Three simple rules to help guide your choice of airline frequent flyer program:
- consider your home airport and the carriers offering routes from there. The bigger a carrier’s network at your home airport, the greater chance that carrier goes where you need:
- Examples: Delta at ATL, American at DFW or British Airways at LHR, Southwest at MDW
- consider your airline spend. Airline loyalty programs are progressively moving to rewarding ticket spend rather than mileage flown. Top-tier recognition programs are invite-only and may require a spend of $50,000 or more (though this is undisclosed). If you have significant airline spend, then shooting for an invite program might make sense:
- Examples: United Global Services, American Concierge Key, Delta 360
- consider not worrying about a frequent flyer program at all. At this point, airlines are selling frequent flyer perks such as priority check-in and seat pre-selection so you can simply pay for what you need. Unless you are going for a top-tier invitation program than the right answer might be to book the cheapest non-stop flight to your destination and not worry about hitting mileage goals.