How to Use Frequent Flyer Programs to Your Advantage in 2025

Long gone are the days when loyalty programs where something only business travelers could take full advantage of. Airlines have made their programs open to everyone recognizing their massive revenue potential. But how to make the most of them even by only flying a few flights per year and earn some serious rewards? Let’s look at how to make the most out of them.

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Choose the Right Airline and Alliance

First thing to do if you’re new to the game is to identify which airline loyalty program you want to sign up for. There are various aspects to keep in mind when choosing which program best fits your needs.

Main thing to think about is which airline do I most frequently travel with, or which offers the most convenient solutions from my closest airport.

Looking beyond that you’ll have to think about the airline’s alliance and its connecting partners. Which has the most extensive network in the area of my interest and the best onwards travel options with its alliance or its partners?

Some examples might be United Airlines has a very strong loyalty program MileagePlus and also has a very strong European partner in the Lufthansa Group. That means that if you frequently travel to Europe you’ll earn miles on United flights and the Lufthansa flights.

Register and Link Your Accounts

Once you’ve decided which airline’s loyalty program best fits your needs, then it’s time to sign up. Although many airlines allow to claim miles on past flights, before you signed up, I’d advise on signing up before you book your first flight.

It’s much easier getting miles immediately than having to go through booking references and other documents to claim miles on past flights.

Also a smart way to boost the miles you earn is by linking accounts. But what does linking loyalty accounts mean? There are two ways of linking accounts:

• Pooling where you link accounts of family or friends (according to what the frequent flyer program allows in its terms of use) to have miles conveyed into a single tally. Every time someone in the family books a flight miles go into the shared account. Airline loyalty programs such as United’s MileagePlus, Korean Air’s SkyPass, Air France-KLM’s FlyingBlue all include such a feature.
• Linking Other Loyalty Programs, when you link to you preferred airline frequent flyer program accounts for hotels or car rentals. For instance, FlyingBlue and ALL (Accor Hotels) allow to earn miles on every reservation jointly, and Marriott Bonvoy has a similar partnership with Emirates’ Skywards.

Be Loyal (Strategically)

This is a tricky point in this guide. You need to become good at recognizing a when it’s worth being loyal and when it just isn’t. What I means is that in some cases it might make sense to spend more to earn a reward or something else down the road.

For instance let’s say you’re looking at a return flight from Frankfurt to Seoul. Your options are Korean Air and Lufthansa. Lufthansa is marginally cheaper, however you have no status or miles with the German airline while you have an elite status with Korean Air. In this case you’re better off booking with Korean Air despite it being more expensive.

That initial higher cost will be balanced out, with the reward that derives from that choice. A return ticket, even flying Economy Class, already gets you enough miles for a domestic flight with Korean air worth approximately 100$ USD.

However, if the flight with Lufthansa is significantly cheaper then it doesn’t make financial sense to book with Korean Air. In that case get the miles from Lufthansa with its Miles&More program even though you don’t fly that carrier all that often.

Redeem Smartly

Airlines know exactly where you can unlock the highest value for your miles, and you should too. Value of your points varies on what you use them on.

Please, for the love of God, avoid spending your miles on onboard purchases, in-flight wifi, duty free or gift cards. Use them for what they are ment to be used for, flying.

The other tip to redeem smartly is to be on the lookout for deals and offer on reward flights. Airlines regularly put on special reward flights to destinations where they need to fill their planes.

For instance FlyingBlue releases at the beginning of every month their latest offers on rewards flights and so does Miles&More.

Earn Miles Without Flying

You don’t necessarily need to fly to build up your airline loyalty miles. You will need to fly to increase the number status points and achieve a higher status.

The smartest way to continue increasing the number of frequent flyer miles in your account without boarding a plane is by signing up for a credit card that allows you to do so.

There are many options out there to earn miles with your everyday expenses. Some are co-branded cards others allow to transfer card issuer points to airline loyalty programs.

What that means in simpler terms is that:

• Co-Branded Credit Cards: are cards a bank or other financial institution will release under the airline’s branding. They often are a fantastic tool to earn miles, and come with more benefits as you move up towards premium solutions. Most cards also ensure your miles never expire as long as you hold and use the card. However they are limited to earning airline loyalty points only for one airline and program.
• Standalone credit cards: on the other hand are not released with the airline’s branding. American Express or Revolut (despite the latter not being a credit card issuer and a bank) are prime examples. You spend money and earn AMEX Membership Rewards points or RevPoints and you can then transfer them to a frequent flyer program of your choice among those that have partnered with AMEX and Revolut.

Alliance and Partner Benefits

We’ve covered alliances above in this post, however, its worth talking a little more about the importance of choosing the right alliance and an airline with strong partnerships.

In most cases you will be able to earn airline loyalty points for your preferred frequent flyer program when flying any other airline of the alliance. Additionally that is also the case with partner airlines that have frequent flyer benefit reciprocity agreements.

Also if you reach gold status, that is the threshold with most airlines, you’ll start to have lounge access across the alliance and other benefits, such as priority boarding and checkin, upgrade priority and so on.

At the end of the day, airline loyalty programs aren’t about flying endlessly. They’re about flying smart. If you pick the right program, consistency is the name of the game, and make every mile count through partners and cards, you’ll be surprised how quickly those “extra perks” turn into real upgrades, lounge access, and free flights.

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