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Yes, I think big companies especially tend to view it that way. Governments have passed some of these rules about employee travel having to use the miles/points
by _delirium 11y ago
Yes, I think big companies especially tend to view it that way. Governments have passed some of these rules about employee travel having to use the miles/points for official purposes mostly because it's politically popular to hammer "government waste", even using tools that aren't very efficient hammers. Companies tend to take a bigger-picture view when they're worried about travel budgets, instead of the relative penny-pinching of going after airline miles. For example when there's internal pressure to cut corporate travel budgets, two common policies are: 1) direct managers to reduce unnecessary travel, e.g. cut out 10% of trips entirely, and 2) institute a rule that employees have to book through the corporate travel agent and normally must pick one of the routes that's within x% of the cheapest business class fare.
The miles themselves, yeah, I think they just see as a minor compensation to employees for travel, since they don't pay them overtime or anything. Plus in some cases it's not precisely a kickback. Sometimes it is, but other times it's intended to incentivize the traveler to stick with their main airline even when the airline has worse routes to some cities. For example, you usually fly United, but today you want to fly to a city where American has a nonstop and United has only a 1-stop, for similar prices. Absent any kind of loyalty program, you'd pick American's nonstop for convenience. United's perks are supposed to encourage you to take the United 1-stop, even though it's a bit less convenient. This isn't precisely a kickback in the normal sense, because they aren't incentivizing you to buy a higher fare, and it's basically a wash from the employer's perspective. Instead they're incentivizing you to accept being personally inconvenienced with a worse flight, in return for receiving some personal perks.
- ghaff 11y agoI know people who do a lot of crazy routings to stay with their preferred carriers. As you suggest, it's not necessarily about spending more money but taking a less direct route. Personally, I won't do it for shorter trips; I spend too much time in planes as it is. But there are a couple more distant destinations where I could fly non-stop but usually will take my regular carrier with a stop instead.
- sithadmin 11y ago>I know people who do a lot of crazy routings to stay with their preferred carriers. As you suggest, it's not necessarily about spending more money but taking a less direct route. That generally doesn't work anymore. Almost all airlines now use a revenue model for milage awards, not distance.
- mpeg 11y agoWith oneworld airlines (BA and AA, amongst many others) mileage doesn't affect status, it works on a different point system (tier points) that doesn't depend in cost, but largely can be gamed by breaking up a direct flight into a few stops in different "zones". For instance, I flew LHR-CDG-DOH-KUL-PEN last year, business class, for less money that I would have spent in a more direct flight, but I got a lot of tier points for it. Then I realised I was addicted to my BA gold status, and that I wasn't getting that many perks anyway. This year I'm opening myself up to other airlines.
- sithadmin 11y agoAA's switch to a revenue model is already under way.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- apendleton 11y agoThat's only for award miles, but not for status-qualifying miles, at least on United (and I think also Delta). And like the original article says, people trying for status pretty much never use award miles because you don't earn status miles for those flights, so they don't really care.