[EDIT: Some small spoilers contained herein.]
I highly recommend watching the new movie Up in the Air, especially if you have any role in managing travel expenses. It is a movie about how important it is to travel, to meet people in person, and that no matter how advanced our technology gets, you cannot shift everything to the Internet in lieu of travel.
Forget about those frequent flier miles. Frequent flier miles add cost to the airfares your firm buys. And yes, firms have tried to cut those costs by stripping miles out of corporate fares, or by capturing employee-earned miles.
But it doesn’t work, for two reasons:
United just announced that they will allow unlimited complimentary upgrades for all Mileage Plus elite members. Not only that, but in an email from United, they make the elite benefits of the Mileage Plus program pretty clear vs. the competition. We haven't seen this aggressive of competitive positioning (by name, no less) from an airline in a long time - remember the Shuttle wars?
