Gengulphus wrote:Lootman wrote:swill453 wrote:Again, you're over-complicating the point and throwing in straw men left right and centre. "Stop rewarding frequent flyers for flying more frequently" - what the reward is, and how it's used is irrelevant to the point.
It is impossible to unwind the airline part from all the rest of these programmes.
It's not merely possible, it's pretty easy: forbid the airlines from awarding 'air miles' or any similar incentive for flying. Other uses of the 'air miles' schemes can continue - they're no worse than Tesco Clubcard points or points for any of the many other types of 'loyalty' cards. The resulting situation would be rather surreal, in that the one thing you would definitely not be allowed to earn 'air miles' for is travelling miles by air! I suspect that would be resolved after a while, because the 'air miles' companies would grow tired of fielding complaints from customers about not being awarded 'air miles' for their flights (and possibly even of trades description investigations...) and decide that it was time to 'rebrand' themselves...
Note I'm
only saying it would be pretty easy to do this -
not advocating it!
Well OK, it is possible to do, in theory anyway. But a little unfair on people like me who have accumulated about 400,000 air miles on the understanding that I can use them for flights. Valuing them conservatively they are worth about £4,000. I would hope that existing miles could still be used for flights but not newly-earned ones.
I also suspect that there would be some kind of black market in air miles in that case. That already exists in parts of Asia where, apparently, the Alaskan Airlines loyalty scheme is particularly popular, oddly. When my credit card details were fraudulently used, the miscreant in SE Asia bought 150,000 Alaskan miles!
JohnB wrote:The French plan is to ban domestic only journeys, transfer flights for international passengers will be permitted, as you'd be livid if you arrived at Charles de Gaulle from San Francisco and told you need to go to Gare de Lyon to catch a train to Lyon. This will cause problems with those transfer flights, as while the number of transfer passengers is small percentage, its all part of a much more expensive package, and could make people switch to a hub outside France and avoid Air France.
So while a laudable aim, it could end up with more miles being flown overall.
Yes, I read the same thing. And if that means that the domestic flights still happen, just with fewer people on them, then not so much is gained. Or maybe people will fly from Lyon to Paris via Geneva
People are always going to want to fly, and air passenger traffic is projected to double by the year 2050. Aviation is only about 2-3% of global energy use. A better solution would be more efficient planes, which of course is already happening.