Of mileage runners and teddy bears
Counting down to the financial and gastronomic overload of the festive season, I saw a post on Rick Seaney’s blog giving advice to US ‘Road Warriors’ on how to maintain their Frequent Flyer VIP status during the coming year. Apparently, the fix is to become a ‘mileage runner‘ and book yourself on the cheapest long haul flights (to any destination) that will allow the accumulation of enough air miles to maintain your ‘Gold Card’ status throughout 2008.
As you might expect, there are number of sites (try here and here and here) commenting on this strange phenomenon; some with details of little tricks that will lead to the promised land of ‘free’ upgrades, others ranting on the irresponsibility of polluting the environment in pursuit of such hedonistic goals.
I know that these are scheduled flights and the plane flies whether the seats are filled or not; I know that these folks are spending their own money and it’s their call if they want to spend it and to punish their backsides making pointless flights to places that they don’t really want to visit, just to maintain the perks that go with elite flyer status. It just seems strange to me that the air transport industry hasn’t figured out how to keep everyone happy.
There is a golden opportunity here for airlines to go proactive and to tie these customers in, grab some good PR and produce measurable reductions in carbon dioxide emissions. All the airlines need to do is to identify the target clients (easy, via existing mileage records), then offer them a deal whereby they pay the ‘mileage runner’ fare up front, the airline credits the ‘mileage’ without the ‘runner’ bit, keeps part of the money and uses the remainder to buy carbon offsets. Result? We’re all happy little teddies (except in Khartoum, teddies have a tough time there, whatever they are called!).
