Best-Of Awards

Best Airline Rewards Program

How we picked the programs to evaluate:

For an airline to be eligible, it had to be based in the U.S. and have a publicly available rewards search calendar with availability from 15 days to eight months from the time of search.

Nine airlines fit these criteria: Alaska, American, Delta, Frontier, Hawaiian, JetBlue, Southwest, Spirit and United. No other airlines met these criteria.

How we chose the winner:

We looked at the rewards rate and elite rewards rate. We rated each of these factors separately, then determined an overall rating based on the weighting described below.

How we rated and weighted each factor:

Rewards rate (57.1%). We determined the dollar value of each program’s rewards miles and the earnings rate of miles. To determine the rewards rate, we multiplied the value of each mile by the earnings rate and then multiplied by 100. For example, if an airline’s rewards miles were worth $0.01 apiece (the value of rewards miles) and 10 miles were earned per dollar spent (the earnings rate of miles), its program would have a 10% rewards rate. (In this example, the two equations would be: first $0.01 x 10 = 0.1, then 0.1 x 100 = 10, or 10%.)
Elite rewards rate (42.9%). We determined both (a) the value and (b) the cost of earning elite status with each program, and determined an overall value by dividing (a) by (b).

How we assigned star ratings:

For each factor, we subtracted the lowest value from the highest value to determine the range. Then, we split this range into five separate “star rating” ranges. We assigned each airline program an appropriate star rating based on where its value fell in the range.