Caravelo

Does your airline status still count when you fly the same group's low-cost airline? Europe's three biggest airline groups each run one loyalty currency across a family of airlines. We scored all three programmes, and only 0.3 separates first from last. 📊 Miles & More 3.0, Flying Blue 2.8, Avios 2.7 out of 5. All three unified the currency. None of them unified the experience, and you notice the moment you board the low-cost airline. → On Eurowings, a Frequent Traveller only gets the lounge on the pricier Smart fare, and the second checked bag starts at Senator. → On Transavia, only Flying Blue's top two tiers get anything, and only on the French side. The Dutch side recognises no Flying Blue status at all. → On Vueling, members earn Avios like everyone else, but Vueling Club status counts nowhere else in the group. Three groups, one shared decision. The passenger in the cheapest seat gets the currency, but not the relationship. I don't read that as a mistake. Frequent flyer programmes were built for the top 5 to 10% of passengers, and someone flying three times a year on a low-cost ticket was never going to reach Senator. If I ran one of these groups, I wouldn't stretch the status ladder down to them. I'd build them something that doesn't need status at all, with clear terms and a price they can plan around. Right now, none of the three has. Full breakdown 👇 https://lnkd.in/e_XUDreg

15 years ago, JoseLuis Vilar 🤓 and I went to our first World Aviation Festival. It was held in the basement of the Sofitel at Heathrow T5. There were about 200 of us. The airport location meant everyone could fly in, do their meetings, and fly straight out again. Back then, the word “World” in the name was doing a lot of heavy lifting. We were young (well, early thirties, let’s be fair), sharing dinner tables with people who had been running airlines longer than we had been working. It was small and a bit rough around the edges, but the conversations were raw and honest. That’s what kept us coming back year after year. And the event grew with us. Bigger venues, booths and the big names followed, all the way to ExCeL London and beyond. Over time it became what the name had always promised. Credit to Terrapinn for building that. And after that many editions, you notice when something changes… Lisbon this year felt different, and I think everyone in the room could feel it. Some of the biggest names in PSS and distribution weren’t there (no Amadeus, Sabre…), and fewer people walked the halls. IMO, there was less wandering and more intent. Meetings were booked weeks ahead, with people who came ready to talk. I don’t know yet where WAF goes from here. Maybe it finds its way back to something smaller and more intimate, closer to that first basement. Or maybe it becomes something none of us have seen yet. Either way, the reason we keep coming back hasn’t changed. It’s still the conversations. So see you next year :)

On 5 October, Vueling brought back the Barcelona–Madrid shuttle. Two flights a day, Monday to Thursday, because business travellers asked for it. It’s part of a pattern I keep seeing. Europe’s airline groups are handing business routes to their low-cost airlines. Transavia took over Air France’s domestic flights at Orly in March. Now Vueling flies the most famous business route in Spain. Which made me go back to 1974. The original Puente Aéreo had one promise. Turn up, get on the next plane, no booking. Iberia kept it with 13 flights a day each way and four reserve flights on top. For its first years, that route didn’t have a loyalty programme. The promise did the job. So what does the shuttle flyer get on Vueling today? → Avios once you’re past the entry tier, and since last October Vueling flights count toward Iberia Club status too. The low-cost shuttle sits inside the group, not outside it. → Vueling Club, relaunched in February, with tiers built on spend. Plus is 2,000 euros a year, which a weekly flyer reaches within the year. → At Plus, a free switch to an earlier flight the same day, in the app. The closest thing to 1974 on the low-cost side. That’s a good set for a low-cost airline, and more than most of them offer. What stayed in 1974 is the guarantee. Four reserve flights a day meant you always got on. Nobody runs a route like that anymore, and no programme promises a seat when the flight is full, Iberia’s included. Fair enough. But the idea underneath it still works. Back then the airline took the risk, with four spare planes. Today it could be the flyer who takes it, by committing to the route for the season rather than one flight at a time. A seasonal pass could do that, and it would give the airline the one thing a ticket never does. It tells you in advance who’s coming back. Vueling Club scored 2.6 out of 5 in our new Caravelo Loyalty Scorecard on Europe’s group-owned low-cost airlines. Full breakdown 👇 https://lnkd.in/ecCzQ_wZ

