For some fliers, trading miles is the way to go

DALLAS (AP) — Scott Hintz needed more miles with American Airlines to book a free trip to Morocco this spring, and he had several thousand miles from another carrier that he thought might be just the ticket.

The San Francisco travel executive went online, found a willing trader for his Alaska Airlines miles and made a swap. In May he was roaming North Africa.

“I took miles out of some programs I don’t use and got some value out of them,” says Hintz, who calls himself “a miles junkie.”

Frequent-flier programs have been around for nearly three decades and billions of miles go unused. Airlines used to prohibit swaps of frequent-flier miles — it’s still in the fine print of many loyalty programs. But now some are perfectly fine with exchanges such as the one that Hintz made — they collect a fee on every trade.

Hintz used one of the little-known swap Web sites, Points.com, which operates like a crude stock exchange or commodities trading floor.

Users list what they’ve got — the number of miles and in which airline — and the number of miles they want in another airline. There is no charge for listing, but consumers on both ends of a completed swap pay a fee, most of which goes to the airlines.

Some trades are straight-up — 10,000 miles in one airline for 10,000 at another. But some traders put a higher value on some carriers, such as Delta and American, the two largest.

Another site, LoyaltyMatch.com, lets members sell miles or use them to buy merchandise.

Travelers say mileage trades are a quick and convenient way to add miles in a snap.

But others say they’re a bad deal for consumers.

Tim Winship, publisher of frequentflier.com, a Web site dedicated to the use of airline miles, says at current fares travelers get less than 2 cents per mile when they redeem their collection for a flight.

Points.com says its trading forum, called Global Points Exchange or GPX, levies fees that match what the airlines charge to transfer or share miles within their own programs.

With American, for example, trading up to 5,000 miles costs $80, rising to $130 for 5,001 to 10,000 miles, and $180 for 10,001 to 15,000 miles. Trading Delta miles costs $30 plus a penny per mile; so exchanging 10,000 miles would cost $130.

Frequent-flier programs started in the early 1980s, when Braniff and American Airlines looked for a cheap way to reward loyal customers and keep them coming back.

From the beginning, airlines limited the transfer of miles. Executives at Points.com owner, Toronto-based Points International Ltd., which provides technology for many loyalty programs, told the airlines that allowing passengers to trade miles would make their programs more attractive and generate fees for the carriers.