While Jet Airways has now suspended all flights and chances that it will resume them dwindle with each day, the JetPrivilege program will continue to operate for now. As mentioned last month, miles can now also be used for flight bookings with many airlines as a mean of payment – and the very low initial value per mile has quickly been increased to make the proposition somewhat more attractive. But in absence of any perspective for better times, the question about the value you can get out of each mile might not be the right question to ask anymore anyway. Miles can also still be redeemed with the regular full airline partners according to the old conditions. By the way, JetPrivilege has, interestingly enough, not lost a single airline partner since Jet Airways’ grounding. However, if you are an elite member, tier benefits on partner airlines are not granted anymore.

With all eyes on Jet Airways/JetPrivilege, it tends to get forgotten that Etihad is still involved in another foreign FFP, Alitalia’s MilleMiglia – with the same result for customers, i.e. a rapid devaluation of the program and there is always a fear that the program can cease to exist any moment. The future fate of MilleMiglia is certainly directly linked to the fate of Alitalia itself, for which the Italian government continues to look for an investor. A bidding deadline for the airline has just been extended again in absence of any acceptable offers – the parallels to Jet Airways are undeniable… And now Etihad punishes the last remaining optimists: Following the recent massive increase of award levels on partner airlines, award levels on Alitalia will be increased on July 01 across the board on international flights, with the strongest increases in Business Class. A roundtrip to the USA will jump from 80,000 to 140,000 miles and to South America from 120,000 to 200,000 miles. Okay, this is still less than what Etihad demands in its own Etihad Guest program for redemptions on these Alitalia flights, where above values stand at 240,000/320,000 miles (depending on the destination) for US flights and at 320,000/400,000 miles for South America… And it continues to publish award levels for flights such as Venice to Abu Dhabi, which is probably to remind of a more glorious past. Just for the purpose of keeping the memory alive: Etihad controlled the FFPs of Air Berlin, Alitalia and Jet Airways. A success story looks differently.

When it was recently announced that flybe was bought by a Virgin Atlantic-led consortium, it was clear that its accrual partnership with Avios would come to an end. This indeed happened on April 30 – but no alternative is yet in place. A partnership with Virgin Atlantic’s Flying Club is yet to start while flybe also seems to work on the (re)launch of an own FFP, which still needs to see the light of the day, too. So flying today on flybe simply rhymes with earning no FFP miles – a scenario, which might not really help to alleviate the difficulties at the regional carrier. flybe offers though a co-branded credit card in the UK, which allows earning free flights on flybe.

Since El Al lost its FFP partnership with American Airlines in 2014, it has remained without a US partner. This has become an issue, especially as El Al has now embarked on a huge expansion of its flights to the US, launching several new destinations between Boston and Las Vegas. As such, the announced partnership with Alaska Airlines as of July 01 – so far though only announced by Alaska’s Mileage Plan – seems logical, although the carrier might be too small to offer decent network expansion possibilities at all of El Al’s gateways.

Accor is running a promotion called “We run the world” across several of its FFP partners this spring – but at varying conditions. So in function of your needs, you should check whether you’d better off with a triple miles offer such as in the programs of TAP Air Portugal or Aeroflot or whether you might be better off with quadruple miles for staying at least 4 nights, for instance in the programs of Turkish Airlines or British Airways. For each promotion, there is also a prize draw for a 2-night stay at an Accor property at the respective home base of the airline, what might influence your choice as well to which program to credit your points. The odds to win are obviously bigger in mid-sized programs than in the largest ones. So do some analysis before your stay as it could pay off! Depending on the program, the promotions end between 01 and 30 June (reservation date).