The ‘best’ differs for each flier
Is there an all-around “best” frequent-flier program? Two new reports help shed some light on a complicated question. “Best” depends as much on your personal travel style as it does on each program’s details.
My take is from the perspective of a regular but not ultra-frequent leisure traveler living in the United States or Canada.
The annual Freddie awards, given out since 1988 by Randy Petersen’s pioneering InsideFlyer newsletter, are the industry’s most comprehensive. They’re based on voting by members of various loyalty programs, worldwide, and are heavily tilted toward the views of road warriors.
American’s AAdvantage program scored as airline program of the year. It earned the top spot by scoring well in all categories, not necessarily in being the best in each. Let’s look at the two categories that matter the most.
Best redemption ability. For typical leisure travelers, ability to score a seat is by far the most important factor. And the winner here is Southwest. In theory, all seats are available if you’re willing to spend the points. American is close behind, followed by Air Canada, Hawaiian, Delta, United, Alaska, JetBlue and Spirit.
Best customer service. Southwest and American ranked one and two, followed by Air Canada, Hawaiian, Delta, Virgin America, JetBlue, Alaska and United.
Best promotion (typically, buying miles) and best elite program really don’t matter to typical leisure travelers, and best credit card is too complicated to cover with a simple score. All in all, the Freddie awards are more useful to road warriors than to infrequent leisure travelers.
Consumer Reports just published its evaluations, based on a combination of statistics developed by detailed analysis of government data for the country’s largest 25 city-pair routes and CR readers’ satisfaction scores for the five largest domestic airlines. The results fall into two groups:
JetBlue and Southwest, with satisfaction scores of 85-86, easily outpointed American, Delta and United with scores of 67-63.
Both winners scored especially well on ability to get seats. Both also scored well in the calculated value per mile/point, generally 1 to 1.4 cents each. By comparison, on the routes tested, the other lines’ miles were mostly worth less, often as low as 0.5 cent.
Although lowest in satisfaction, United beat its two legacy lines in the number of miles required for an economy class award trip: 18,700 miles compared with 21,250 on American or Delta.
But neither the Freddies nor CR covered ease of earning miles in its calculations. That’s a near fatal omission for consumers considering frequent-flier options.
All in all, the results from these two reports don’t really change the long-standing conventional wisdom about frequent-flier programs:
If most of your flights are on one airline, join that line’s program and fly it whenever you can.
Consider Alaska or Hawaiian, both of which still use the “legacy” mileage-based earning formula and have useful partnerships.
Consider American’s high scores, but figure there’s a good chance it will copy Delta and United in switching its earnings to a dollar basis.
If you earn most of your miles through a credit card, and if your main target is free economy seats, you’re better off with a card giving a high cash payback and buying your tickets yourself.
But if you value points to travel in a premium class, airline miles are your only practical choice. Good luck scoring seats.
The Freddie awards are named for Sir Freddie Laker, whose Skytrain revolutionized trans-Atlantic travel. Even though his airline failed, his legacy remains strong.