Why does airline benefits program advertising not violate truth-in-advertising laws?
<p>Advertising for airline customer loyalty programs frequently offers customers &quot;miles&quot; as a reward.</p>
<p>For instance, Delta Airlines claims:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Earn up to 50,000 bonus miles with the Delta SkyMiles® American Express Cards. Terms apply.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>(This example technically only says &quot;up to,&quot; but there are others that do not include such a qualifier).</p>
<p>Of course, these miles do not correspond to any common usage of the term miles, but rather represent a certain number of loyalty program points, one that would be insufficient to buy any combination of flights that would travel a distance greater than twice the circumference of the earth.</p>
<p>On the surface, would seem like a clear example of misleading or false advertising under a number of legal regimes (including the USA): a company redefines a term related to their product (the distance travelled) in such a way as to produce a misleading impression that can result in financial benefit, without noting the redefinition in its advertisement.</p>
<p>However, this does not appear to have caused any legal problems for airlines, so that would suggest that such advertising is legal. Why is this?</p>

<h2>Airline miles are pegged to the miles you fly</h2>
<p>For those airlines which still call their points miles (many don’t) you usually <em>earn</em> 1 mile for each full-fare economy nautical mile flown. More for business and first class, less for discount fares.</p>
<p>So, no problem.</p>
<p>That said, the word is now generic to the extent that any loyalty program could use then without confusion.</p>

<p>Do you really think the use of the metaphor of &quot;miles&quot; by an airline pertaining to airline travel is in some way false advertising?</p>
<p>Back in the Bad Old Days (circa ~1950-1970), grocery stores and gas stations used to give away &quot;green stamps&quot;: they looked like postage stamps, and they were bright green and printed with a value and the name of the store or station, and you got one stamp for each $1 you spent at the store or gas station.</p>
<p>The store or gas station also gave you a paper album to collect their stamps in, like you would collect real postage stamps, and so you licked the green stamps on the back and stuck them on the pages, and when you filled an album, you traded it in for merchandise or some cash value of groceries or gas denoted on the stamps.</p>
<p>You, of course, couldn't use green stamps to mail a letter, even though they looked like stamps and were called stamps by everyone. No one seemed to have trouble noting the difference in the different kinds of stamps that happened to be called by the same noun, or the fact that their usage greatly differed. The marketing idea was simply that the concept of a &quot;stamp&quot; denoted some kind of value that could be collected and redeemed.</p>

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