Too often, airline loyalty programmes don’t live up to their potential. Customers face complicated rules, redemptions that feel like hard work, and benefits that aren’t always clear. The result is a programme that exists in name, but doesn’t deliver the commercial or customer value it could.
What separates the winners from the laggards isn’t just data or discounts. It’s simplicity, transparency, and real commercial alignment.
We recently had Oliver Ross, Head of Loyalty & CRM at KM Malta Airlines, on our podcast, and he had a simple but poignant point:
“You shouldn’t need a PhD in loyalty to understand how it works.”
Let’s walk through why and how airlines can reshape loyalty into a programme that drives ancillary sales, customer engagement, and bottom-line growth.
Loyalty’s new value proposition: more than miles
Loyalty used to be about stuffing miles in wallets. Now, data proves it’s an economic linchpin for airlines:
- A leading industry study calls loyalty programmes a “financial powerhouse,” delivering high margins, predictable cash flow, and resilience, even outperforming flight revenues (Medium)
- Over the years, airlines have experienced a significant increase in ancillary revenue. Sophisticated offers and dynamic pricing models are projected to boost this sector’s growth from around $169 billion in 2022 to more than $728 billion by 2030. (The Insight Partners)
Personalisation is at the heart of this. Airlines that use rich customer data to tailor offers not only boost lifetime value but also reduce distribution costs. Especially when driving traffic into direct, owned channels.
At KM Malta, Oliver puts it simply: loyalty is no longer just a retention tool. It’s a retail and revenue engine.
Pain points that continue to hinder retention
What happens when an airline builds a loyalty program that’s overly complex?
1. Clunky redemption experiences
Oliver candidly described the previous system:
“Members never being able to find reward space” and needing to call the centre just to redeem. Loyalty went from being a benefit to becoming a liability.
Alt Option: The need to call the centre for redemption leads to “members never being able to find reward space”. As a result, loyalty went from a benefit to a liability.
2. Unclear value
Oliver also reflected on how confusing many programmes are:
“Customers don’t know what they’ll earn until after purchase. It felt like making them do the maths.”
This opacity kills engagement and leaves ancillary revenue on the table.
3. Fragmented member journeys
Many airlines offer fragmented loyalty programs with no central portal, inconsistent timelines, and unclear balances. If the digital journey is not intuitive and clear about what customers have earned and how to spend it, retention drops. These gaps create frustration, discourage repeat bookings, and turn valuable loyalty assets into underutilised overhead.
What modern, value-driven loyalty should feel like
So, what does a loyalty programme need to look like? Especially to make CCOs, CFOs, and Revenue Managers sit up and take notice?
1. Simplicity at every step
KM Rewards’ principle:
“You shouldn’t need a PhD in loyalty to understand how it works.”
Simplify redemption. Let customers spend points as effortlessly as they book a seat.
Complexity deters engagement. Redemption rules that require call centres, blackout dates, or fluctuating values confuse customers and erode trust. Simplicity, on the other hand, lowers usage barriers and increases the likelihood of repeat purchases.
For executives, this translates into higher redemption rates (plus, less liability on the balance sheet), stronger ancillary uptake, and improved customer satisfaction scores.
2. Seamless digital experience
KM Malta Airlines shaved around 40-60 seconds off the booking journey by pre-populating member details.
That kind of convenience is a direct driver of conversion. Every second saved in the digital journey reduces abandonment and increases revenue capture. The takeaway is clear: integrating loyalty into the core digital retailing experience improves customer stickiness and channel performance.
3. Transparent, personalised rewards
So, what’s next on KM Malta Airlines’ roadmap? To show passengers exactly how many SkyBux they’ll earn and burn for each fare and ancillary item, tailored to each traveller. This is precious behavioural data and a powerful incentive to upsell.
Pairing this clarity with personalisation empowers airlines to steer behaviour, like incentivising premium fares, promoting ancillary attachment, or nudging direct channel bookings.
Clarity in loyalty isn’t boring; it’s commercially powerful and turns every booking into a predictable and optimised revenue event.
4. Loyalty that grows with you
Oliver also highlighted a vision beyond flights:
“We are looking at a number of initiatives to allow members to earn and burn outside of the airline. And also for members to join without having ever flown with the airline.”
Beyond bookings, loyalty should expand opportunities for ambassadorship, cross-sell, and ecosystem play. Extending earn-and-burn into hotels, retail, or lifestyle partnerships generates programme relevance and incremental revenue streams. For airlines, especially those with limited networks, marketplaces expand the brand’s footprint into customers’ daily lives.
How Triplake Loyalty Modules delivers this vision
Seamless integration into airline ecosystems
Triplake Member Portal and Member Experiences modules are not just additional systems, but rather vital building blocks for transformative customer experiences. By seamlessly weaving into airlines’ digital ecosystems, these modules redefine each interaction into giving something back to those customers and saying, “thank you for flying with us”.
Personalised offers that show real value
Imagine a frequent flyer, Yasmin, who receives tailored offers thanks to her Member Portal preferences and data-driven triggers. Whether it’s a special discount at her favourite hotel, or a surprise flight upgrade, they prove that she is valued and understood.
Frictionless redemption across channels
Simplifying the redemption process is another game-changer. With Triplake Member Experiences, Yasmin can instantly earn-and-burn rewards across the airline's mobile app, website, or even airport kiosks, making her loyalty journey smooth and hassle-free.
