Maybe You Can Trade Them For Peanuts

By Dean Foust

Redeeming frequent-flier miles for a seat on a popular route has never been easy, as any road warrior can attest. But scoring that free trip is about to get even harder: Faced with $135-a-barrel oil, most big carriers, including United and Continental, have announced 10% capacity cuts—to take effect, most likely, after the summer crush. And some in the industry say they’ll eventually have to cut back by 20%. While the airlines say they’ll continue to set aside an average 6% of seats for frequent fliers, analysts note that the 10% cut would eliminate up to 70 million seats on domestic flights.
Already, carriers are making it tougher to use any of the 17 trillion frequent-flier miles they handed out during the past three decades. American, United, and US Airways now erase the miles from accounts that have been idle for 18 months. “Travelers should use their miles now,” says Tim Winship, editor of FrequentFlier.com. “It could be next to impossible to redeem them by this time next year.”