In January 2020 Hilton moved from requiring activity in an account every 12 months to keep it active to a 15 month expiration policy. Then the pandemic hit and many programs, including Hilton, paused points expiration. Hilton points won’t expire until at least December 31, 2022. Now they’ve moved to a ‘permanent’ 24 month expiration policy, with points first expiring again in a year. Why the change?

Expiring miles are a huge temptation for frequent flyer programs.

1. They sell miles, generating revenue
   
2. When they expire miles, they don’t have to spend money on redemptions
   
3. Profit

At the same time for members broadly it’s one of the biggest frustrations. Part of me even likes expiring miles, I want a program to be profitable and invest in its engaged members rather than increasing its costs on less engaged members. I track my miles and expiration (thanks, Award Wallet!) and this is a selfish view.

Angering members, asking them to earn 1 mile to keep their account active, pushing them away from giving future business because the program ‘stole’ their miles may mean that it’s not a long-term maximizing strategy but this is debatable. There’s been a trend away from expiring miles in U.S. programs even before the pandemic.

This Hilton change is being framed as permanent, but what’s that? Delta miles didn’t expire until they did, until they didn’t again.

• Miles in the original Delta Frequent Flyer program didn’t expire. They even ran a Super Bowl ad with no fine print promising their miles wouldn’t ever expire. Then they ‘ended the Delta Frequent Flyer program’ and launched Skymiles, with expiring miles.

• But they promised that miles earned under the old program would never expire. Then they decided that old miles would be merged into Skymiles, and those old miles would therefore.. expire.

• Delta had also committed that any elite member who continued to maintain their status could always redeem their old Frequent Flyer miles under the original program’s award chart, that promise went poof as well. Delta’s explanation? The terms and conditions of the program said they could change the rules.

• When Delta led the U.S. majors in eliminating expiration of points, they touted it as ‘the right thing to do.’ Of course if expiring miles was wrong one might wonder why they didn’t restore the miles they had expired? That would have been expensive.

American AAdvantage still expires miles (but not for those under age 21). Alaska Airlines expires miles and never even paused that during the pandemic.

Infrequent customers are of greater relative importance, with business travel coming back more slowly and changing. Eliminating expiring miles is a strong play for new members, which is clearly American’s inching towards such a policy with under-21s. But the cost of doing so is great, so the airline didn’t go all the way (plus why not expire points again like Delta did before announcing no more expiration – the best of both worlds!).