Cryptocurrencies instead of airline miles: the choice of two US airlines
Cryptocurrencies instead of miles? It could be the solution for the future. It all starts with Ravn Alaska, a small company [...]
Cryptocurrencies instead of miles? It could be the solution for the future. It all starts with Ravn Alaska, a small local airline in the state in America's far northwest that routinely flies its Dash 8s from its Anchorage base to various small towns in the area. The pandemic hit Ravn Alaska hard, but the company managed to survive. As flights resumed, it decided to start an ambitious new project. Long-distance transpacific travel between major U.S. cities and major Asian capitals such as Tokyo or Seoul, but stopping in Anchorage.
The Northern Pacific Airways Project.
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It is called Northern Pacific Airways, a new company founded again by Rob McKinney, former CEO of Ravn Alaska. An ambitious project, it said, because in spite of the cheaper fares the company offers, a long trip with a stopover in remote Anchorage seems to have very little appeal compared to the faster and more convenient direct flights that already exist.
Here's why Northern Pacific has decided to enter into an innovative partnership with FlyCoin. This is a young U.S. tech startup active in the field of cryptocurrency. The plan of Ravn Alaska, Northern Pacific and FlyCoin is to attract customers by giving away cryptocurrencies instead of the old airline miles.
FlyCoin: why cryptocurrencies instead of miles
Cryptocurrencies are one of the businesses of recent years. More and more economic sectors are opening up to this new business, which has now infected even the world of sports. Lenny Moon, the CEO of FlyCoin, explained his vision on airline miles this way: "Right now, they are essentially like money. However, they are not entirely so because they are constrained in such a way as to keep you within the air travel system."
That is, the actual miles are a kind of "reward points" to be earned by traveling and buying airline tickets, which can then be spent to buy more tickets, or otherwise something related to them.
The advantage that FlyCoin proposes is to provide. not miles to its customers, but cryptocurrency. Space for a digital currency that can yes be used to buy airline tickets, but also for other online transactions by exchanging it with other cryptocurrencies, such as the famous BitCoins.
Another advantage that FlyCoin guarantees, compared to the more classic air miles, is that it its digital tokens have no expiration date. So they are not affected by devaluation. "In fact, they are risk-free and easily transferable," Moon says.
Who has already invested in the project?
So far, the first airlines to invest in the ambitious FlyCoin idea have been precisely Ravn Alaska and its sister company Northern Pacific. Both aim to transform Air travel's new cryptocurrency into their main currency of exchange. The goal is to take advantage of its advantages over the usual airline miles. Obviously also the growing cryptocurrency fad and the always useful novelty factor, along with the low costs offered. In this way, the two companies aim to make a big leap forward.
The project has just been announced and its success will have to be evaluated in the coming years. However, this is not new: back in 2018, the well-known international airline Singapore Airlines introduced the possibility of converting airline miles into cryptocurrency by leveraging Blockchain technology.
The idea of Ravn Alaska, Northern Pacific, and FlyCoin is more ambitious, however, precisely because it starts with small businesses that do not want to integrate cryptocurrencies into an already established service, but to use them as an engine for a new project to take off. The next step for the two U.S. companies at this point will be to convince the Anchorage airport and the city's businesses to accept FlyCoin as a new currency.
