spent enough during the year) are still viable
https://i.imgur.com/MA3YeuX.jpg
Let's spend one on a plane so that we can make it into the gold lounge and get free yogurt-covered raisons!
I suppose it makes sense if a single line is a year.
Each dot is 6 pixels wide, making it 52 x 52 = 2704 weeks (making each row a year).
You could get the number of days remaining by expanding this image about 2.6x along both axes.
You're looking at spending 5-10% of all of your weekends in a plane to maintain this status.
Being up in the next tier can earn you multipliers of the miles you actually fly and other perks, so it can be a fairly rational decision.
The only time I did an explicit mileage run (as opposed to taking a longer route to get to where I had to go anyway) I did a short hop from London to Madrid in First Class on a really cheap ticket, spent the day walking around being a tourist, and then probably paid for the ticket in the amount of booze I guzzled at the rather excellent Iberia lounge on the way back.
That was to keep good status with American. Having good status with American can making flying - gasp! - pleasurable.
First, if you have carry-on luggage and the flight is full, this guarantees you access to overhead space. That can be a big deal. Having to gate-check your bag can be irritating if you've got things in there that you need, and the longer the flight, the more important this is.
Second, at least on Delta, the people who board priority have a separate line. That line continues to exist even after general boarding starts. The upshot is that, even if you board with everyone else, you can cut the line and not have to stand around waiting. If you prefer sitting down to standing in a line, then this is valuable and good.
Third, and related to #2, boarding early means you're likely boarding with other frequent travelers. Those people are better to board with because they are quicker and more efficient, on average, about things like clearing out of the aisle, getting settled, etc. This means less waiting around and being jostled in the aisle.
All of this adds up to a much more pleasant experience.
All of those are hugely valuable, especially stuff that saves you time at the airport. A huge problem with air travel is that airports are located usually far away from anything of consequence, and the requirement to arrive absurdly early (to navigate luggage, check-in, security, etc) adds huge chunks of time to a flight.
I have priority with United, but I still try to board late - I hate being stuck in a shitty tin can - but the rest of the benefits are enormously pleasant.
I imagine that the occasional free flight on non-blackout dates doesn't make up the cost difference of always choosing the cheapest flight but I have no data to back it up.
I've had endless hassles converting miles to flights. It always seems that there are no seats available for mileage redemption for the routes and times I want to fly.
So I've concluded miles are worth a lot less than cash. I now buy the cheapest ticket regardless of carrier and use a cash back credit card. No more miles, no more loyalty.
If your time has value, and if you're spending your own money (not your employer's), is it worth the effort to juggle all the programs, deals, miles and terms?
Or is cash the better option?
I also churn credit cards for the miles and hotel points. Next month I'm flying to Tokyo, Taipei and Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific and Japan Airlines in first class and Eva Air in business, staying at the Park Hyatt Tokyo and Conrad Hong Kong.
Then in January I'm flying to Vietnam, again in first class on Cathay and JAL, with free stops in Hong Kong, Beijing and Tokyo.
While some of these can be purchased as one-offs, the cost of doing so would probably offset the "cheapest flight" approach, and the convenience of receiving them automatically has some value on its own.
The cost/benefit might still not be there, but it's not as straightforward as the ticket savings vs. free flight savings question you put forward. You have to also bear in mind that many miles hunters are logging some (or most) of their travel on an employer's dime.
Also, there's another huge benefit to sticking with a single airline - you learn that airline. When I used to fly 2 weekends/month, it was very disconcerting when I had to use a non-United airline and deal with the subtly to vastly different quirks.
Cracking down on milage runs is one thing. It makes sense for airlines to price flights according to their value (including rewards value). But tying rewards to spending instead of miles is a mistake. Many people like myself will just move to airlines who still reward their travelers well.
Secondly, the overarching assumption is that American (and its alliance) will follow the other major players and switch once the merger is done, at which point there won't really be anywhere to go, at least for people mostly traveling domestically in the US. They control the market.
Two factors likely contribute to policy decisions of the airlines. Mergers produce less competition, and secondly, it's quite noticeable over the last couple of years that every flight is packed full.
Consequently, a shortage of seats assures carrier income which makes loyalty much less relevant, in particular loyalty that's tightly linked to miles traveled.
OTOH loyalty programs connected to credit cards are probably more profitable to airlines, and in today's world more effective in maintaining loyalty too.
Last time I looked, domestic one-way business class reward seats were going for 25,000 points on MileagePlus, and that's their "Saver" reward, which isn't available as much as their "Standard" reward, which is 50k each way for business class.
So it sounds like United is trimming your ability to accrue miles, but also requiring more miles to earn a seat.
Edit: I should ask it this way: how much do you have to pay directly to get all the perks Elite status gives you? Can you buy Elite status for $500? $1,500? This is as opposed to how much do you have to spend on extra tickets you don't need to get the upgrades? Basically, I assume that it's cheaper to buy extra tickets and fly around, than to buy the status directly (otherwise people wouldn't do it). The question is how much cheaper is it?
http://www.delta.com/content/www/en_US/skymiles/about-skymil...
I think the value is there, but you have to be willing to take a plane to nowhere and burn entire weekends just to get it. I certainly don't think that's worth it, but there are a lot of people that do.
That was basically SA gold. If you are higher tier (e.g. LH HON Circle), then add things like free full service restaurant and private passport control to the list.
Delta, similarly, gives shorter lines, free upgrades to first class based on availability (you can always get them if you do something odd like take the first flight out of Newark before the buses are running), and free standby and same day confirmed flight changes (just book the last flight of the day, go to the airport whenever you want, and use your free change). Free standby is really handy for illegal transfers too. E.g. Fly to LA then hop a plane leaving immediately - officially you can't do it because there has to be a certain time window for you to transfer, but with free standby they'll put you on the plane as long as you are at the gate and there's a seat.
So a lot of times you get things that would cost a lot more (companion ticket, first class, etc.) and other times you just get some of your time back (shorter lines, illegal transfers).
This is useful perk to me.
In the late 1990s/early 2000s, people used to go on "baht runs", buying a cheap Thai Airways airpass that allowed many segments of intra-Thailand travel for a very low price, and earning many "qualifying segments" on TG's partner carriers, allowing people to make top-tier United status for under $1000 (by getting 100+ qualifying segments).
There were reports that some people didn't actually fly the trips (e.g. supposedly some people paid locals to board with their boarding passes).
These days, like the "pudding guy" and the "buying Treasury bonds with credit cards" and the "dollar coins", are over.