11 May 2007
	Hard to use air miles Neil Stratton, Broadacres

I read Nazmeera Moola's column with great interest (Economic Viewpoint April 27). She's quite right about air miles - it's practically impossible to use them. But here's a possible solution. In the UK many years ago it was determined in court that if an airline or bank awarded you air miles, then they were yours to do anything you wanted with. So you could give them to a relative, or a charity. Loads of charities ran campaigns asking for people to donate their air miles. Having collected many millions, they would "sell" them back to the airline, or use them. All the schemes I've seen in SA allow only "the owner" to use the air miles. Why give someone a present and then prescribe what can be done with it? A court needs to establish who owns these air miles. And having established ownership, it ought to be possible to do anything you like with them. If the airlines were faced with large-scale redemption of millions of air miles, they would think a little more carefully about handing out their "awards" in the first place. Meanwhile, I'd like to start by giving my SAA Voyager miles to a charity like Reach for a Dream.