In article , nobody
wrote:


Something big has changed since then. In the 80s and 1990s, Frequent
Flyier loyalty was extreme. But at one point, the price difference
between the low cost carriers and the legacy carriers eroded that
loyalty, allowing people to choose their airline, instead of always
blindly buying from "their" airline.


I think frequent flyer loyalty was seriously eroded also when the
airlines changed over from having more or less open availability for
award travel, except for certain blackout periods that were stated in
advance, and instead began limiting the number of FF award seats on any
flight to such low levels that cashing in FF miles for award travel
became, if not nearly impossible, at least an almost always unpleasant
and unrewarding hassle.

A couple of particularly unpleasant experiences with that and my FF
loyalty went out the window.