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In the spring, Etihad announced 15 new destinations, from Atlanta to Algiers to Krabi, and encouraged Etihad Guest members to fly to all of them. The first three members to do so would receive 5, 3 and 1 million miles respectively.

The terms have been adjusted twice since then, but without a guarantee of really winning in spite of the efforts put into making the 15 destinations, the stakes were still too high for many.

But not for everyone. Etihad has now announced the three lucky winners.

The small catch – and where it starts to smell like outright fraud – is that the flights to Algiers, one of the 15 destinations, were never actually launched due to a political spat between Algiers and Abu Dhabi…

Subscriptions are gaining more and more popularity in the industry, as part of customer loyalty programs or independently.

Ryanair also introduced Ryanair Prime in the spring, and frequent flyers quickly calculated whether the annual fee was worth it for them compared to the savings offered. Of course, you should only commit to something like this if you are sure that you will ultimately come out on top.

But apparently, such a mindset was precisely what threw a wrench in Ryanair’s plans, which is why the program has already been discontinued. In absolute honesty, Ryanair explained in the original wording: “To date, we have signed up over 55,000 Prime members, generating over €4.4m in subscription fees. However, our Prime members have received over €6m in fare discounts, so this trial has cost more money than it generates.”

No comment necessary, right?

Starting from the 2026 qualification period, Hilton is simplifying the status attainment in its Hilton Honors program.

The thresholds for Gold and Diamond status are being lowered without cutting back on the benefits. At the same time, a new top tier, Diamond Reserve, is being introduced, where Hilton is introducing guaranteed benefits for the first time, which have long been standard in other hotel programs, such as confirmed upgrades or late check-outs.

It is also worth noting that as part of this change, rollover nights will be discontinued, meaning that additional nights above the required threshold for achieving or maintaining a status can no longer be credited to the following year.

Global Hotel Alliance has surpassed the mark of 50 participating brands – and with Rotana, there have been 51 since this month

To celebrate and encourage members to discover as many brands as possible, GHA Discovery has launched a promotion running until May 31. If you book stays of at least two nights at different brands by February 28, you will earn bonus points starting with the second brand, which can accumulate to 875 bonus points for ten different brands, worth 875 USD.

Since the alliance is more about luxury hotels, you should expect an average price of 200 USD per night, so total expenses of at least 4,000 USD for the highest bonus, whereby the 875 USD (in addition to the regular points) still look quite a good deal.

A nice side effect of the GHA Discovery program is that you can achieve elite status with the number of different brands – and you can reach the top Titanium status with just three of them!

Even almost four years after the Russian invasion, the will to resist in Ukraine remains unbroken, even though many things in everyday life – such as air travel and frequent flyer programs – no longer function as they used to.

But a new initiative from the Ukrainian state railways, which maintains a reliability under the current difficult conditions that is not found everywhere in Europe, also shows that the loyalty spirit still exists.

In four off-peak months in 2026, every Ukrainian can travel 3,000 kilometres free of charge on selected trains within Ukraine under the UZ-3000 project.

Surely, no one is envious that Ukrainians can easily get free rides, but there is a risk that they will be disappointed when they are flooded by Wizz Air, Ryanair & Co after the Russians leave, who have much in their offer, but no customer loyalty programs with free flights!

We still wish all Ukrainians to experience this disappointment in the New Year!

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.