I've never paid much attention to this, being the trusting person that I am, but according to Nancy at Full Circle Online Interaction Blog, Northwest's frequent flier programs award fewer miles than are actually flown. She says:
- I was checking my frequent flyer miles on Northwest Airlines and thought, hm, the total qualifying miles seems low, considering I flew from Seattle to NY, to Austin back to Seattle. Only 3,346 miles. That didn't seem right. So I went to the Flying Distance Calculator. Hm, quite a discrepancy. Considering the lower nautical mile figures, NW is crediting me about
NW Says LGA to IAH - 709 miles
Flying Distance Calculator says - 1229
Sea to Newark NW says 1201
Calculator says 2080
Houston to Seattle NW says 937
Calculator says 1626
Now if Northwest raises prices because fuel is going up, yet they are actually flying LESS miles due to some crazy math, something is wrong here. I'm losing 2088 miles (and, with my elite status, another 50% on top of that.)
I can understand bankruptcy. I can understand hard times. I can't understand blatant deception.
Other than learning there was such a thing as a Flying Distance Calculator, I thought you all might want to check it out for yourself to see if, in the airline frequent flier world anyway, it's becoming a smaller world than it used to be. If anyone from Northwest is reading this, please e-mail me or drop a note in the comments with your point of view.