MILWAUKEE – Jeff Patrias earns up to 400,000 frequent-flier miles a year through overseas business travel, but he couldn’t use those miles for a family vacation this week in Orlando, Fla.

Popular destinations like Florida during spring break are nearly off limits even for road warriors like Patrias, a Minneapolis publishing executive.

Frequent-flier programs were created in the 1980s as a way to win the loyalty of business travelers. Redeeming frequent-flier miles for airline tickets isn’t always easy, but last year more than 15 million people traveled on mileage awards from 11 U.S. airlines, according to new research by Jay Sorensen, a former Midwest Airlines executive who runs a business consulting firm called IdeaWorks.

There were millions of round-trip tickets not redeemed by frequent-flier travelers, according to Sorensen, and up to 65 percent of miles were projected to remain unused at JetBlue, a popular discount airline.

Airlines have raised the “price” in miles for many travel awards and have restricted the types of tickets that can be upgraded by miles. A traveler who once snagged a domestic trip by accumulating 20,000 frequent-flier miles now needs 25,000 miles.

Northwest Airlines requires a Saturday-night stay for some mileage awards, or the trip will cost 50,000 rather than 25,000 miles, Patrias said.

People are earning miles faster than ever, said Matthew Bennett, publisher of firstclassflyer.com, a Web site for frequent and first-class fliers.

Airlines sell millions of miles a year to their partners, such as credit card companies, and in 2003 received nearly $2 billion in return, according to Petersen.

There were 9.7 trillion frequent-flier miles earned in the first 20 years of mileage programs, Petersen said. Major airlines use the programs as bait to lure passengers while they compete against smaller, discount carriers.

The strategy has worked, because research shows that consumers value frequent-flier miles as one of the three most important factors in choosing an airline, said David Stempler, president of the Airline Travelers Association, a Washington, D.C., advocacy group.

“Ticket price and scheduling convenience come first, but frequent-flier miles can be the tie breaker” in the decision, he said.

“And airlines love these programs because they get the benefits of customer loyalty without all of the costs.”

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AP-NY-04-05-04 2014EDT