Author Archive

Even in its name, British Airways has always had a doubt about who their program is aimed at: “Executive Club.”

In April, we will get used to the new name “The British Airways Club” – but at least as far as the elite qualification is concerned, the program will likely cater more to executives: Qualification will be based on revenue and in order to achieve Silver status – which notably grants access to oneworld lounges – you need to spend 7,000 GBP (before taxes and fees) each year with British Airways, American Airlines or Iberia, which likely translates to a customer price of around 8,000 GBP.

Of course, that’s no longer within everyone’s reach. Other partner flights still count towards status qualification, but with them alone, one is unlikely to achieve the status.

The alternative: more traditional programs within the oneworld alliance, with which one can achieve status with significantly lower expenses.

For Avianca’s lifemiles members, 2025 starts off well as the program has introduced unilateral improvements.
Members now receive significantly more (revenue-based) miles on all fares on Avianca flights, including for the first time miles at the cheapest Basic/Light fares. On the other end of the scale, the credits in Business Class have been increased from 7 miles to 10 miles per USD.

If this motivates you to engage more with the Star Alliance program in 2025, the promotion for purchasing miles running until January 31 might be of interest, where the program is traditionally always aggressive: For each purchase, you receive a bonus of at least 110%, which increases to 160% starting from the purchase of 36,000 miles. Such a bonus can make purchasing miles definitely worthwhile.

If you are planning flights with Emirates or FlyDubai until March 23, you should book them by January 24 to secure a good start to the New Year as a Skywards member.

For all these flights, you earn double miles.

After the recent changes, the Skywards program has become more interesting for reward flights in Economy Class, but significantly less so for reward flights in Business or First Class. Double miles on one or two flights will at least partially compensate for this, but certainly not entirely.

So far, six airlines use the shared Avios currency for their frequent flyer programs. In addition to the founders British Airways and Iberia, these now include the programs of Qatar Airways, Finnair, Aer Lingus, and Vueling.

The advantage of this common currency is notably that it can be transferred between the various Avios programs for free, allowing one to benefit from the best reward opportunities in the programs, as there are still differences on the reward side.

To these companies, an unexpected one will be added in the coming months: the relatively small regional Scottish airline Loganair, which will hence be basing its Clan Loganair on Avios, too.

The small program is unlikely to enter into direct partnerships with the other companies, but the currency will – at least for occasional Loganair customers – certainly become more useful like that.

If you, as a SkyMiles member, are using the partnership with Lyft, you are probably doing so more out of habit than conviction: Since the start of this partnership in 2017, the SkyMiles program has devalued to such an extent that as a Lyft customer, you simply have other, more rewarding accrual options.

But by April 07 at the latest, you will be forced to change these habits, as Delta will then be exchanging its riding partner to team up with Uber. The same considerations apply here, and as with Uber’s other Frequent Flyer partnerships, collecting points will likely only be possible locally, i.e. in the USA, and possibly not even for external visitors who do not use the US version of the Uber app.

If you are not really convinced that the revenue-based accrual for British Airways flights works well for you – that is what you get not only in the Executive Club, but also as member of Iberia Plus or AAdvantage when flying on British Airways – an interesting alternative is now available, but you have to move quickly.

Qatar Airways is running a promotion in its Privilege Club, awarding double miles on all British Airways flights to the Middle East and to Asia Pacific until June 30, 2025 – provided you book by December 18. With double miles in a distance-based scheme, there are fair chances that you will be better off in almost all cases than with a revenue-based accrual.

As you can move miles freely between the Privilege Club and the Executive Club, this is really just about being opportunistic to maximise the accrual (what you can even handle differently from one flight to another), while deciding only later under which program it will be more beneficial for you to redeem them.

Accor already had three double dip partnerships with frequent flyer programs in different regions for its ALL program, with Flying Blue from Air France KLM, with the Privilege Club from Qatar Airways, and with the Frequent Flyer from Qantas. The latter is limited to the Asia Pacific region.

Like the other two partners, there is no geographical restriction with the latest partner either. The partnership with Brazilian Azul Airlines and its Tudo Azul program is only open to ALL status members, however.

Since ALL members can only change their double dip partner once a year, the consideration of who the best partner is becomes even more complicated, especially since there isn’t really a clear answer here, but rather depends a lot on your travel habits (more flights or more hotel stays?, average expenses etc.).

Last month, Norwegian introduced a new currency, Spenn, in its Norwegian Reward program. That currency is now also used by its hotel partner Strawberry Hotels.

The earn rates on Norwegian flights is identical to what you used to get with CashPoints, i.e. between 1 and 5% of the ticket costs depending on the fare category. The main difference is though that CashPoints had a fixed redemption value (1 point = 1 NOK), while Spenn points have a dynamic value, which is not transparent to anybody – which means that they will probably be less worth in most cases.

But it becomes worse: Spenn is only available to members in the Nordics and only for flights on Norwegian. On all partners, members continue to earn CashPoints and need to decide on each booking whether they want to use CashPoints or Spenn as partial payment since they can’t combine both currencies.

Initially, it was even communicated that members could rather opt for CashPoints than for Spenn for Norwegian flights, but that seems not to have come to execution.

If you live outside of the Nordic countries, Spenn are, for whatever reason, not an option for you and you automatically earn CashPoints only. What might actually be the better solution anyway in the end.

Of course, members are always free to change their address if they really care so much and want to benefit specifically of one or the other option.

As regularly in the past, Hilton starts the new year again with a no-brainer promotion.

Hilton Honors members earn double points for all stays until April 30. No restrictions, no nasty fine print.

So, there is simply no reason to ignore this promotion, whatever your usual engagement level with the program might be.

Not directly contradicting the above, one should ask at the beginning of the New Year which strategy to apply in the hotel sector.

If you a) plan a certain volume (at least 10 stays) and b) can bundle them into a chain without too much effort, hotel programs still definitely make sense. If these conditions are not met and thus notably an elite status in the hotel programs cannot be achieved, the various booking platforms linked to a Frequent Flyer Program are certainly the better choice.