Dick Durbin Rides Again: Frequent Flyer Programs In the Crosshairs

by Robert McGarvey

The senior senator from Illinois again has airline frequent flyer programs in his sights and he doesn’t like what he sees so Dick Durbin has proposed a new bill, The Protect Your Points Act. What Durbin has in mind is a revolution in how frequent flyer programs operate.

Understand that right now most prognosticators see the Senate flipping Republican in the 2024 election but this is an extremely volatile election – vide the Black Nazi in North Carolina – and right now I am keeping my wallet closed when it comes to betting on the November outcome. But I will say that if the Democrats lose the Senate – where Durbin presently serves as majority whip – any hope this bill is enacted into law vanishes.

Which would be too bad because it’s a good bill.

Durbin explained his intent: “I understand the practicality of airline rewards programs—I’m a participant myself. But without adequate oversight, airlines are taking advantage of their customers by offering grandiose rewards, only to change the terms and conditions without consumers’ knowledge. My new legislation, the Protect Your Points Act, would require one thing from the airlines – transparency. To be clear, my bill would not eliminate your airline rewards programs or regulate the value of your points or miles. My bill only requires the airlines to play fair. If these programs are as valuable to consumers as the airlines claim they are, the airlines should have no trouble taking these simple steps to make them more transparent.”

Here’s the bill’s cornerstone: “Prohibit airlines from including provisions within their frequent flyer programs’ and airline co-branded credit cards’ terms of service that reserve their right to make changes at any time without notice to consumers, and instead require them to provide at least one year’s notice to consumers of any changes to these terms of service, or any actions that would devalue or jeopardize accrued points.”

Another key plank in the bill: “Require airlines, within 90 days of enactment, to prominently display on every page of their website a disclosure of the financial value of one point/mile, updated in real time, so that consumers may more easily compare the value of points across different airlines.”

The bill also would force airlines to let consumers pay for flights with any combination of points and cash.

Other parts of the bill would make it easier – and free – to transfer points to others and prohibit the expiration of points.

That last bit especially interested me because recently American Airlines told me I had 11,000 miles expiring and rather than play in their sandbox I just gave the lot to a charity. I would rather have given them to a family member who is a loyal AA pax (I have no idea why) but that would have cost me $55 and it struck me as insulting that I’d be coerced into paying to shift bits and bytes and the charity donation was free.

Airlines for America, the carriers’ trade group, had this to say about the Durbin bill: “U.S. airlines have been working to Protect Our Points for years against those working to eliminate these loyalty programs. U.S. airlines are transparent about these programs, and policymakers should recognize their popularity and work to ensure that unnecessary regulation doesn’t eliminate them.”

Who can read beyond “US airlines are transparent about these programs?” There is nothing transparent about the programs of the big three domestic carriers – that’s indisputable.

Yes, I know that for the big three domestic carriers loyalty programs are among the biggest sources of profit on the bottomline – indeed actual airplane operations per se produce a slender profit if any at all – and some loyalists are suggesting the airlines would be in financial difficulty were the Durbin bill enacted. That all may be true. But that does not mean I am so masochistic that I think it acceptable that pax get continually jerked around by carriers as they twirl shiny objects before our eyes and too many of us dutifully jump with joy.

Remember, I have scored three pairs of tickets to Europe with points just in this decade. But just because I can win at the airlines’ game doesn’t mean I like it.

So I still say count me as all in for the Durbin plan.