Danish Carrier Gives Miles To Company, Not Traveler

<I>Billund, Denmark</I> - Given the chance, most travel managers would compel airlines to give fre-quent flyer points exclusively to the ticket buyer. What few know is that there is one regional European carrier that actually does this: Maersk Air of Denmark.

Some airlines, such as Japan Airlines, Asiana, Korean Air and Virgin Atlantic, offer mileage rewards to both purchaser and traveler, but Maersk is the only one to offer the miles only to the purchaser--namely, the corporation.

For every 10 return tickets a corporate client buys on Maersk, it gets one round trip free. The individual traveler receives no bonus, although corporations are at liberty to reward frequent travelers with a free ticket for their efforts.

"If I were a travel manager, perhaps as a benefit I would give some of the tickets to my staff, but the important point is that I would want to control it,'' said Jorn Eriksen, Maersk commercial senior vice president.

Maersk, which bases most of its flights out of Billund, Denmark's second-largest airport, operates throughout Scandinavia and to key northern European business destinations such as London, Frankfurt and Brussels. It carries 1.9 million passengers per year, some of them on charter flights.

As to why Maersk--which is owned by the private A.P. Moller Group, the largest company in Denmark--offers no bonuses to individuals, Eriksen claims it is simply a question of morality. "This is an old-fashioned group and we believe in old-fashioned morals,'' he said. "If a purchasing manager arranged a discount for his company based on volume and asked for an extra discount to be put in his bank account, that is the same as an export manager accepting frequent flyer points. The purchasing manager would be subject to prosecution, whereas the export manager would not. To me, it is in bribery in both cases--and that is how the Swedish authorities see it.'' He was referring to a recent decision by the Swedish government to tighten up an earlier law taxing frequency points used for personal purposes (BTN Europe, September 1996).