Best Value Airline Rewards Programs in 2024 - NerdWallet (2024)

Airline rewards programs are complicated. It might seem like you need a Ph.D. in complex systems (or at least fine-print reading) to understand them. But underneath the complex gobbledygook lies a simple pair of questions:

After all, that’s what an airline loyalty program is about: Rewarding frequent flyers with value (in this case, points or miles) that they can use for future trips.

With this in mind, we can determine which airlines deliver on this simple promise and which fall short.

To do this, our team at NerdWallet compared U.S. airlines’ rewards programs across these two factors to arrive at a single “rewards rate” for each. This rewards rate shows which airlines offer the best bang for your travel buck when purchasing airfare. For example, a rewards rate of 10% means that for every dollar you spend purchasing base fares with the airline, you can expect about 10 cents back in the form of rewards (redeemable points or miles).

To determine these rankings, we collected hundreds of data points from real-world airline routes to determine the value of points or miles for each airline. Then, we combined these results with the number of miles earned per dollar spent on base airfare.

Enough math. The point is that Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines are easily the most rewarding domestic airline programs (and they’ll merge into one program in 2024, so you soon won’t have to choose between the two). You can expect to get about 9 to 10 cents in value for every dollar spent with Alaska or Hawaiian. That's far above the 4 to 7 cents per dollar spent you can expect from the big three: American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines.

Alaska’s performance is hardly surprising for rewards aficionados, as its Mileage Plan has a good reputation for customer-first policies. The same goes for Hawaiian Airlines, which has a customer-friendly reputation.

Spirit Airlines came in with just a 3.5% rate largely because they offer a lower points earning rate on base fares (6x) than they do on purchases they categorize as optional (12x), such as boarding pass printing, seat selection, baggage, etc. If you spend a lot on these extra fees with Spirit, your proportional earning rate will be higher.

If you’re an infrequent traveler who takes a couple of trips per year and doesn’t bother much with earning airline miles, you can mostly ignore these rankings. They’re called frequent flyer programs for a reason.

If you travel a lot for work or are a leisure traveler who maximizes travel rewards, these rankings should make a big impact on where you put your loyalty. If you or your company spends $5,000 per year on airfare, you could earn back $485 worth of miles from Alaska versus only $245 from United, for example.

Choosing the right airline loyalty program for you will involve other factors, such as the number of flights from your home airport or your willingness to pay extra fees for additional services, but the rewards rate can help tip the scales.

Imagine choosing between two cash-back credit cards: One offered to refund 10% of every purchase and the other offered only 3.4% back. That, in a nutshell, is the difference between the best airline and the lowest rewards rate airline program when comparing their rates on base airfare costs.

Keep in mind that miles are not cash, and the hypothetical return on spending with any of these programs depends on one crucial variable: whether you actually use the miles. Still, the differences are stark.

Terms apply.

If you choose to become loyal to one of the big three domestic airlines, the good news is that they all offer similar, middling rewards rates. In terms of the pure financials of redeemable miles, you’re not meaningfully better off with Delta than you are with United or American.

These rankings are a good indication of which airlines are dedicated to offering value to their most frequent customers and which are throwing up smoke and mirrors. The fact that it took us weeks of data collection and analysis to determine these figures demonstrates how opaque the travel rewards game can be. Hopefully, this offers some clarity.