Author Archive

As originally announced after the takeover by Lufthansa, ITA officially left the SkyTeam alliance on April 30. Joining Star is scheduled for early 2026.

Somewhat surprisingly, the announcement just before the end of the month came that all partnerships with SkyTeam companies in the Volare program will be maintained for the time being – which, by the way, applies in both directions. Status customers will even continue to receive status benefits with some partners.

This naturally leaves interesting options open, such as collecting miles for flights with Air France KLM and the Lufthansa Group in one program. The “problem” with that is that points from the Volare program can still only be redeemed in a non-transparent manner for Cash & Miles tickets on ITA flights.

Of course, one can speculate that Volare will merge into Miles & More next year anyway – but with the upcoming change to a dynamic reward pricing system at Miles & More, one hardly gains any transparency in the process.

Apparently, Aegean Airlines has come to a partnership with Emirates as if by a stroke of luck.

In certain cases, this partnership can surely provide added value for Miles+Bonus members, but it was hardly planned in the long term.

On the Aegean website, where collecting miles on flights is explained, you can actuallu still find the following information:

Concrete examples are always a good idea to explain something – but they should be adjusted occasionally if necessary!

While Emirates has always been restrictive in providing award seats in First Class to members of partner programs, it has now also tightened the conditions for Skywards members.

From now on, you must be an elite member to be able to use these awards. Regular customers should not really be affected by this, as you need so many points for these awards that you are usually a status customer anyway.

However, this measure clearly targets customers, especially in the USA, who accumulate large amounts of points through credit card programs and then convert them into Skywards points to use such awards. Often, these customers have, however, no loyalty towards Emirates at all – but often took these coveted seats to the detriment of the truly loyal customers in the past!

Of course, nowadays you can’t publicly say anything against sustainability anymore. But if it harms one’s own business too much, one is at least allowed to respond at the level of the loyalty program.

Deutsche Bahn has certainly contributed significantly to the decline in domestic air traffic in Germany, thanks in part also to its improved BahnBonus program. The public perception of domestic flights has deteriorated significantly, too.

Eurowings is now trying to counteract this: For all domestic flights booked by June 30 for July and August – except for flights to Sylt – you will receive triple miles with Miles & More. Due to the low absolute mileage credits, this is more of a symbolic gesture – but this symbolism is definitely fully realised here!

Jetblue and United have confirmed their intention to work closely together. In an initial step, a partnership at the level of the Frequent Flyer programs TrueBlue and MileagePlus will certainly be seen.

In the medium term, the further development also depends on the authorities, but a complete takeover of Jetblue by United is currently not to be excluded and thus the complete disappearance of the brand is also possible.

While some would probably miss the Jetblue brand, its TrueBlue program has never really met expectations. And for those who get along well with the program, the consolation is that such a potential merger is not on the agenda for tomorrow.

28 November 2022

Several recent experiences let us recognize a drift towards a situation where established loyalty platform suppliers are no longer living up to the responsibility their role comes with. A change is urgently required here.

I’ve been passionate about aviation ever since I can remember and about FFPs ever since I started to think – yes, I am not one of these young bloggers, who were even not yet among us on 01 May 1981, when an idea of American Airlines was

20 May 2022

One of the big winners of the Covid crisis are experience awards. They have indeed the potential to add some excitement to members, unrelated to other aspects. But why only few loyalty programs get this right?

09 May 2022

My personal take was that the travel industry would use the downtime of Covid to reinvest in reconsidering certain CRM practices as this would have a long term impact on their business. A reality check shows, however, that my assumption was wrong.

26 February 2022

Usually, businesses are well advised to stay out of politics. But as things can’t be called usual anymore right now, the picture might be different this time. So, what to do with the members based in Russia we all have in our loyalty programs?