Alaska Airlines is selling year-end elite qualifying miles under the guise of contributing towards their efforts in sustainable aviation fuel.
- $100 per 500 elite qualifying miles
- up to 5,000 qualifying miles
- through end of year
Alaska is also promoting purchase of carbon offsets, albeit not with qualifying miles. Delta is currently in the midst of a scandal over low quality carbon offsets which may actually increase carbon on net.
Direct carbon capture may have promise if the cost of removal can be reduced enough. In any case it’s a bit of a misperception that each mile of flying, or each takeoff, contributes similar amounts of emissions into the atmosphere. In fact most environmental issues are caused by about 15% of flights and changing altitudes and routings of those flights could make a huge difference.
There’s plenty that can be done and needs to be done to address the roughly 2% of global emissions that stems from commercial air travel. This, though, is really just window dressing on an end of year sale of qualifying miles that prevents the need to mileage run.
(HT: Thomas)
Mileage Runs seem to be probably the worst thing a human can do for the environment. Blow thousands of pounds of CO2 into the air, so they can blow even more CO2 into the air the next year with more flying, and more flying in premium cabins. Delta airlines customers in particular seem to be gleefully unaware of this and proudly post trips from America to Asia and back in a single day. The new structure of loyalty programs is actually for once helping to stem this practice.
My offer was slightly different. As an existing MVP Gold 75K (who is on track to repeat, but is at the moment short by a little more than 5,000 EQMs), my offers were as follows:
Can purchase up to 10K EQMs (interesting, since I would only need about half that)
Also interesting: “If the Member purchases enough to cross the EQM requirements to achieve MVP®, MVP® Gold, or MVP® Gold 75K that status will be granted.”
1,000 to 5,000 EQMs cost $200 per 1,000 EQMS -OR- 20,000 RDMs per 1,000 EQMs
6,000 EQMs for $1,250 OR 125,000 RDMs
7,000 EQMs for $1,350 OR 135,000 RDMs
8,000 EQMs for $1,400 OR 140,000 RDMs
9,000 EQMs for $1,475 OR 147,500 RDMs
10,000 EQMs for $1,500 OR 150,000 RDMs
@TM why are you here then? Obviously travel is evil to you. Oh, and turn off your electronic device, both it, and the servers it accesses online, are huge users of energy, most of which comes from fossil fuels. Just stay home, huddled in a cabin in the woods, but don’t burn wood to keep warm because that emits CO2…but at least you’ll die with a smug self righteous look on your face.
Oh wait, no, you’re an American leftist, which means you get to keep doing what you want, as long as you espouse the correct beliefs.
I will take a flight in TM’s honor.
While you’re at it, good luck reducing those cow farts
@mantis @johnl you are good people. Enough said.
And the weather 4 weeks from today at 3:37 pm in Seattle will be exactly 57.3 degrees and Sunny… Give me $100 and I’ll see if I can change that to 57.4.
Suppose, as 1,609 scientists from around the world said a couple of months ago, the whole carbon thing is a fraud. Gee, the “feel-good” fuzzy of pandering to politicians may come back to bite them.
Have anyone’s EQMs from this “Chooose” carbon-credit promotion hit yet?
My wife purchased them on December 19th, and they still haven’t hit. We have a trip on 1/9 we’re hoping to get free bags for.
(We paid $100 for 500 EQMs to put her over the threshold… she had just barely missed it on flying.)