With Qatar Airways being the principal victim of the diplomatic crisis between Qatar and its neighbouring countries, the question about the future of the airline – and its Frequent Flyer Program Privilege Club – needs to be raised. True information from Privilege Club is not available since the internal advice seems to be to pretend that it’s business as usual. It is true that the airline is pushing ahead with its development as planned, just having launched flights to Dublin, with Nice and Skopje coming up next. But as a matter of fact, the neighbouring countries have not only cut air links between Qatar and their countries – affecting more than 20% of Qatar’s total capacity -, but are also revoking the licences of Qatar Airways – which will take a long time to re-establish, even if the crisis is nevertheless resolved quickly. Should the crisis last, however, the international community will need to position itself as well – what could definitely put new challenges upon the carrier and question its membership in oneworld. As always in such times of uncertainty, FFP members should make sure to keep their mileage balances at reasonable levels by redeeming miles regularly as things might turn worse quickly. The likelihood for such worst case scenario might be difficult to assume for outsiders, but gambling in such situations has never been a good advice.

With relatively short advance notice, Malaysia Airlines introduced a fully dynamic – hence opaque – basis for award flights on Malaysia Airlines itself on June 10 in its Enrich program. The ticket price is converted into a mileage price at varying rates, whereby the cheapest Economy fares can’t be paid by miles. Good bye, planning security. The latter one continues to exist, however, with its partner airlines – which include next to the oneworld partners also further airlines such as Air France KLM, Emirates or Etihad (and also Virgin Atlantic still until August 31) – thanks to a fixed award table, but here, award prices were massively increased, often more than doubled. In its questionable approach to devalue the program, Malaysia Airlines was thus at least consequent and didn’t leave any back door open…

While Alaska’s partnership strategy in its Mileage Plan program is definitely creative, its latest additions such as Hainan Airlines, Emirates, Icelandair or Condor all had one logic point in common: The partners in question fly to Seattle, Alaska’s main hub. The obvious intention is hence to strengthen the hub through such bilateral agreements as Alaska doesn’t belong to any alliance. But now, the program has started a reciprocal partnership with Finnair, deviating from that logic as Finnair doesn’t serve Seattle. If this is a hint to what is yet to come in the program – which is one of the most generous ones in the market – in terms of airline partnerships, we are all impatient to see more!

The Mileage Plan is certainly the program of the moment, also thanks to its courage to do things differently. While credits in Business and First Class on its airline partners have anyway been very generous since last December as reported, there is now a promotion with virtually all partners over the whole summer, until September 30, under which you can accrue double miles on their flights to the US West Coast in Economy Class. The offer applies also to flights to Vancouver for its Asian partners. This might be good to know as it needs to be assumed that, following the anti competitive measures of the US administration against airlines from the Middle East and Europe (laptop ban), Asian carriers will be the next ones to be targeted… A registration for this promotion by September 01 is required.

Even if most Frequent Flyer Programs don’t grant anymore a full mileage credit at many fares corresponding to the real distance flown, you usually still manage to accrue thousands of miles within a few hours of flying. You should know to appreciate that in front of a current promotion between Asia Miles and Hertz: For bookings until July 31 and rentals until August 31, which need to be terminated by September 15, Asia Miles members receive 1 mile per mile driven, with a guaranteed minimum of 2,000 miles. It risks though being infinitely more difficult to reach the upper limit of 10,000 miles of this promotion. The offer is valid in Western Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand, whereby rentals in Western Europe need to commence by June 25.