Someone already thought of traveling to space for free with their accumulated miles? This opinion will be output to reduce the stock of thousands of loyal customers for some airlines. The numbers are impressive, although the majority of companies, such as Varig, do not tell the precise number of miles accumulated to be strictly confidential, as part of the company's balance sheet.

According to data from magazines such as Inside Flyer or Fast Company, the miles available in the airlines in the world exceed the 8.5 trillion, enough for 1 million revolutions around the Earth or more than 40 thousand trips to the sun, round trip. Only in the United States the stock of over 3.5 trillion miles, and to grow.

Even that seems impossible dream or fiction, U.S. Airways has offered to place the first tourist trip into space for 10 million miles. Perhaps that is the formula to reduce the stock, which grows about 20% a year.

So many companies have begun to consider changes in rules and make the award-issuing of tickets is more difficult, increasing the miles needed to receive the award (free flight). Others, such as Varig, increasingly try to innovate strategies to reduce the accumulation of miles.

When the business miles was born 25 years ago in the United States, some airlines have used as the only commercial strategy to reward its most loyal customers.

At the time, the concept was another, even without the forfeiture of miles. Four years later, American Airlines introduced the concept of ticket-prize.

After a few days, United Airlines also announced its program and four months after the time was Delta Airlines. The interest was such that the first year were granted to the most frequent passengers 4.1 billion miles. At the time, were 1.8 million U.S. customers. Today, the number reaches 100 million. When the Varig Smiles program was launched in Brazil in December 1994 were 80 thousand customers. Currently there are more than 4 million.

Programs for airline miles, however, is comprised of rental car companies, hotel groups, the mobile operator, shops, restaurants and credit card company. From then on, it was found that behind the marketing strategy of companies that formed a real business parallel: 40% of the miles accumulated by travelers were achieved without increased even on the plane. In 2001, they "sold" $ 2 billion in the equivalent in miles.

The membership of this group of companies served, moreover, to flow to miles. Today, a customer can go anywhere in the world using their miles and paying only the airport taxes and levies.