Recently, loyalty program watchdog website point.me announced their ranking of the world’s best airline rewards programs, analyzing carriers across a broad array of categories including elite status, inflight benefits, and more. As airline loyalty programs have increasingly become profit-making multi-million dollar businesses, many often forget their original goal of rewarding and recognizing passengers for their commitment to the airline.

A list that focuses on the customer experience

With the increasing commercialization of reward programs, few metrics allow customers to gauge which programs best suit their needs. As a result, watchdog point.me offers the following analysis as to how they created their list and judged individual loyalty programs:

“Each program has an elite status (recognition) component and a mileage-earning and redemption (reward) component, and these are really two separate things.”

Therefore, the four US airlines that made their way onto this list were able to adequately deliver to their customers on both of these components, providing customers with an appropriate balance of recognition and reward programs. Let’s take a deeper look at the four US carriers that found themselves ranked among the top ten globally for their loyalty program offerings.

Airline Loyalty(1)

1: United Airlines MileagePlus

The United Airlines MileagePlus program ranked as the top US loyalty program, ranking in third position globally only behind Air France-KLM’s Flying Blue program and Air Canada’s Aeroplan program. The carrier, which has recently received some negative press due to program changes that have weakened the benefits of elite status, likely just missed out on the top spot. With a host of partnerships and opportunities to transfer miles from programs like Bilt and Chase, there are endless ways to be rewarded by this unique program.

2: American Airlines AAdvantage

The second airline to ever establish a loyalty program (following Texas International Airlines) back in 1981, and the program’s global footprint has expanded massively since then. With two complete cobranded credit card lines on offer from Barclays and Citibank, it is unsurprising that customers have praised the variety of options presented by the AAdvantage program. Especially if one lives within range of an American Airlines hub or travels to some of their most-served regions, like Latin America, there is no better value than that which is offered by the AAdvantage program.

American Airlines Boeing 777-300ER departing LAX shutterstock_2475364085

Photo: Wenjie Zheng | Shutterstock

3: Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan

With an upcoming merger with Hawaiian Airlines that is set to result in major changes to the carrier’s loyalty program, Alaska Airlines’ Mileage Plan ranked seventh overall globally. With a West Coast-focused network, the airline offers impressive elite status and rewards redemption benefits. Alaska’s program, however, lags behind its competitors in terms of redemption value and offers relatively few co-branded partnerships.

4: JetBlue TrueBlue

One of the most friendly loyalty programs for leisure travelers, JetBlue’s TrueBlue program has consistently been touted as having some of the best rates for mile earning and ease of award booking. The carrier is also noted for having some of the best last-minute award deals between the US Northeast and many key leisure destinations in the Caribbean, Florida, and Mexico.

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