Airlines may be global businesses in many ways, as well as exhibiting cutting edge technology in areas like mobile phone check-in at airports and offering user-friendly websites for buying air tickets (along with a host of other “ancillary” items like hotels and car rental). But, when it comes to making use of the enormously rich [...]

CitationAir by Cessna, a leader in private jet transportation solutions, today announced an exclusive relationship with British Airways, the United Kingdom’s largest carrier, to offer premium travel benefits to passengers on both sides of the Atlantic. The newly launched PrivateConnect(TM) service will provide British Airways customers access to CitationAir’s entire fleet of Cessna Citation aircraft, [...]

In their latest white paper, the loyalty program experts at Carlson Marketing examine how loyalty programs can play an important role in the ongoing success of low-cost carriers (LCC). Loyalty programs have become the rule rather than the exception with 8 of the 10 largest LCCs offering at least some form of loyalty program. “Now [...]

Virgin America, the award-winning California-based airline, has announced today that it has joined Points.com’s Partner Network. Starting today, Virgin America’s 1.3 million Elevate members have the option to buy points for themselves, transfer or gift points to other Elevate members via Points’ industry-leading miles and points purchase platform. Elevate members can purchase or transfer in [...]

Delta SkyMiles has introduced Sky Priority, which the airline says is designed to improve elite members’ experience at the airport. The Sky Priority benefits are offered to all Diamond, Platinum and Gold Medallion elite members, SkyTeam Elite Plus members and travelers flying in business elite, first and business class. Sky Priority benefits include dedicated check-in [...]

Etihad Airways, the national airline of the United Arab Emirates, today launched a new Apple iPhone application for members of its award-winning loyalty programme, Etihad Guest. It is the first application of its kind to offer real-time loyalty points redemption for its users. The application, available free to download and use from the Apple iPhone [...]

While airlines are still grappling with concerns over fuel instability and revenue/yield issues, they are also now more focused on positive areas of impact such as customer loyalty and retention. Although controlling skyrocketing fuel prices is still a chief concern for airlines, creating positive customer experiences to build customer loyalty has now risen on the [...]

United Airlines is giving Mileage Plus frequent flyers an option to use their miles to book more parts of their trip. According to the airline, all Mileage Plus members may use their miles for hotel stays worldwide and car rentals in the US and Canada. Mileage Plus members can book and use their miles for [...]

Delta Air Lines Inc. is expected to change its frequent-flier program to let travelers roll over extra elite-qualifying miles and credits from one year to the next. By allowing customers to roll over miles and credits that aren’t needed to reach a status level, the airline hopes to discourage travelers from splitting their loyalty among [...]

Scott Hintz needed more miles with American Airlines to book a free trip to Morocco this spring, and he had several thousand miles from another carrier that he thought might be just the ticket. The San Francisco travel executive went online, found a willing trader for his Alaska Airlines miles and made a swap. In [...]

Peter Greenberg wrote an interesting post on the Bing Community . Does airlines make more money with their FFP programs than with air transportation ? Frequent-flier programs may very well be the most effective, powerful marketing tools introduced in the last century. And in recent years, they’ve also become the most profitable divisions of many [...]

Online reward-management service Points.com said that Air France-KLM has joined the website devoted to putting trillions of remaining air and hotel loyalty points to use. Members of the Air France-KLM frequent flyer program, Flying Blue, will be able to “buy or gift miles” so people can top off to levels required to qualify for free travel, [...]