After 50 years of flying around the world on various airlines, most of them with American, I did not think that there was a trick in the book the airlines could use to pull the wool over my eyes. I was wrong. They’ve got me.
Today, quite by accident, I stumbled upon a fraudulent scheme which American have been evidently using for years. (Shame on me that I only now found that out).
How?
By gypping their customers out of the miles which they thought they had earned.
A case in point.
In early June, my wife and I flew from Phoenix to London. I don’t know why, but a little bird made me check today to see if the AA had credited us the appropriate mileage.
I probably wouldn’t have bothered if this were a flight from say, Phoenix to Albuquerque. But Phoenix to London is over 5,000 miles. Times two. So it’s not chump change. Or at least it didn’t used to be when the airlines were honest with their customers and didn’t try to screw them.
Lo and behold, I noticed that I only got a credit for 2,640 miles in my account. That’s about half of the distance between Phoenix and London. Then I checked my wife’s account. She got even less – only 1,650 miles or 31% of the actual distance. Hm…
So I called the airline. A polite AA agent explained to me that they no longer use miles to calculate the miles.
If that sounds like an oxymoron, it is. But the agent was nonplused. She explained to me that they now calculate the miles based on some formula which has nothing to do with miles. It is based on fares.
Another oxymoron.
Award Miles Based On Spend
“So why do you still call it miles?” I asked. “Isn’t that deceptive? You could have called it free drinks. Or baggage. Or fuel credit. What you said has nothing to do with miles.”
Yet all these decades as a loyal AA customer (I opened my mileage account with AA in June, 1983) I thought that a mile was a mile. Just like a spade is a spade. And it used to be like that for a long time.
“I remember the time when customers like me could actually get 50% or more miles if they traveled in first or business class,” I told the AA agent. “Now you are defrauding your customers by stealing 50% of their EARNED miles just because they travel in the economy. That’s outrageous!’
Never mind that this customer has traveled over 2.4 million miles with this very airline alone! Not to mention the United, Delta, British Airways, Qantas, Singapore Airlines, Lufthansa, Iberia, Alitalia, Air France, Swiss Air and others. Even Aeroflot and China Air.
What can I say? By the time I was finished, this agent was shredded. I am sorry about that. It was not about her. It was about a huge company which pays her salary and defrauds its best customers in the process.
“Oh, by the way,” I said before hanging up, “when did all this change?”
“In 2020,” he agent replied.
“Huh. The Covid year.”
Bastards, they used Covid as a cover to defraud their best customers in perpetuity.
Makes you want to never fly again. And not just because of this. The airlines have now invented charging for a seat. They provide next to no service on most flights. And if you buy a discounted fare, you can never make a change lest you want to forfeit your money (which is what happened to this writer and his wife this summer). And if you want to use these hard-earned “miles,” the airlines constantly change the rules to make more difficult to do so, and therefore more beneficial for them.
EPILOGUE
After that, I checked out when and how this American Airlines’ and other air carrier’s scam evolved. It was apparently nothing new. I could have read about it in the press long ago. Shame on me.
Look at this article, for example, from a 2016 FORBES magazine (for God’s sake, I used to have a column in that magazine in the 1990s and now this slipped past me!).
American Airlines AAdvantage Program Changes: Award Miles Based On Spend, Elite Qualifying Dollars, Platinum Pro-Status Level & Upgrades Prioritized Based On EQD
Or this one from the New York Times also in 2021:
How Frequent Flier Programs Are Changing in a Changed World
In an era of climate change and virus concerns, it’s a challenging time to keep fliers loyal. Here is how U.S. airlines are trying to keep up.
As they say, “fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
These airlines are sure not going to pull the wooldover my eyes again. I was perhaps asleep at the wheel after I retired and closed my company in 2014. But I am sure as hell awake now.
Alas, I don’t know how much good will it do me. For, all the airlines are basically doing the same things. Stay put, I suppose. That’s one option. Or travel by car.
Truth in Media 
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