The Best Frequent Flyer Program In Each Region Of THe World

By region, they find that the best program is:

• North America: American Airlines AAdvantage
  
• Europe: Air France KLM Flying Blue
  
• Latin America: Avianca LifeMiles
  
• Middle East & Africa: Emirates Skywards
  
• Asia/Oceania: Cathay Pacific Asia Miles and Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer (tie)

What’s Behind These Rankings – Do They Make Sense?

Point.me helps you find frequent flyer award seats (and walks you through the process of setting up accounts, transferring points, and making the booking) has a lot of award search data. People are looking for available awards all day, every day.

They already know which programs offer availability that most that their members are looking for, and which programs offer those seats at the best prices. This is the second year they’ve ranked frequent flyer progams.

However, it’s not as simple as just looking at awards people have searched for and doing a data dive into the results.

• They look at only part of the program. Nearly all loyalty programs are really two separate components: recognition and reward. There’s an elite program for the company’s best customers, and a points redemption component. These ratings are about earning and redeeming points.

• They’re evaluating more than just availability and price. They break things down as follows: Ease of earning miles (20%); Redemption rates (20%); Availability on partner airlines (20%); Redemption experience (10%); award availability on own airline (10%); Ability to hold awards (5%); Customer service quality (7.5%); Change fees/policies (7.5%)
• Inputs shifted slightly this year. For instance, ease of earning went from 25% last year to 20% this year; partner redemptions went from 15% to 20% and redemption experience dropped from 12.5% to 10% of the score and customer service increased in importance from 5% to 7.5%.

Is Air France KLM Flying Blue The Best Frequent Flyer Program?

We can quibble with their weightings, but if they’re looking for ‘who does the best job when you want to go use points’ I think it’s reasonable to honor Flying Blue.

• Air France KLM Flying Blue has done a great deal to make reasonably-priced and frequently available awards possible in premium cabins across the Atlantic, and they partner for points transfers with all of the major currencies.
  
• The program has simply gotten better over the past few years. It is unquestionably the best program in SkyTeam.
  
• I find their lowest-priced award space hard to come by (too hard) but can usually find award space – for a family, even – for slightly over the lowest prices (i.e., not double).

Air France Airbus A350 Business Class

Last year their number two was Air Canada Aeroplan. I don’t love changes to earning points for flights that goes into effect next year, but Aeroplan is a great redemption program. They have more airline partners than anyone else (Star Alliance plus non-alliance airlines). Their award pricing is reasonable. They are a transfer partner of most currencies. Customer service isn’t great. I don’t see it as all that much worse than last year, though. And I believe that – contra these rankings – they’re a materially better program than United’s MileagePlus which now ranks better.

Is American Airlines AAdvantage Second Best In The World?

It’s interesting to find American AAdvantage at number two overall in the world.

• American’s program is probably better than United’s and definitely better than Delta’s. It’s better than Southwest’s and Spirit’s for sure.

• They do a decent job making revenue-based awards available on their own flights at reasonable value, certainly better than United and Delta.

• And they’ve added Citi as a transfer partner. That makes their points easier to earn (you never need to earn fewer than two miles per dollar for your spending, making their awards a better value). Lack of transfer partners is one knock on Alaska’s Atmos Rewards. I’d add that Alaska seems to have some IT issues with some partners, where it doesn’t always show as much award space as American does.

  I had to really think about whether Alaska’s is a better program than American, especially with Alaska’s great partnerships outside of oneworld. However (1) Alaska’s premium cabin awards on their own flights are quite awful, and (2) without bank transfer partners (where you earn 1.5x or 2x on all spending) Alaska miles are tougher to earn at scale than others, so while each mile is quite valuable they’re tougher to accumulate.

• A real knock on the program, though, is (1) the elimination of fixed-price mileage upgrade awards, now offering only revenue-based buy ups paid with miles or cash, and (2) that they lack sufficient partners beyond the oneworld alliance and oneworld is fracturing – Avios programs like British Airways, Qatar and Finnair make award space available to their own members that aren’t made available to partners like American; Qantas and Cathay Pacific now do the same; and other partners like Etihad limit access to premium cabin award space American can book.

American Airlines Boeing 777-300ER Flagship First Class

What About The Rest Of The Results?

There are also some things I quibble with. That’s part of what’s fun about these kinds of lists! I give them real kudos for making not just results available but all of their underlying rankings, too. I think their analysis is defensible, even if I don’t think Virgin Atlantic Flying Club should rank so high (even if they’re great for points transfers and for coach award value to London on their own flights).

By the way, the worst programs they identify are Aeromexico, EgyptAir, and Hainan Airlines. Last year’s bottom-ranked program was Air India Flying Returns, but they’ve actually improved quite a bit.

Like many things with Air India, it’s a work in progress (and they haven’t yet seemed to really want to be a top value program) and there is certainly a spark of hope. The ability to redeem United Airlines awards starting at just 3,500 points (7,000 for first class) and the introduction of U.S. transfer partners (Mesa, Rove) makes them strategically interesting.

It seems right that Delta comes out behind Southwest, which doesn’t even have airline partners to redeem with (and therefore their points cannot take you to Europe, Asia or South America), and ahead in North America of only Allegiant and Spirit to round out the top 10.

Hurry! Only 2 Seats Left At This Price!

In Europe, I actually prefer TAP Air Portugal, SAS, and Aegean’s programs – ranked at the bottom of their top 10 – over Virgin Atlantic (#2), over Aer Lingus (#4) which seems to me one of the worst except for the ability to transfer points out to other Avios programs, and over Iberia (#7, notoriously tough to work with and with draconian change policies).

Avianca LifeMiles as the best in Latin America seems right to me, although that’s as much a function of lack of competition as anything else. Asia’s tough and they give the nod in a tie to Singapore and Cathay Pacific.

• I think cases could be made for ANA, Japan Airlines, Korean, ANA and EVA Air all as challengers (EVA just because of reasonably-priced better availability for their own members).

• Qantas Frequent Flyer seems overrated at #3 in the Asia Pacific region.

• And in any case, Singapore’s points expiration policy (3 years, and you can’t extend them with more activity) rules them out in my view. So I’d say Cathay’s program is a little better.

I’m similarly torn (or at least indifferent) to the rankings in the Mideast. Emirates is tough to swallow at number one given how indifferent the Skywards program seems to me towards its members, especially non-elite members (and because they’ve become difficult to work with as a bank transfer partner – hence Chase has dropped them rather than following Amex and Citi in devaluing transfers).

Emirates Boeing 777 ‘Game Changer’ First Class

But Etihad has blown up their program, and has some of the worst award change policies in the world. I’m inclined to prefer Qatar Airways, and remember you can transfer Qatar’s points to British Airways and Finnair.

What’s Missing?

I think it’s important to understand any ranking for what it’s trying to measure, and whether that matches your own goals. This is about ease of earning and redemption. There are going to be sweet spots that best match any given customer’s needs, based on where they live and travel to. And this doesn’t factor the value of a program’s elite component. If you fly an airline elite, how they treat their best customers may matter as much or more than the value you can get from their redeemable miles.

Disclosure my award booking service now works with Point.me and I have tremendous respect for co-founders Tiffany Funk (whom I got to know through her running the operations behind One Mile at a Time) and Adam Morvitz (Point Me To The Plane).