Nearly four decades since its inception, debate still rages over who actually invented air miles.
Sir Keith Mills, then a marketing executive, claims to have dreamt up the idea of the original Air Miles brand on a train back to London in the mid-1980s from a meeting in Liverpool with the now-defunct airline British Caledonian.
“I set up Air Miles to reward loyal customers, and also to enable companies that issued the currency to understand better what their customers’ needs were,” he said.
Geoffrey Bean, another advertising executive involved in the scheme, claims that Alan Deller, British Caledonian’s commercial director at the time, was the real architect, coming up with the idea of using unsold airline seats as promotional rewards.
Fast-forward to 2024 and
Source: Making money from thin air: how air miles really work
