www.CostaRicaTicas.com

Miles are good – but can you actually use them?

While many airline travelers eagerly participate in today's seemingly unlimited number of frequent-flier programs, there has been increasing frustration with them in recent years. “Indeed, on this 25th anniversary, we're hearing much hoopla praising frequent-flier programs as boons for the airlines as well. The truth, however, is much darker,” writes ABC News.

The programs have become so popular that customers look to earn miles anywhere they can. And, with miles now available for everything from mortgages to groceries, miles are piling up in frequent-flier accounts at an astonishing pace. U.S. frequent-fliers now have billions of miles stockpiled in the various programs. That not only creates a huge liability for airlines, but also a backlog of "free" reward seats when too many people try to redeem miles during peak periods. One of the top frequent-flier complaints is that it has becoming too difficult to redeem miles for a frequent-flier reward ticket –- if there are any reward travel seats available at all.

Tim Winship of frequentflier.com says "the astonishing thing is that while the earning side has gone through the roof, the award side has moved very little." In fact, he tells Knight Ridder Newspapers, " it has never been more difficult to redeem miles....The pressure on airlines now is to reduce free seats, as they are still operating in the red."

ABC News concludes: “So today we have a confusing dichotomy. The airline industry appears to be congratulating itself on a great idea it says has worked wonderfully. … But behind the false front of sweetness and light lurks a dark repository of billions and billions of unredeemed miles no airline executive really wants to talk about, or allow to be cashed in."

http://blogs.usatoday.com/sky/

The answer of course is for them to just go ahead and buy fleets of bigger aircraft.

I just booked a May 22- June 6 trip from Green Bay to SJO using miles. It cost me 30,000 miles and $82 and I will have to do an overnight in Miami, so I will have to find a room on Priceline or whereever. Already checked that out and it will be about $57 plus room taxes. My alternative was to pay a fare of around $756. I did do different booking scenarios and dates to see if I could do it all in one day. That could be done but it would have cost 70,000 miles. They make it difficult, but it can be done. Delta Skymiles was 70,000 points for the same flight that I got on AA.

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My life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out and loudly proclaiming...." MAN....WHAT A RIDE!!!!"

I use successfully over 200,000 miles annually, mainly for trips to Costa Rica for wingmen. I find that Continental generally has plenty of availability to San Jose, at least with a little pre-planning. At the higher elite levels it's easy to book early because there is no penalty for changing dates or redepositing the miles.