McGarvey’s Words

Let me count them: I have been on four Southwest Airlines round trips in the past few months. All full fare. All bought online, using a Diners Club card, which theoretically entitles me to an accelerated earning of freebie tix. But I am no closer to an award ticket than when I started. Why? I don’t track miles (or flights, as in SWA’s case). Never have. Hope never to. Heresy? I prefer to see myself as a liberated flyer.

Maybe I am the Village Idiot but I am bound by no airline’s rewards program. I am emancipated. Rather than seeing myself as a fool I prefer to think I am a contemporary ronin, a traveler without loyalties other than to self.

In moments of weakness over the years I have accumulated memberships in many frequent flyer programs but I never use the numbers, don’t even know them because, along the way, the airlines and I have fallen out of touch as I have moved but left no forwarding address. I sigh with relief because my travels are architected to suit my needs and my clients. Period.

This started 15 years ago when I saw a co-worker, let’s call him Mike, clutching an OAG and frantically plotting how to get from LAX to Dallas. That seemed pretty simple to me – lots of non-stops to choose from. It wasn’t simple for Mike. His trips were a calculus of many variables. If he touched down in Las Vegas he got 500 bonus miles. If he over-nighted in Tulsa, that was another 1000 miles. In the end, a straightforward trip became for Mike a bone-crushing web of short hops spliced together to generate five figures of mileage awards from even a 300 mile commuter flight.

“But I earned enough miles for a roundtrip for two to Thailand...with free hotel rooms, too,” explained Mike when I asked him about this obsessive collecting of miles.

Yeah, but at the cost of how many miles of lost sleep, how many hours spent in small town airports, how many hours spent conjuring up magic routing to deliver maximal pay-offs? Guys like Mike don’t like to face up to the reality that they belong in M.A., Mileage Anonymous, a 12-step program somebody should start to minister to the lunacies of mileage collectors.

Don’t I collect anything? Confession: I pay the few extra bucks required to enroll in American Express’ Membership Rewards program where I have roughly 200,000 points, which in fact is every point I have earned since enrolling. I am not sure how to redeem them, don’t know that there’s anything I want to get anyway, and so the points add up, month after month. And I have a smaller pot of Diners Club points but I don’t pay extra for them (I don’t think) and probably don’t have enough to redeem for anything.

I have never redeemed airline miles. Never.

Which brings me to the key point: exactly what do all these miles get us? The promise is free travel, that is, free airfare and free rooms in hotel partners of the airlines – but, you know, I fly enough as is. If I’m dreaming about a vacation in the next couple months, it’s driving up to Bryce Canyon in Utah, about 500 miles north of me, to catch a little time amongst the hoodoos and hike through the snow. There’s no airport near Bryce Canyon and, as I recall, the best hotel is an inexpensive Best Western, so how the devil will mileage awards help me here? And if I don’t go there, probably I’ll drive to Taos, NM and, again, airfare freebies won’t help me there.

Meantime, airlines are attaching many more strings to programs that allow redeeming miles for upgrades to business class – and, jaze, exactly what’s wrong with flying in the back of the bus anyway?

You know what frequent flyer points are good for: magazine subscriptions. The girl friend recently cashed in some Continental miles for a free subscription to Wine Spectator. Cool – but I honestly can afford to buy the magazines I want to read.

What do I gain by eschewing frequent flyer programs? I buy airfare that puts me on planes that get me to my destination faster, more directly, and (at least sometimes) at the best price. I’ll always pay a few extra dollars to get there quicker because that, not mileage awards, is my highest priority.

I book hotel rooms based solely upon location and price – naturally I collect no points, no miles. Ditto for booking rental cars. What I lose in miles I gain in customer affection for my expense reports, which inevitably are lean and sober.

Call me a fool but at least I am not a slave.

Are you?

Tell us why you collect miles, or why you don't. The best emails will go here.

Want to keep reading McGarvey's Words? Sign up for Joe Brancatelli's weekly email notification of new travel columns that have posted to JoeSentMe.com. McGarvey's Words usually posts every other week, except when it doesn't. How to get this update? Just send Joe a blank E-mail and Joe will sign you up personally.

Click here to visit Joe Brancatelli's Travel Site JoeSentMe.com

Keep coming back, for more of McGarvey’s Words.

Taos Land Sale: Click For Details

Have a cruise complaint? File it with Porthole Magazine's Ombudsman.

McGarvey on Publishers Marketplace: Brain Wars

About Robert McGarvey

Author of How to Dotcom (Entrepreneur Press), McGarvey is writing a book on Brain Wars, the rise of cognitive science and the search for truths about thinking. A onetime columnist for BizTravel.com, he is a frequent contributor to dozens of magazines, ranging from American Legion to Selling Power, American Way, and Rutgers. He has also contributed to Harvard Business Review. For the past five years, he has served as "The Ombudsman" for PORTHOLE Cruise Magazine. Still curious about McGarvey? Read up on him here.

Taos Land Sale: Click For Details