So far, the fact that SAS has been with SkyTeam rather than with Star Alliance since September 01 might have not changed your life fundamentally.

But this is going to change now.

In order to get to know its new partners, the airline is challenging its EuroBonus members in a very simple manner: Fly between October 08 and December 31 on at least 15 different SkyTeam members (out of 17, excluding Czech Airlines, which will go out of business on October 26, as well as without ITA, which won’t join the program anymore, given its expected departure from the alliance, neither MEA, with which no FFP partnership is yet in place) and you’ll get 1 million points. Award flights, paid by EuroBonus points, are thereby also taken into account.

Everything is said. Happy planning.

On October 30, Virgin Atlantic will entirely move to a dynamic award pricing on its own flights in its Flying Club. Indeed, all seats will become available for redemption like that, what is praised as improvement by the company. But without any guarantee what future prices will look like and given the experience of other programs having moved to a dynamic pricing – notably by Virgin’s shareholder Delta, which regularly prices Business Class long-haul flights at 1 million miles in its SkyMiles program -, you have all the reasons to fear the worst.

One attractive alternative for Flying Club members remains though to use miles on Air France or KLM flights, which are offered at reasonable prices – but obviously subject to the usual capacity restrictions.

While the Southwest program Rapid Rewards might also have become the victim of some devaluations in recent years, it basically continues to provide solid value to regular Southwest guests. But the lack of airline partnerships has always been the weak point of the program, meaning that you can’t use the program for travelling outside of the US or that the program is of limited relevance if you don’t live in the US.

This will though now gradually change as Southwest Airlines has embarked on a strategy to engage in commercial partnerships with other airlines, including at the level of loyalty.

As such, Icelandair is expected to become the program’s first ever airline partner in 2025 on a mutual basis, with more to follow.

Let’s make three assumptions:

1) You are looking for a better service than what you would get on one of the best airlines in the world, Qatar Airways.

2) You travel in a group of 10-19 persons, ideally on a routing between secondary airports, let’s say from Billund to Milwaukee.

3) You have a LOT of Avios.

If all these conditions are met, you might be happy to learn that you can now redeem your Avios through the Privilege Club program of Qatar Airways for travel on Qatar Airways’ sub fleet of four corporate jets, branded as Qatar Executive. Their biggest aircraft is an Airbus 319 with only 19 seats, giving you an idea of what kind of level of comfort to expect on board.

Theoretically, you can pay for these flights in full by miles or otherwise under the Cash & Miles option. And booking for the first time will allow you to upgrade one passenger to Platinum status in the Privilege Club program and offer a fast track to Gold to three others. What can be useful if ever you return to flying like normal people after your top end travel experience.

You’ll still have to wait until late 2025, but if you are a frequent flyer on Jetblue, this is potentially of interest to you: In an effort to develop its premium product, the airline will introduce two own lounges at its main hubs in New York JFK and Boston.

Next to Transatlantic Business Class passengers, access will be granted to top tier (Mosaic 4) TrueBlue members as well as to holders of a soon-to-be-launched premium credit card.

As announced, SAS is now fully integrated into SkyTeam, but some particularities are worth noting around its airline partner network.

First, the airline has kept one Star member in its EuroBonus program, Singapore Airlines. All other partners have left.

Within SkyTeam, not yet all members are represented. ITA and MEA are currently still missing, while Czech Airlines will obviously not join anymore at all as it will go out of business next month. It can though be expected that the first two will start a partnership on their turn in the near future. The focus of the SAS management was simply to ensure to get the more important partners on board on time.

But a bit surprising (and actually unheard of in any alliance) is the decision by SAS to apply a specific award pricing on three partners: Redemptions on Air Europa, China Airlines and Vietnam Airlines are still based on the new standard award table – but a surcharge of 100% applies to them.

For the time being, the standard SkyTeam elite benefits don’t yet apply to three other partners, Aerolineas Argentinas, Aeroméxico and MEA.

While logically and morally never really justified, many airlines used some spikes in fuel prices some years ago to introduce fuel surcharges on award tickets. And since then, they have only known one way: up. Even if, as right now, fuel prices are on the fall, hardly anybody adjusts these co-payments, which make award travel sometimes simply not attractive anymore. And since these costs are far more opaque than the award levels themselves, there is a lot of abuse here.

As example, Qatar Airways has just silently doubled those surcharges for award travel for its Privilege Club members – before reverting the change amidst the harsh reaction by bloggers. So, there are not (yet) in the club of programs where one has to pay 1,000 USD and more for a long-haul roundtrip in Business Class – in addition to the mileage price, which is often on the rise as well.

The conclusion of this is simply that it is no longer enough to be go for low award levels; one also needs to check these surcharges. And there are still some good examples out there, such as North American programs, where these surcharges are considerably lower or even not applied at all, partially even not on their European or Asian partners, which are known for the most abusive practices in that area.

The takeover of Hawaiian Airlines by Alaska Airlines has now been fully approved and will take place.

While both brands will be retained, both airlines will actually merge under one single operating certificate. In terms of loyalty, you should expect that over time Hawaiian Miles will be merged into Alaska’s Mileage Plan.

Both programs are rather attractive by US standards, so there is not a worst case scenario you might need to fear. But as always, there will be details to be watched out. With Alaska being a oneworld member (though very flexible when it comes to its own airline partner network) and Hawaiian now being a designated member in the alliance, it seems to be obvious, for instance, that some of Hawaiian’s airline partners, like Virgin Atlantic, will be lost.

But in an immediate first step, we will certainly see a simple FFP partnership between Alaska and Hawaiian to start with, increasing dramatically the award opportunities for Mileage Plan members to Hawaii!

Have you ever fancied about using your miles for a cheap award flight on an Airbus 380, even if it is in Economy Class only?

If you are an ANA Mileage Club member and have 17,500 miles, you can do so by booking your roundtrip award flight on ANA between Tokyo and Honolulu by September 30, for a travel date between January 14 and February 28, 2025.

It might not be your most comfortable 7-hour flight ever, but certainly an unforgettable experience in the nicest livery of any Airbus 380 aircraft in service, on one of the Flying Honu planes!

Scandinaiva might be one of the hotspots for loyalty right now.

SAS is now in SkyTeam, while Norwegian and Strawberry Hotels will launch their merged program in November. Not much is yet known about the program, other than that a common currency, called “Spenn” (a Scandinavian expression for bucks), will be introduced. Awaiting that launch, Norwegian is currently running a status match campaign for SAS tier members.

Another major hospitality player in the region, Scandic Hotels, has just completed the relaunch of its program Scandic Friends. This mid-sized program now features an industry record of seven membership levels, going all the way from a “New friend” to a “Best friend” status.