The best airline loyalty programs in Europe

One way to make business travel a little more enjoyable is to collect loyalty points from airlines.

You can get access to nicer lounges, better seats at no cost, and sometimes even a free flight that you can put towards an upcoming vacation. Great, huh?

Every company travel policy has different guidelines around collecting and using loyalty points, so make sure to check with your travel manager or office manager first. A common rule of thumb is that it’s okay to choose your preferred carrier if the cost is not more than 10% greater than an alternative, but some companies request that you choose the lower-priced carrier every time - no matter what.

Perk allows travelers to save their loyalty program numbers so that they get used whenever possible. The more loyalty programs, the merrier!

Below, you’ll find information on all of the best frequent flyer programs in Europe, including partner airlines, destinations, and rewards.

But how do you choose the right one? The only way to get great benefits is to fly often, so choose the program whose airlines you’ll frequently fly with.

Most airlines are part of alliances, and their loyalty program partners overlap. We’ve done the heavy lifting for you by selecting the best of the best programs.

Flying Blue

Flying Blue is the Air France and KLM frequent flyer program. One great thing about Flying Blue is that they allow you to collect points when flying with their many partner airlines. The program allows you to earn air miles for every euro spent - miles that can be used for class upgrades and new trips!

Certain tiers of Flying Blue also give you access to airport lounges and offer steep discounts on seat options. If Paris and Amsterdam are business travel hot spots for you, then there’s no reason not to sign up.

Partner Airlines:

Tiers & Benefits

Check out the different levels of this program and how to move up the ladder of benefits.

XP can be earned in many ways. E.g. you can get 5 XP on an economy flight under 2,000 miles and 36 XP on a business class flight over 5,000 miles. View all the ways to collect XP here.

Other awesome benefits from Flying Blue include free transfers for Gold and Platinum members from Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly. Discover the full list of benefits here.

Flying Club

Brought to you by Atlantic arm of Virgin, the Flying Club also allows you to rack up flights for Delta Air. Unfortunately, tea with Sir Richard Branson is not part of the perks, but there are plenty of other cool rewards, such as exit row seats and premium check-in.

Always wanted to chillax in the Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse instead of your usual madhouse terminal at Heathrow? Now’s your chance. The swanky clubhouse isn’t just for first class flyers, it’s open to Gold Tier members of the Flying Club as well. So if British and Asian destinations are part of your regular routes with Virgin Atlantic, consider signing up. Even better, you’ll get free seat selection every time you fly.

Partner Airlines:

• Virgin Atlantic

• Delta Air Lines

Tiers & Benefits

Learn about the benefits of each tier and how to qualify.

Little extras like bonus birthday miles and cabin upgrades (when you earn 2,000 Tier Points within a membership year) make this loyalty program enticing.

Learn more and get started by signing up for the Red Tier of the Flying Club.

Miles & More

If Zurich or Frankfurt (or just about anywhere in the U.S.) are regular destinations for you, then Miles & More is the right choice. With so many partners in the Star Alliance, it’d be almost silly not to sign up and start racking up points. The standout benefits of this program are the cabin upgrades and priority check-in. Better yet, you can redeem mileage points at over 300,000 hotels worldwide.

In any airline rewards program comparison, this one will rank towards the top, simply because there are so many big partner airlines.

Partner Airlines:

Tiers & Benefits

Learn more about the program and sign up here.

Executive Club

Partner Airlines:

Tiers & Benefits

To get more benefits with the Executive Club, you need more Tier Points. It’s really complicated to calculate just how many Tier Points you’ll get for a flight, so complicated in fact, that there’s an online calculator you can use. For a quick understanding of how valuable Tier Points are, and how you can reach a new tier, a flight with British Airways from SFO to London Heathrow is 20 points with Economy Low and 90 points with Premium Economy.

While Tier points can help you get more benefits in new tiers, Avios is the name given to the points you spend on things like flights and cabin upgrades.

Avios can be spent on holidays, hotels, car hire and more. The fact that you can pool Avios together with a household of 6 makes this program a no-brainer for anyone who regularly travels with kids, in addition to the usual business travel grind.

TrueBlue

Want to get points for taking surveys? You can! Surveys aren’t very fun, but when you can earn points for them… they might be tolerable. The other way to earn points with TrueBlue is to fly JetBlue, so if that’s a regular carrier for you, then go ahead and sign up.

Partner Airlines:

Tiers & Benefits

Collect 3 points for every dollar spent. You can spend points on JetBlue Vacation packages, magazine subscriptions, and flights to Hawaii with Hawaiian Airlines (a great carrier to a great destination, by the way). You can also get bonus points for special things, such as receiving 7,000 points when you’ve booked 7 round-trip flights in a year.

Aeroflot Bonus

The Aeroflot Bonus program includes lots of great European airlines including AirFrance and KLM. Choose this over Flying Blue if you often travel to Russia or China or one of the other countries served by these partner airlines. Aeroflot Bonus points can be used towards hotel bookings and shopping sprees. Get to the top tier of the program, and you’ll receive 3 class upgrade vouchers!

Partner Airlines:

Tiers & Benefits

Learn more about Aeroflot Bonus and sign up here.

Norwegian Reward

Do you fly with Norwegian often? Great, then this rewards program will make your day. They don’t have any partner airlines so you’ll need to use Norwegian regularly to get a lot of value here. That said, you can also earn their “CashPoints” on Norwegian Hotels, all car rentals in France, Italy, and the US, and with their many partners like GetYourGuide and Groupon.

Partner Airlines:

• Norwegian

Benefits

Norwegian doesn’t have different tiers. Instead, they allow you to rack up CashPoints from flights, hotels and Groupon purchases and then spend those points on expedited security lines, free seat reservation, free baggage, Premium upgrades and more.

For every sixth flight with Norwegian, in addition to banking points, you get 1 Reward, which gives you +2% CashPoints on every flight (or partner purchase) thereafter.

Next, when you book 6 flights again, you can use that for free expedited security on all future flights, or free seat reservation on all future flights.

What’s really inventive about this program, is that you don’t have to fly internationally 20 times a year to get really cool perks. You can quickly earn benefits - one flight, one benefit.

Go here to learn more about Norwegian’s inventive, one-of-a-kind rewards program.

Do you fly frequently for business travel? Do you wish you could book your own flights instead of dialing a travel agent or sending an email to your office manager? Perk makes it easy for business travelers to book their own flights within policy. And even better, we allow you to save your loyalty program information, so you can easily add it on to every booking and get those points!