I’m beginning to think that airlines don’t really do the whole travel-rewards thing. Oh, they’ll say they do, but when it comes down to it…
So the two airlines with which I have accumulated miles1 both have two tiers of rewards; let’s call them “Level Suck” and “Level Rock”. Level Suck requires only half as many miles as Level Rock, but there are restrictions; specifically, “peak routes” might not be available at Level Suck, Saturday-night stays might be required, etc. At no point does the documentation for either programme really get down to cases and explain in detail when one must redeem at Level Rock and when Level Suck is available.
The flight that I am trying to plan is entirely within the continental United States, over a weekend. I am trying to fly from a minor airport in a Midwestern city to a minor airport in a Southern city; “minor” should be understood here to indicate that the number of baggage claim belts at the airports in question — combined — can be counted on the fingers of one hand. This is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a Peak Route.
And yet it seems that no reward flights are available at Level Suck on the days in question, on either airline. There was briefly the possibility of such a flight, but when I tried to redeem it I got a message informing me that I cannot book this online, and must call a toll-free phone number. The message did not inform me of the fact that no one would answer the phone at the number in question, but that turns out to be true as well.2
And so the whole frequent-flier thing gives certain indications of being a scam. By the time I’ve got enough miles on either plan to reach Level Rock, I suspect that they’ll have changed the rules again somehow to prohibit the redemption of miles on days containing a Y or something.
[1]: The two airlines in question are now partners, as it happens, and one can earn miles for one’s plan by flying with the other. This is a very different thing from being able to just, say, pool miles between the two plans and come up with something worthwhile; the latter seems to be a fundamental logical impossibility, somehow.
[2]: Plus, one of the airlines will happily quote “prices” at you which are impossible to achieve using the guidelines in the Member’s Guide. If reward travel happens at x and 2x miles, how is it possible to get a search result which costs 1.7x miles?