Flying Blue was named point.me’s best airline loyalty programme for the second year running in 2025. But what’s the secret to Air France-KLM’s ongoing success?

Ben Lipsey, SVP Loyalty, Data, and Digital at Air France-KLM, shares his insights in an exclusive interview from World Aviation Festival 2025. With around two-thirds of its customers based in Europe, but half its revenue coming from the US, Flying Blue must strike a careful balance to stay relevant with both demographics.

I think we got the recognition from point.me for being an easily available currency, the flexibility we offer, and the attractiveness of our rewards. That allows us to offer a programme that is relevant to both Europeans and Americans.

Maintaining that relevance is something Lipsey believes will be critical moving forward, as personalised offers become commonplace. Consumers are increasingly likely to tune out if they are presented with products that aren’t tailored to their lifestyle. From a loyalty perspective, personalisation could be the difference between a traveller sticking with one airline or switching to a rival.

We need to make sure that we use the knowledge we have about a customer to remain ahead of the game, so we can better target them for the right offers.

As well as balancing the fine line between attractive rewards and revenue management, Lipsey discusses the relationship between sustainability and loyalty. Although ‘frequent flyer’ status carrying pejorative environmental connotations, Lipsey sees it as an opportunity to consolidate sustainable behaviour and advance sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).

We try to reward our customers for joining us on our sustainability journey by earning points through buying SAF flights. We are the first airline loyalty programme to offer this.

With Lipsey’s role covering data and digital as well as loyalty, we also discuss the overlap between these areas and how to bridge data insights with the physical experience of flying.

We want to tie all this together to make sure we’re offering an app that is top of the market, a website that makes things easy, pushing offers that are relevant, so that when customers choose to engage with use, they know we’re giving them the best possible experience. 

🎥 Watch the interview to get the full discussion on loyalty with Ben Lipsey.

Questions asked include:

  • Point.me recently rated Air France-KLM’s loyalty programme, Flying Blue, as the best in the world. Why do you think that is, what kind of initiatives have helped you stand out and deliver high customer satisfaction?
  • How are customer attitudes to loyalty changing? And how do airlines need to adapt?
  • How can airlines make sure they’re giving passengers the best loyalty points for their money?
  • How can loyalty programmes integrate sustainability with loyalty to attract more customers while staying in line with net-zero targets?

Join us at World Aviation Festival 2026, where our dedicated panels, workshops, and presentations will be analysing how airlines can boost loyalty and rewards programmes.

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