Last December, Global Traveler Magazine named United Airlines’ MileagePlus the best overall loyalty program for the 16th straight year. Global Traveler has a circulation of over 500K, and awards are voted on by business and luxury travel readers.
This year, Breitflyte Airline News is launching an all new “Points & Perks” section on our website. As recent news has proven, customers will go to great lengths to achieve and maintain the highest levels of status for their favorite airlines. For our first article on the topic we have decided to highlight United Airlines’ MileagePlus program, which has recently been named “Best Overall Airline Loyalty Program” by readers of Global Traveler Magazine. Global Traveler has over half-a-million monthly leisure and business readers and annual rewards are determined by their Global Traveler Reader Survey.
On December 12, 2019, United Airlines announced that the airline’s MileagePlus loyalty program as been awarded top honors in the category for the 16th consecutive year. Additionally, Global Traveler readers named MileagePlus “Best Frequent-flyer Bonus program for the 7th year and their co-branded Chase credit cards “Best Overall Credit Card Program” and “Best Credit Card Rewards Program” for the 8th year. The United Explorer Card, also co-branded with Chase, was named “Best Frequent-Flyer Affinity Credit Card” for 2019. In the December announcement, United’s President of MileagePlus and VP Customer Loyalty, Luc Bondar said,
“MileagePlus earning the Best Overall Frequent Flyer program for the 16th straight year is a sweet achievement for us, most importantly because it is voted on by members and frequent travelers from around the world. This year we made a number of improvements to the MileagePlus program, including announcing that miles never expire, and we know these changes continue to make MileagePlus an award-winning program for our members.”
Some of the improvements to the program for 2019 include the elimination of an expiration date for miles, discounted CLEAR memberships, and a new way for Premier Platinum members and above to manage upgrades with PlusPoints. United and Star Alliance also offer members over 1,300 destinations (more than any other U.S. airline loyalty program) and allow members to redeem as few as 1,000 points for eGift cards.
Source: United Airlines