Airlines pour enormous resources into designing loyalty tiers, mileage bonuses, and elite perks. Those investments assume the primary risk to airline loyalty comes from rival carriers – but the larger risk is quieter and less obvious: member inactivity.
NB: This is an article from Switchfly
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Around half of the members in many programs remain inactive or redeem only for low-value economy flights.
That inactivity isn’t harmless. With roughly 30 trillion unredeemed points industry-wide, airlines carry a growing liability while simultaneously forgoing ancillary revenue opportunities. The real growth opportunity for airline customer loyalty is not reshaping the behavior of the top 10 percent of flyers; it is activating the silent middle – millions who accumulate points but don’t use them.
Flexible redemptions – hotels, cars, activities, travel protection, and points+cash options – are the blunt instrument for that activation. They give members practical ways to realize value and invite them back into the airline’s ecosystem.
Understanding the Silent Majority Problem
The Silent Middle Represents Massive Untapped Revenue
Large airline loyalty programs follow an uneven distribution: a small cohort of frequent fliers does most redemptions, and a large middle rarely redeems.
This creates a commercial and financial paradox:
- Dormant points represent liabilities on the balance sheet
- Dormant members represent missed opportunities for selling hotels, car rentals, activities, travel insurance, and ancillaries
Without activation, airlines not only carry the balance-sheet burden of unredeemed points, but they also cede customer wallet share to OTAs and other travel platforms that monetize the rest of the trip.
Why the Silent Majority Stays Quiet
There are three practical reasons why millions of members remain silent:
- Flight-only redemptions don’t match member behavior. Many fly too infrequently to redeem for meaningful upgrades or aspirational seats.
- Redemption friction suppresses action. Inventory constraints, blackout dates, complex rules, and unclear valuations make redemption feel like work.
- Program structure mismatches traveler intent. Members think in terms of complete trips, not discrete seat inventory – creating an experience gap that keeps points dormant.
OTA Behavior Has Shifted Expectations
Online travel agencies established a user expectation for one-stop trip planning: booking flights, hotels, cars, and experiences in one place. This holistic model sets a behavioral baseline.
Travelers who have been conditioned to bundle components through an OTA expect convenience, choice, and transparent pricing in a single session. Airlines that offer only flight redemptions become a peripheral part of travel planning rather than the hub. This disintermediation lowers engagement frequency and weakens the emotional tie between the traveler and the airline brand.
