How we chose the best airline loyalty program

Every year, the TPG Awards honor excellence in credit cards, loyalty programs and travel. Please click here to read more about our winner selection process and methodology for the 2024 TPG Awards.

The TPG Awards have honored the top travel brands, credit cards and loyalty programs since 2018. But this year, we’ve taken a new approach to several of the honors, leveraging data to select the winners of five awards.

For the first time ever, we used objective data to recognize the Best U.S. Airline Loyalty Program, including how you earn and redeem rewards, what elite status benefits you can enjoy and just how far a program can take you across the globe — through both its own network and via airline partnerships.

The six finalists for this award were:

It was a close battle between the top four programs, but only one winner could rise to the top in this year’s TPG Awards.

And the winner is … American Airlines AAdvantage.

Here’s a closer look at our methodology and how AAdvantage won the Best U.S. Airline Loyalty Program award.

Our methodology

We scored these six major airline loyalty programs across four categories:

• Footprint: This was a combination of domestic airports served by the airline operating the program and the number of partner airlines in the program.
• Earning: This analyzed the earning rates across a carrier’s suite of cobranded credit cards, as well as what you earn for every dollar spent on flights with said airline. It also considered nonflying earning partners, including transferable credit card currencies, vacation packages, cruises, experiences, car rentals, transportation providers, shopping and dining.
• Redeeming: This was a combination of each currency’s value in TPG’s November 2024 valuations (all six programs have been data-backed for more than a year) and the cost of the lowest domestic redemption rate available when searching across the program network, using handy internal tools like calendar views along with external tools like Seats.aero.
• Benefits: The final category focused on each airline’s elite status offerings. Half of this involved how attainable these tiers are through spending various amounts on flights and cobranded credit cards. The other half analyzed elite status perks for each program, including advance upgrades, complimentary seat selection, baggage allowances and the benefits when flying on partner airlines.

All raw data was converted into a scaled score from zero to 10 and then weighted according to our proprietary formula, with each category making up 25% of the final score.

Related: Best airline credit cards

With a total score out of 100, the final rankings were as follows:

1. American Airlines AAdvantage: 70.98

2. United MileagePlus: 69.47

3. Delta SkyMiles: 63.29

4. Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan: 62.02

5. Southwest Rapid Rewards: 52.68

6. JetBlue TrueBlue: 49.02

Why American Airlines AAdvantage won

American Airlines AAdvantage just edged out United MileagePlus, while Delta SkyMiles took third, just ahead of Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan.

American flies to more domestic airports than any other U.S. airline, with an impressive 225 destinations served, according to the October 2024 Air Travel Consumer Report. The Fort Worth, Texas-based carrier also scored highly in the number of airline partners it has as a member of the Oneworld alliance, which includes British Airways, Qantas, Iberia and Cathay Pacific, as well as notable nonalliance airline partners like Etihad Airways and Hawaiian Airlines.

Using our data-backed monthly valuations, TPG values AAdvantage miles slightly higher than other U.S. airline currencies. The program’s decision to retain a generous award chart for partner-operated redemptions has long made AAdvantage miles valuable. Not to mention, domestic flights start from just 5,000 AAdvantage miles. While this is not the lowest rate in the category, it is still a great deal for redeeming miles that are easy to earn.

AAdvantage particularly shone with its top-tier status perks for its AAdvantage Executive Platinum members. This status (equivalent to Oneworld Emerald) gives first-class lounge access at Oneworld lounges, including the excellent Qantas first lounges at Melbourne Airport (MEL) and Sydney Airport (SYD) and the stunning Pier first-class lounge operated by Cathay Pacific at Hong Kong International Airport (HKG). These partner lounge benefits outweighed all other programs’ top-tier perks except Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan’s MVP Gold 75K and MVP Gold 100K, which also offer Oneworld Emerald status.

Related: TPG readers’ favorite airport lounges around the world

Other notable items from our analysis

Southwest and JetBlue’s absence of membership in a global alliance hurt their scoring in the footprint category. While Southwest’s business model has not been to partner with other airlines, we hope to see JetBlue increase its airline partners as it competes with larger airlines in the U.S.

It’s worth noting that the TrueBlue program took top marks in the earning categories, with high rewards on its cobranded cards and the carrier’s base earning rate of 6 points per dollar spent on flights (the latter of which tied with Southwest).

And what Southwest lacks in airline partners, it makes up for in how domestic award rates go. We found seats as low as 2,025 Rapid Rewards points, an astonishingly low rate for a domestic flight and less than half the cheapest price of the “Big Three” carriers (American, Delta and United). JetBlue was a close second here, with rates starting at just 3,600 TrueBlue points.

Bottom line

In a close contest, American Airlines’ AAdvantage program narrowly beat United MileagePlus and Delta SkyMiles to win the Best U.S. Airline Loyalty Program award at the 2024 TPG Awards.

Despite switches to dynamic pricing, increasing elite status spending requirements and devaluations of some of our favorite sweet spots, the AAdvantage program remains impressive in the ever-changing loyalty landscape.

As one of the world’s largest airlines and a Oneworld alliance member, it allows members to easily earn and redeem miles at often attractive rates and provides many benefits for top-tier elite members.