Jet fuel is back near the April highs. American said this month that its Q4 fuel is running about a dollar a gallon above what it planned in July. Most of the industry treated the spring as the worst of it. I have held off writing about fuel. Almost everything in this business is exposed to something the airline does not control. Fuel, engines, a strait, a regulator. What tells me more than the price is how differently airlines are responding to it. → airBaltic sold its remaining hedges in March to stay inside its liquidity covenants and filed for Chapter 11 earlier this month. Fuel was not the cause. Grounded engines and lost routes were. It was the last thing the balance sheet could not absorb. → Ryanair is one of the best-hedged airlines in Europe and still cut two million winter seats. But it moved aircraft to where margins hold and said openly that some competitors may not make it through the winter. The hedge bought room. What Ryanair did with the room is the point. → Most airlines took the third route. Trim capacity, recover what fares allow, and hold everything else until the price comes down. That is a reasonable response. The risk is that waiting spreads. Once fuel is the reason to hold capacity, it quietly becomes the reason to hold everything else. In the conversations I had with airlines this year, fuel is rarely the whole reason something stops. More often it is what gets said while a harder question stays open. Expensive fuel is not a reason to do nothing. If anything, it is the reason to do something different. So if a project has been paused on fuel, it is worth asking at what price per gallon it comes back. If there is a number, that is a decision. If nobody can name one, fuel was never the reason.

€650 buys five months of Lufthansa status. The offer closes next week. If you have an eligible Miles & More credit card, Frequent Traveller status costs €650 or 80,000 miles, valid until the end of February. That gets you business lounges, business check-in, extra baggage and bonus miles. A while ago I wrote that status is the worst deal on the table. It asks for years of flying upfront, and the airline keeps the right to change the reward mid-game. Lufthansa just removed the years of flying, but it kept the right to change the reward. Award prices still move with demand, with no chart to check them against. And the status you can buy is only the first step. Above Frequent Traveller, Miles & More has two more tiers, Senator and HON Circle, and you still have to fly your way into both. Those two tiers carry the thing that put Miles & More at the top of our new scorecard, which is a written guarantee of a seat. → Senators get "a confirmed booking in your chosen travel class even on fully booked flights" → HON Circle members can book award seats even when none are left No other programme we've scored promises a seat on a full flight. So the lounge is for sale. The promise isn't. If I had to sell one of the two, I'd sell the promise. A lounge makes the hour before a flight nicer. A guaranteed seat on a sold-out Friday flight is the reason someone keeps booking you. That promise is a big part of why Miles & More tops the board at 3.0, ahead of Flying Blue and Avios. Full breakdown of Europe's three airline groups here 👇 https://lnkd.in/eMsBkYzV

Frontier is putting first class seats on its planes. This is the airline that took the fee model further than anyone. Last year, about 60% of Frontiers revenue came from outside the base fare (bags, seats, fees), the highest share of any airline IdeaWorks tracks. Honestly, I get the logic... Spirit is gone, the big three now sell their own basic economy fares, and premium is where the money is (American now makes half its revenue from 30% of seats). The cheapest seat alone doesnt win anymore. Frontiers chairman, Bill Franke, said that in a mature market, a budget airline may need to adjust its business model to compete. And the seats arent the only change. → Starlink internet on board from 2027 → First class upgrades for its top status members → Its credit card deal with Barclays, extended to 2037 Each one gives a traveller a reason to pick Frontier again, beyond being the cheapest option on the screen. Will it work? I dont know, and IMO thats not the point. The point is that Frontier didnt protect its playbook for its own sake. Theres no prize for that. Theres a prize for performing better in the market youre facing. I bring this up because of a line I hear often in airline meetings. "We're a legacy carrier so we dont do that". Sometimes its the budget airline version, "Thats not our model" I understand why. A model that worked for years stops feeling like a choice and starts feeling like identity. Few airlines were more attached to theirs than Frontier, and it still changed when the market moved. So next time I hear "we dont do that" Ill think of the first two rows of a Frontier plane.