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Even if you don’t usually consider the idea of flying in First Class with a paid ticket, you should read on briefly.

Lufthansa is offering Miles & More members double miles in First Class for bookings made by the end of the year and travel until March 31, 2026, but only on four routes: from Frankfurt to Washington and Mexico, as well as from Munich to San Francisco and Delhi.

And here the calculation gets interesting: Assuming a reference price of 12,500 EUR for such a round trip, a basic member would earn 100,000 miles on these routes – as a status customer, even 125,000 miles.

With the new dynamic pricing system, you can still find many reward flights within Europe at the Economy Light fare for under 2,000 miles per round trip. So with a single expensive luxury flight, you can get around 50 free flights in Europe (of course, plus the obligatory surcharges of around 100 EUR) – which is certainly not bad. Just make sure in advance that your desired European routes actually offer such a low award value, as this is not the case on all routes. From Frankfurt, the price range indeed varies from 348 miles for a one-way flight to Vienna to 7,962 miles for a flight to Gothenburg.

On January 01, 2026, Virgin Atlantic is introducing a new benefit in their Flying Club: Every time you fly with Virgin Atlantic in five different years, you will receive a bonus of 12,000 miles. Award flights also count as activity, and these five years do not have to be consecutive.

As a Flying Club base member, you will also receive a 10% bonus on all future Virgin Atlantic flights.

Even better, Virgin is considering all flight activity back to 2021 for this offer, meaning that the first members will get their first bonus immediately and as a surprise gift. Of course, these 12,000 miles won’t offset the increase in Business Class award prices, which have often multiplied with the dynamic pricing system, but the gesture is still nice.

Even if you personally aren’t affected, there’s an interesting lesson to be learnt here: Sometimes you do something today and are rewarded for it years later, without knowing it in advance. How often you should expect such luck with Frequent Flyer programs, however, is another question!

SAS’ EuroBonus program is increasing the award prices on its own and partner flights starting December 01 – but only in Business Class. Some prices will increase by up to 20% (even 33% within Europe).

This leads to the curious situation where, on some routes, the prices come very close to the prices of First Class awards. So a round trip from Europe to South America in Business Class now costs 190,000 miles (instead of the previous 165,000 miles), while the price for the First Class flight here is “only” 225,000 miles.

Indeed, a small consolation – especially taking into account the very limited availability of First Class awards -, but we are happy if it helps someone among our readership!

Flying Blue has introduced two subscription plans under the name Flying Blue Extras, allowing members to purchase additional benefits.

The main benefits are up to 25% extra miles on flights with Air France and KLM, lounge vouchers, an extended selection of Promo Rewards, and – in the higher version – a 10% reduction on the first two reward bookings within a year.

All this sounds interesting. However, whether it is worth the price of 379 or 699 EUR must be doubted in many cases, and therefore, depending on the expected behaviour, a detailed calculation should be made before signing up here, whereby the value of the extended selection of Promo Rewards remains somehow the unknown parameter in the equation.

Let’s not kid ourselves, but not everyone is a super frequent traveller, yet they still want to benefit from loyalty programs.

Choice Privileges, the loyalty program of Choice Hotels, which operates more in the budget and mid-range sector, is increasingly targeting this demographic, especially with the recent program changes.

Starting in 2026, you can reach the first elite level with just five nights or receive an annual points bonus after your second and third stays. Soon, you’ll also be able to transfer points to other program members.

And if you become a big fan of Choice Hotels with these changes, you might also be interested to know that after 55 nights per year, you can reach a new, highest membership level, where, as an additional benefit, you receive a reward stay of up to seven nights at a 50% discount once a year.

Until December 26, you also receive a bonus of 1,000 points per night at Choice Hotels after prior registration.

Riyadh Air had applied for and received slots at London Heathrow airport for the winter flight schedule, but now they must also use them to avoid losing them. Due to delays in the delivery of their own aircraft, an unofficial inaugural flight will now take place on October 26 with a chartered aircraft from Oman Air – but only for employees and owners. To avoid disappointing expectations in its own product, the general public will have to wait until Riyadh Air receives its own first Dreamliner.

Nevertheless, their future Frequent Flyer program, Sfeer, is ready and has been presented in very broad terms. It will operate on a revenue basis. However, nothing can be said about the quality yet. It is remarkable, in any case, that the program is ready (long) before the start of commercial flights. However, it remains to be seen to what extent it will be able to influence the purchasing decisions of (potential) customers in a tough competitive environment.

When ITA left SkyTeam in the spring after being acquired by Lufthansa, the Volare program surprisingly retained partnerships with SkyTeam airlines, and even continued the status benefits with some partners.

Now, these partnerships are gradually being scaled back, and as of now, only Saudia will remain from the former partners starting mid-November – but even this will likely be for a short time only

ITA will join the Star Alliance in 2026, and that will probably also mean the end of Volare, as it will almost certainly be absorbed into Miles & More.

Within a few months, Italy will lose its two most significant local programs like that, Volare and MilleMiglia, which is certainly not good news for local frequent flyers.

If you don’t live at their main base in Fort Lauderdale, it’s probably a bit difficult to follow how Spirit Airlines is actually doing.

But if you have some faith in their future, at least for the next few weeks, you might want to take a closer look at a promotion in their Free Spirit program: Through November 20, you can earn 5,000 bonus points for each round-trip flight on Spirit, plus 1,250 points for each flight on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Saturday, for a total of up to 7,500 points for a round trip.

The price for award flights starts at 2,500 points per one-way segment, which shows the attractiveness of this promotion. The bonus is awarded for each round trip during the promotional period.

Last spring, Canadian airline WestJet revamped its WestJet Rewards program, introducing, among other things, the possibility of submitting an offer for an upgrade on WestJet flights using points, which is then either accepted or not by WestJet.

To promote this option, members will receive a bonus of 250 points in October if they submit an offer that is ultimately not accepted.

The strategy is hence clear: For every flight, you should submit the cheapest possible offer. Either you will actually get an upgrade at such a price with a bit of luck, or more likely, you will get 250 free points!

Let’s be honest, most of us are probably quite emotionless when it comes to car rental booking platforms.
And most people have probably never heard of OK Mobility, but thanks to a new partnership with Air Europa’s Suma program, you can now earn 5 miles per EUR for bookings through the platform – which is significantly more generous than other platforms.

With Turkish Airlines recently taking a stake in Air Europa (in addition to existing part-owner IAG), Air Europa’s future should be fairly secure and such miles should retain some value.

Through the OK Mobility platform, you can collect miles not only for renting cars but also for renting motorcycles, camper vans and vans.