United Airlines, Air Canada and Turkish Airlines come up top in the most recent airline loyalty programme study.
GLOThe most recent research conducted by Goodtravel Management examines the effectiveness of various customer loyalty programs offered by different airlines. In order to assess their quality, 59 loyalty schemes and the airlines associated with them were ranked from best to worst.
To accomplish this, Goodtavel utilised standardised data from various sources, including metrics such as “average monthly Google searches,” “points expiry,” “lounge reviews,” and “minimum leg room.” Each loyalty scheme was evaluated based on these categories, resulting in an overall score out of ten.
Out of the 59 loyalty schemes analysed, MileagePlus with United Airlines secured the top position with an overall score of 7.85 out of 10. Despite recent price increases for all tickets to Europe, MileagePlus continues to offer numerous opportunities to earn and redeem miles, providing the best value among all the airlines examined. The scheme’s popularity is evident from its membership base of over 100 million, and it is particularly renowned for its attractive travel credit card offers.
MileagePlus excelled in several aspects, earning the highest score for points expiry (10) since its points do not expire. Additionally, it received an exceptional score for the number of destinations (9.75), offering an impressive total of 342. Passengers also enjoy a generous amount of legroom, with a score of 9.22, providing them with a spacious 75 inches of leg space during long-haul flights.
Ranked in second place is the Aeroplan scheme offered by Air Canada, with an overall score of 6.53. This loyalty program consistently provides unique opportunities for members to earn points, such as through a recent partnership that allows linking their account with Uber/Uber Eats in Canada.
Aeroplan has achieved notable recognition at the 32nd annual Freddie Awards, where it was honored as the Airline Program of the Year and received awards for Best Promotion and Best Redemption Ability.
In the study, Aeroplan demonstrates one of the highest global average monthly Google search volumes among all the airlines examined, with over 368,000 monthly searches (scored 8.18). It also receives positive ratings for lounge reviews (7) and offers a similar generous leg room as MileagePlus. However, it falls short of the top position due to a relatively short points expiry timeframe of 18 months (scored 0.25) and a lower number of destination options (222 in total, resulting in a score of 5.97).
Taking the third spot among the best loyalty programs is Miles & Smiles with Turkish Airlines, scoring an overall 6.23. It excels in the category of lounge reviews with the highest score among the top three airlines (8.57). However, it receives deductions for its limited points expiry of 36 months and offers less leg room compared to the top two airlines, providing only 60 inches (scored 6.27).
On the other end of the spectrum, the loyalty program with the lowest rating is Free Spirit offered by Spirit Airlines, with an overall scheme score of 0.73. This may not come as a surprise, considering a recent survey revealed that Spirit Airlines was the carrier most Americans would avoid flying with, receiving 21 percent of the votes. Furthermore, Spirit Airlines ranked lowest in passenger satisfaction in the 2023 American Customer Satisfaction Index.
Free Spirit receives low scores across all categories, with the lowest being 0 for the points expiry category, as the points are only valid for 12 months. It also receives a score of 1.2 out of 5 for its airline Trustpilot score and serves just 83 destinations.
Completing the bottom three are Volare with ITA Airways (overall score 0.86) and myFrontier with Frontier Airlines (overall score 0.88).
Methodology
Good Travel Management used On Point Loyalty’s 2023 report to identify the top 59 most valuable airline loyalty programs globally, which we ranked across six data points:
- Average monthly Google searches globally, identified using Google Keyword Planner.
- Points expiry identified using a combination of statistics from PointHacks, Nerdwallet and desktop research – if points had no expiration, they were assigned 250 months.
- Number of destinations, identified by airline websites and Wikipedia.
- Lounge review score, taken from Airline Quality’s list of user-submitted review scores.
- Airline Trustpilot score.
- Minimum legroom for long-haul business class travel or equivalent, identified using a combination of airline websites and review sites.
Where multiple airlines operate under the same programme, we have used the statistics for the largest of these airlines to reflect the group. This is indicated by a * in the top ten table.
These datapoints were normalised to give each scheme a score between zero and ten for every metric. Each metric was weighted according to perceived importance in the index, and an overall score was calculated.
The full data can be viewed here.
