As rewards programs proliferate and shift to spending rather than miles flown, it has become harder to earn awards. We explain why, and help you plan a strategy to maximize your rewards.
These days, airlines are happy to shower you with sign-up bonuses and juicy earning multipliers to get you to spend on their credit cards. It’s supposed to be a mutually beneficial relationship: You get award travel, and the airlines get record profits. Delta Air Lines, for example, earned nearly $2 billion from its American Express partnership in just the last three months of 2024 — up 14 percent from the previous year.
The problem, though, is that the points and miles you earn are buying less travel than they used to.
Just look at British Airways, which increased some partner award prices by 60 percent in under a year, or Air France-KLM’s Flying Blue, which recently raised the number of points needed for awards between 14 and 25 percent.
What’s behind this wave of devaluations, and more important, what can you do about it? The answer lies in understanding how dramatically airline loyalty programs have evolved — and knowing where to look for remaining sweet spots before they vanish.
Airline miles feel inflation, too
The fundamental problem is simple: too many points chasing too few seats. “What we’ve seen over time is a lot of miles being printed, and we haven’t seen a concomitant increase in the number of unsold airline seats available for redemption,” said Gary Leff, an airline industry expert who writes about airlines and loyalty programs on his blog, View From the Wing.
When frequent-flier programs began, planes averaged only about 65 percent full. Once a flight took off, those empty seats could never be sold, so airlines used points and miles to fill them. Today, planes run closer to 85 percent capacity or higher. Simultaneously, credit card partnerships have airlines issuing more points than ever, and most airlines have switched to dynamic award pricing that fluctuates with demand.