Steve Hart: Charity begins at home, well, sometimes

COMMENT

There are more than nine trillion frequent-flier miles sloshing around in about 100 loyalty programmes.

If the people who earned these points could use them without restriction they would probably put the airlines out of business. That's possibly why a restricted number of aircraft seats are made available to people wanting to "spend" their air points.


But there is another way. You could donate unwanted points to charity - it's common in the United States - but it appears the idea is almost unheard of here. Some airlines who operate in New Zealand said they had never heard of such a thing.

But who would want to give away hard-earned air points?

Well, those people who believe they will never have enough points to benefit from them, are unable to use them, have changed schemes or maybe the points are close to expiring. Some people give away air points because they want to.

The Make-a-Wish Foundation is based in the United States (www.worldwish.org), and has offices in Australia and Auckland. The organisation works to grant the wishes of children living with a life-threatening illness and flies as many as they can with their families on special holidays.

The US-based operation says it benefits from donated air points from airlines such as British Airways, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines. (Strangely, BA in Australasia doesn't allow its members the option to donate points to charity.)

Save the Children benefits from unwanted US Airways air miles. The airline shares any donated miles equally between Save the Children and Make-a-Wish. And for every five miles donated, the airline adds one mile. Last year the airline's goal was to collect 30 million miles for these worthwhile causes. It received 38,349,077 - so it seems the public likes the idea of donating unwanted points.

But the Auckland branch of Make-a-Wish doesn't have that luxury. If it did, says a spokesman, it could help many more than the 30 or so children a year it offers holidays to.

If you want to donate air miles or air points in New Zealand you will have to join American Airlines' AAdvantage club. With this scheme you can donate to charities such as Unicef.

Qantas, Lufthansa, Emirates, Singapore Airlines, Cathay and Thai Airways, which all operate out of New Zealand, will not allow you to donate your points.

But right on our doorstep is our national carrier, Air New Zealand. Surely this is a firm that's in tune with local people - it's a company that is bound to help. Why wouldn't it?

Sadly, a spokesman for Air New Zealand said it did not allow customers to donate Airpoints (its frequent flyer programme) to charity "but was thinking about it". Well at least they were thinking about it - that's a start, I thought.

But then I spoke with the people at Make-a-Wish in Australia and received a big surprise. I was told that, across the Tasman, Air New Zealand is bending over backwards to give away Airpoints. It has been working with the charity in Victoria since November.

Nicole Kentley, state manager at the charity, said an email appeal to Australian registered Airpoints members was a "great success". It needed 200,000 points and within 15 minutes of the emails going out received 400,000.

By the end of the appeal the charity had 3.4 million Airpoints. Air New Zealand matched donations point for point.

"Air New Zealand now allows its customers to donate points to us at any time," said Nicole.

The airline seems keen to help people, but appears unable to give us the same freedom that it offers its Australian customers.