If you had a ticket in hand, then there's a chance that another airline would honor that ticket. It would certainly be on a space-available basis and they'd probably charge a fee.

The value of a frequent-flyer ticket at the end of the day depends on the value of a revenue ticket that you might have bought had you not used your miles,

The big issue is award availability. Whenever you have a capacity reduction, that inevitably translates directly into fewer award seats, and I have no doubt that will happen in this case.

It's as close to the Swiss Army Knife of rewards cards as it gets. It all comes down to simple math.

A lot of consumers use the term 'bait and switch' when they hear this.

At some point the new labor force will get up to speed and will be able to kind of truly replace the labor that has been lost through this strike. But that's probably a couple of months out.

There is something deep in the human psyche that keeps people, myself included, in sort of a hoarding mode. You have to overcome that.

This whole miles-for-merchandise mini-movement is being forced onto the airlines by their own inability to make good on the promise of free award seats.

It is a mess in the offing. The whole situation is coming apart at the seams. From a consumer standpoint, it has to be very, very troubling.

I welcome the idea of an airline giving serious attention to the nutritional specifications of these snacks.