Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

That's a good question. At the risk of introducing a whole 'nother topic— the ins and outs of how airline rewards programs work— I've read recently that even though air travel was obvious way down over the past 12 months airlines saw no dip in how fast their members were earning points. Although the claim was lightly sourced it makes sense to me as over the past 10 years airlines have reduced the number of points members earn from actually flying while greatly increasing the number of points awarded for partner activity. During the partial shutdown, in particular, airlines were working hard to sell points to consumers. Now, as the pandemic winds down and the public looks to travel by plane again, consumers have more points than ever to use instead of paying cash. Airlines will likely inflate the points cost for tickets (i.e., deflate the effective value of points) to bring this glut of points back into line.