VANCOUVER - Infrequent Flyers Unite

I decided to do some research on air miles (long story). Here's the most fascinating of the many facts about the aviation economy;

There are around fourteen trillion air miles in circulation. Fourteen Trillion.

There's some debate as to how that equates to monetary value. In my experience; an air mile varies in value from airline to airline (for the difficulty of earning them from British Airways or Cathay Pacific, you'd think they were priceless where as, in fact, they just don't want tourists to earn any) but The Economist had a stab by putting an arbitrary amount on them. Five cents.

In that equation; the value of the world's air miles is $700 billion.

To put that in perspective, that's more than all the US currency in circulation in the world today.

If that seems rather a lot; it's because it is. There are far more air miles in circulation than there are eligible seats for them to be redeemed. If everyone in the world who had accumulated miles were to cash them in all at once; it would take 25 years to get through the backlog.


Be afraid, American Airlines. We're coming for you...

Does this seem like a bit of a problem to anyone else? That the world's airlines have created a system of currency which has left them with an impossible liability? Not really. The potential for such a crisis to occur is, after all, fairly small. And even if all the miles in circulation were to be eventually cashed in; airlines have over the years been gradually squeezing more and more clauses into their redemption.

American Airlines, for example, informed me a few months back that the expiry date on the miles I had accrued during my trip around the world had jumped forward from 2009 to the end of this year (yes, all air miles have an expiry date attached to them. Typically you need to post activity to your account every eighteen months or so to keep them active) There's also the possibility to squeezing the value of miles by limiting the types and times of flights they can be redeemed on.

In other words, and just like any other type of currency, air miles are prone to inflation and will become increasingly worthless as time goes on. Therefore, the sensible thing to do would be to spend them whilst they still retain something of their value. Especially if you're an infrequent flyer, since yours will become the most worthless most quickly. In fact; let's all do it together and force an air miles meltdown!