Airline loyalty schemes reward one thing above all: flying more, in the highest-carbon seats. They are quietly designed to turn ordinary travellers into frequent flyers, but it’s a game you can choose to opt out of.
A small, wealthy minority causes most of flying’s climate harm, while most of the world has never flown. But why do so many of us who do fly find ourselves doing it a little more every year? Part of the answer is a system quietly designed to make us: the airline loyalty scheme. Here is how it works, and why it pulls in exactly the wrong direction.
Rewarded for polluting?
Frequent flyer programmes reward one thing above all: flying more, and doing it in the most carbon-heavy seats. The more miles you clock up, and the further forward you sit, the more perks you earn: lounges, upgrades, status. It is a clever, effective incentive to keep us in the air, and to keep us buying those luxury seats that can carry several times the carbon of an economy one.
Chasing status
The tiers, like silver, gold, platinum, turn flying into a game with a scoreboard. And if you reach the top, you want to stay there, which means flying again, and again, and again. At its most absurd, people take “mileage runs”, flights they do not need, purely to protect or grow their status.
A mileage run is a flight taken for no reason but the miles: fly out, turn around, fly home, so the points tick over and the gold card survives another year. When flying to nowhere starts to make sense, the altitude has really gone to your head.
Why do airlines love them?
This is no longer just a way to reward your most loyal customers. For many airlines, the loyalty scheme and the credit cards tied to it are now the single most valuable part of the whole business. A 2026 report that valued the world’s airline loyalty programmes put American’s AAdvantage at around $27 billion, far more than the entire airline is worth on the stock market. Some analysts have taken to calling the big carriers “credit cards with wings”.
Here is the trick. Airlines sell miles to the banks for real cash. Every time you spend on an airline credit card, your bank buys miles from the airline to reward you with. Handing out those miles costs the airline next to nothing, so it is almost all profit, and every mile you collect is one more reason to book another flight. So the nudge to keep flying is not an accident. It is built into how the industry makes its money.
Can air miles ever be ‘green’?
Some airlines, like Qantas, now offer a ‘green’ loyalty tier: switch your home to green energy, stay in eco-certified hotels, give to charity, offset a flight, and then earn free flights for doing it. Yes, those actions are all important, but remember that the scheme’s core purpose is to get you to fly more.
There’s no such thing as a free flight
Frequent flyer reward schemes are not harmless fun. They are one of the quiet engines behind the fact that a small group flies so much, and that aviation’s emissions keep climbing. If we want the people who fly the most to fly a little less, rewarding them for flying more is exactly the wrong design.
The good news is that this is a part of the system you can choose to opt out of. And opting out, with a clear reason, sends the industry a signal it actually pays attention to. If your loyalty has started to feel out of step with everything else you are doing for the planet, here is a short, ready-to-send letter to close your account and tell your airline why.
Your questions:
A flight taken purely to earn miles or keep status, not to actually go anywhere. People fly out and straight back so their points top up and their tier survives another year. It is loyalty incentives at their most absurd: burning carbon for the colour of a card.
They are designed to. Every reward is tied to flying more, and to sitting further forward in higher-carbon seats, so they pull frequent flyers towards exactly the trips the climate can least afford.
They reward some genuinely good habits, but every reward still moves you up the same fly-more scoreboard, and the scheme’s core purpose never changes.
If it has started to feel out of step with everything else you do for the planet, then yes. Closing it, with a clear explanation why, sends the industry a signal. Here is a ready-to-send letter.
