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Generally considered illegal, the topic of selling points to the highest bidder has popped up again on various frequent flyer hubs around the world.
So what if you have 100,000 points on, say your Diners card, and you want to sell it? It's a bit of a grey area, and no doubt rules are different from country to country and program to program.
On the face of it, it seems airline reward programs safeguard themselves against any such dealing by stating the points are not the property of program members.
But what if the transaction takes place before the points are actually transferred into an airline program account? If it's done outside the program, technically the airline is not involved. Or what if it's used by an "eligible family member" who happens to compensate you for the favour? At best, there seems to be a lack of a definite answer to the problem.
There have been recorded cases where FF program heavies have followed on-line auctions to pounce on point traders, but whether the programs would be successful in prosecuting is, for now, anybody's guess.
It's certainly a topic worth discussing. If any of our readers has information
on trading points, please post it on our
Bulletin Board.
Speaking of selling points. US Airway's Dividend Miles is offering to sell miles for a record 3 cents a pop - the highest price we've heard of (though apparently that includes taxes).
Qantas has started a new service on its website with details of flights where award seats are still up for grabs. According to the schedule, at the time of writing some of the award seats still available in July included flights between Sydney and Honolulu, Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Tokyo, Sydney and Brisbane and Adelaide and Sydney. For details go to news and offers on the Frequent Flyer page of the Qantas website.
For those of you who would rather not have the hassle of dealing directly with the airlines, there is always our
Award Booking Service. For a modest fee, our frequent flyer experts will do all the work for you. This popular service was recently featured on the
Getaway Show.
Following a recent court ruling in Norway, Qantas says it will soon be no longer possible to earn Frequent Flyer points on Norwegian domestic SAS travels. The change takes effect on August 1.
Points can still be earned on selected SAS flights within Scandinavia and between Scandinavia and Asia.
Could the Citibank Platinum be the ultimate card for serious frequent flyer point collectors? One of our Bulletin Board regulars seems to thinks so, though he writes entry level income requirements are very high. Once you're in though, the card's program lets you use your points with any airline and includes the part-cash, part-points option to buy flights. Your points are automatically transferred to FF programs, they never expire and with Qantas (the preferred partner airline) you get 1-for-1 transfers.
Well, not exactly, but United's Mileage Plus members in
the US - who normally only accrue frequent flyer points through flying -
have been given extra incentive to use non-flight program partners to
click up bonus miles. A select group of members was sent special
promotion invites recently, with an offer of 3,000 credit miles the
first time they used the services of a non-flight Mileage Plus partner.
If you've been thinking of using your award points to
take a break on some island not too far away, Qantas is launching a
non-stop service between Melbourne and Hamilton Island this month. There
are also more links starting from Sydney and Melbourne to Queensland's
Mackay, Maroochydore, Proserpine, Rockhampton, and Townsville.
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