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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.

28 November 2022

Several recent experiences let us recognize a drift towards a situation where established loyalty platform suppliers are no longer living up to the responsibility their role comes with. A change is urgently required here.

I’ve been passionate about aviation ever since I can remember and about FFPs ever since I started to think – yes, I am not one of these young bloggers, who were even not yet among us on 01 May 1981, when an idea of American Airlines was

20 May 2022

One of the big winners of the Covid crisis are experience awards. They have indeed the potential to add some excitement to members, unrelated to other aspects. But why only few loyalty programs get this right?

09 May 2022

My personal take was that the travel industry would use the downtime of Covid to reinvest in reconsidering certain CRM practices as this would have a long term impact on their business. A reality check shows, however, that my assumption was wrong.

26 February 2022

Usually, businesses are well advised to stay out of politics. But as things can’t be called usual anymore right now, the picture might be different this time. So, what to do with the members based in Russia we all have in our loyalty programs?