Industry price pressure and 3rd party charges are indirectly and directly contributing to making most loyalty programs worse.

I can buy a ticket BRU-MUC-ARN-MUC-BRU in Eco K for € 125,99 for the four flights. The LH fare component of that is € 17,00 while taxes & surcharges are 108,99. I don’t expect to get a lot of miles from an airline when their revenue is 17 euros for 4 flights... Generally speaking, I nowadays get more award miles via credit cards than from actual flying.

Since we all have different travel patterns it’s always going to be comparing apples with pears, but is there any loyalty program that seems to be positioning itself significantly better & better for the mainstream traveler? If so, which one?