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The task for Air India was rather easy: to improve its loyalty program Flying Returns. The relaunched program features indeed almost unilateral enhancements, from a non-expiry of miles for active members to lowered award levels, the introduction of a family pool and new non-air partnerships. Whether the switch to a revenue basis for Air India flights is though an improvement is definifely subject to one’s individual assessment, especially as you would not earn any miles on any carrier-imposed surcharges – which represent though often some 50% of the total ticket costs in Economy Class.

Tier qualification levels are fairly low – 30,000 miles for (Star Alliance) Gold status -, but at least 30% of the required points need to be earned on Air India flights. Awards are now priced on a segment basis, but even connecting flights are still cheaper than previously. But whether a nonstop Transatlantic flight in Business Class at 200,000 miles (increasing by up to 104,000 miles if you add connecting flights at both ends) really makes Flying Returns the “most rewarding program” in the market – according to Air India’s own claims – is more than doubtful.

Air India’s sister company Vistara continues to operate, at least for now, its own program Club Vistara.

August 31 will be the last day when one of the five founding members of the Star Alliance, SAS, will be a member of the latter – before joining SkyTeam on the following day. What this exactly means for its EuroBonus members remains to be seen as the information available at this point remains limited. Of course, status and points will be honoured, but there will certainly be more details to be considered.

So for now, just take it as good news that the EuroBonus program will survive as independent program although SAS is now partially owned by Air France KLM. And you consider whether you’d rather fly on Lufthansa or Air France, on Korean Air or ANA, on United or Delta etc. and choose like that to redeem any points over the next few months or wait until September to start doing so!

There are other programs offering regularly interesting award sales, think Flying Blue or Miles & More. Though valuable, these offers always have some kind of last minute character, making it some times a bit difficult to adjust to.

Alaska Airlines goes a different way with its new quarterly Global Getaways offers in its Mileage Plan: They can be booked during one month, but for a travel date a few months out. For instance, in April, you can book discounted offers for travel between September and November.

And the other interesting fact is that they are exclusively available on their wide range of partners! They are offered at a 50% discount, but are only availabe in Economy and Premium Economy – and only for flights originating in the US. But getting for 20,000 miles one-way to the Fiji or for 30,000 miles to Zanzibar is definitely a good deal!

While the offer/program might not be worth going out of its way, you should though definitely consider it if you plan to fly with Emirates or Flydubai anyway until June 30: Booking your flights by April 18 (and registering for the offer) lets you earn double miles on almost all flights in their Skywards program. Only flights to/from India are excluded, whereby it is not clear how a flight such as New York-Dubai-India is handled, i.e. whether you’d still earn double miles at least on the New York segment.

But as always if an offer is not fully clear, you should better not take a risk of being disappointed in the end.

Turkish Airlines has rebranded its long-standing subsidiairy AnadoluJet as AJet and positions it more with a low cost profile. This places it more as competitor to other low cost carriers like Pegasus Airlines.

That’s why it is even more surprising that AJet does no longer participate in the Turkish program Miles&Smiles, neither offers any own loyalty product. This is clearly a missed opportunity for an easy competitive edge and obviously adds another dimension to the loss of appeal of Miles&Smiles, following the recent massive program devaluation.

Logically, AJet doesn’t participate in any other of the handful of Star programs in which AnadoluJet used to participate anymore either.

It might be a strange manner to celebrate its birthday: On May 01, 43 years after having launched its – and as such the first ever – Frequent Flyer program, American Airlines will start to use the program as weapon of its distribution strategy – copying something that has widely been practiced in the hospitality industry since ever: In order to earn AAdvantage miles and status points for American Airlines flights, one needs to book directly through American Airlines or through “preferred” travel agencies, unless your company also participates in the Corporate Loyalty Program AAdvantage Business or has any corporate agreement with American Airlines. The list of preferred agencies will change every six months and is determined in function of the share of NDC bookings the agency realises with American Airlines. These New Distribution Capabilities allow agencies notably to sell ancillary services. It looks though that this restriction can be circumvented by simply crediting miles to one of American’s numerous partner programs.

On June 01, Etihad will revamp its Etihad Guest program, implementing a range of improvements and downgrades, making it difficult to judge in general about the changes. Whether you are better off or not really depends on how you use the program. The most surprising change is though certainly that tier members will no longer have automatic access to lounges, but need to select that benefit (=trade off against other benefits) as part of their new choice benefits. Some award flights become cheaper, including in Business Class, but you should definitely avoid changing your plans: Refunding award flights will cost you at least 25% of the miles used, but goes up to 75% if you do so within 7 days of travel. You should also note that you will need a flight activity every 18 months (including on partners) rather than any program activity as until now in order to keep your miles alive.

Given the current tendency of program devaluations, we had to fear the worst when ANA announced an adjustment of award levels in its ANA Mileage Club as of April 18 both for ANA and partner airlines flights, after not having touched the award levels for many years. After all, the program is one of the more rewarding ones in Star Alliance. But things turned out to be not so catastrophic. Most changes apply to long-haul flights in Business and First Class only, but most remain at reasonable levels. The strongest hit of 50% concerns flights between Europe and the Middle East or Africa. And the best value of the program is definitely still with Economy Class flights to Oceania, running, for example, at only 75,000 and 80,000 miles roundtrip from North America and Europe respectively.

The main issue with Virgin Atlantic’s Flying Club are certainly not the award levels as such (although they got a bit too expensive in Business Class as well), but the horrendous surcharges on award tickets, which basically kill the attractiveness of the program. As such, the current promotion for a 50% reduction on the mileage portion of all Virgin Atlantic award flights to the US is nice and should be used if possible, but doesn’t address the main issue of the program. Flights under this offer need to be booked by March 20 and travel needs to be completed by June 30.

Finnair has now acomplished the shift of its program Finnair Plus to the Avios currency, used notably as well by British Airways and Qatar Airways. While the free transfer of points between Finnair Plus and other Avios-based programs will still take a couple of weeks to be put in place, it is now time to start to use the program in a more flexible manner. This obviously applies to Finnair flights, where you need to consider whether you are better off with the accrual rate of 6 miles/EUR under the Finnair Plus program or the traditional distance-based approach of partner programs. But the same logic is valid for non-air activities: While you get, as example for such optimisation potential, 500 miles for all rentals with Sixt in the Qatar Airways program, Finnair Plus members get either 350 or 700 miles depending on the car category. And once you are ready to redeem, you need to check which award model lets you get your desired flight for the cheapest price and move your points accordingly. For instance, redeeming an Economy roundtrip flight between Helsinki and Paris on Finnair would cost 26,000 Avios to a Finnair Plus member, but “only” between 22,000 and 23,000 for members of the programs of British Airways, Iberia or Qatar Airways.