Expanding loyalty beyond flights
Loyalty should extend beyond the plane seat. Triplake enables airlines to incorporate third-party ancillaries, allowing members to spend rewards on hotels, tours, retail, or lifestyle offers. Yasmin can use her points for destination experiences like nature tours, event tickets, or boutique shopping. Broadening the programme’s relevance while deepening the airline’s relationship with her everyday life.
Future-proofing loyalty with cohesive digital transformation
This holistic approach boosts customer retention and aligns commercial goals with modern consumer values, making Triplake Member Portal and Member Experiences modules future-proof solutions in an ever-evolving market. By working cohesively across all digital platforms, Triplake ensures the airline's loyalty programme is not siloed, but rather a cohesive part of the digital transformation strategy.
Conclusion: Turning Loyalty into a Competitive Advantage
Airline loyalty can no longer be about points alone. To truly stand out, it must deliver simplicity, transparency, and meaningful customer experiences. By adopting solutions like Triplake’s Member Portal and Member Experiences modules, airlines can transform their programmes into powerful engines for engagement, ancillary revenue, and long-term loyalty.
With seamless integration, frictionless redemption, and value-driven personalisation, Triplake helps airlines not only meet customer expectations but exceed them—making every interaction a chance to strengthen relationships and grow revenue.
The airlines that embrace this vision today will define the future of loyalty tomorrow.
The average airline web portals is not broken. It loads, it sells tickets. It technically does what it's supposed to do.
And yet, the experience feels tiring.
You notice it when you try to do something simple. Change a seat. Find your gate. Understand what happens if a flight is delayed. Suddenly you are scanning long pages, decoding airline terminology, clicking back and forth just to stay oriented.
The problem is not with the features, It is effort effort required in getting from A to B.
Airline portals still expect travellers to think like systems. To understand menus, categories, fare families, ancillaries, rules. But travellers arrive with something much simpler. Intent.
They want to get something done and get on with their journey.
This article posits that airline web portals should stop behaving like navigation systems and start acting as intent-aware decision environments. When UX is designed to reduce effort, adapt to context, and quietly support travellers at each stage of the journey, portals become calmer to use, easier to trust, and far more effective for airlines.
The basics still matter more than airlines think
Before talking about AI or personalisation, it is worth being honest about the fundamentals.
You can see that accessibility standards aren’t yet being applied and portals aren’t optimised for mobile, which results in performance drops. Navigation feels heavier than it needs to be. Search often works, but only if you already know what to ask and how the airline expects you to ask it.
These are not exciting topics, but they shape everything that comes after. If a portal is slow, confusing, or inaccessible, no amount of intelligence layered on top will fix the experience.
At Branchspace, we see this repeatedly. Airlines want to move faster, personalise more, experiment. But the UX foundation is not always ready to support that ambition.
Where portals lose traveller trust
The biggest UX issues are rarely dramatic, they are subtle and cumulative:
- A vague error message that offers no next step
- A long paragraph that hides the one thing the traveller needs to know
- Three different words for the same concept depending on where you are in the journey
- A mobile page that technically works but feels endless
In isolation these are small instances, but they compound to create friction for a user. And friction erodes confidence.
Travellers begin to hesitate, scan more carefully, and spend extra effort just trying to stay oriented. They stop trusting that the portal will help them when things go wrong. Good UX goes beyond delight, it is about reassurance.
Decision-making is the real job of UX
Every airline portal is a decision-making environment:
- Choose a flight
- Choose a fare
- Choose a seat
- Decide whether to rebook or wait
The role of UX is not to present all options equally. It is to reduce the mental work required to choose well.
That is where simple principles matter more than flashy ideas: clear visual hierarchy, familiar patterns, plain language, and progressive disclosure.
When these are done properly, travellers stop analysing the interface and start moving confidently through it.
This is also where intent-led thinking becomes powerful. When portals are designed around tasks rather than pages, complexity begins to fall away naturally.
What changes when you design for intent
When you stop designing for navigation and start designing for intent, the portal behaves differently:
- Shift the focus to intent and the portal begins to respond in new ways
- Search leads the experience rather than sitting in the background
- Logged-in travellers with an upcoming trip see what they can do next, instead of being asked to explore
This is the direction we have been taking with platforms like Triplake by allowing the portal to respond to context, trip stage, loyalty status and behaviour.
Where AI actually helps and where it should stay quiet
AI has a role in airline UX, but it works best when it stays in the background rather than taking centre stage. The strongest AI-driven experiences are often the ones you barely notice, because the interface feels simpler and the path forward feels clearer.
That might mean routing a traveller straight to the right outcome based on a natural language query, or surfacing the most relevant rebooking option when a disruption occurs. In other moments, it is about removing repetition altogether, using known preferences to spare travellers from making the same choices again and again.
At its best, AI offers clarity, supports decisions without trying to make them on the traveller’s behalf. People still want to feel in control of their journey, they just do not want to work so hard to get there.
The portal is becoming a living interface
The most interesting shift we are seeing has very little to do with technology and everything to do with behaviour. Airline portals are gradually moving away from being static websites and towards adaptive interfaces that respond to where a traveller is in their journey.
Before the trip, the portal helps you prepare. On the day of travel, it shifts into a supportive role, surfacing the information that matters most in the moment. Afterwards, it follows up, closing the loop rather than simply ending the experience.
Making this work demands modular design systems, flexible platforms, and teams that think beyond individual pages and flows. It is not an easy change, but it is both achievable and increasingly necessary.
