The best and worst frequent flyer schemes revealed

The best and worst frequent flyer schemes revealed

Loyalty is a fickle thing, except in the skies when the notion of a ‘free’ seat on the next holiday prompts punters (or business travellers) to literally put all their points in one basket.

However, in recent years frequent flyer programmes tend to vary widely and aren’t measured by the same yardstick, so when it comes to flexibility and redemption availability who comes out on top?

IdeaWorks researched the availability of rewards flights for its annual Switchfly Reward Seat Availability Survey across 25 different frequent flyer programs. The company made over 7600 booking queries on 280 specific dates during March 2015 for each airline and the percentage in the chart below shows the “availability rate”, which represents the percentage of dates redemption bookings could be made.

Closer to home, Virgin’s Velocity Frequent Flyer has been ranked as the top in the Asia Pacific region and second in the world for overall reward availability, a third consecutive win for the airline. Southwest Airlines and airberlin were tied in first place, followed by Air Canada and Singapore Airlines rounding out the global top five.

frequent flyer

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