Low-Level Elites, Emancipate Yourself

Why You Probably Should Break Up with Your Loyalty Program if You Fly Fewer than 50,000 Miles…

When it comes to finding loopholes and subterfuges in loyalty programs, I am as relentless as a truffle dog. The flim-flammery is there—I know it—somewhere beneath all that prose that’s as engaging (and sometimes as hard to see through) as the small print on a credit-card agreement.

So when, on Sept. 21, United Continental Holdings, the official name of the now merged Continental and United airlines, introduced the 2012 Mileage Plus Program, I was straining at the leash to sniff out the booby traps.