JetBlue Delivers Long-Overdue Loyalty Update But Is It Too Complex?
Photo Credit: JetBlue has made overdue improvements to its loyalty program Flickr / Adam Fagen
Skift Take
Although JetBlue is broadening the reach of its loyalty program, it won't see the benefits it expects if the program becomes significantly more complicated, as some experts believe.
JetBlue Airways has finally made long overdue improvements to its loyalty program True Blue. The New York-based carrier announced on December 7 it's expanding its elite Mosaic programs and creating a level of mileage accumulation named tiles that enables customers to obtain perks before reaching mosaic levels of flying.
However, loyalty program experts question whether JetBlue's first updates to True Blue in 10 years have made it unnecessarily complicated, which they see as part of a trend of airline loyalty programs becoming more complex.
"With the exception of Southwest, all of these programs suffer from extreme complexity," said Jay Sorensen, president of IdeaWorksCompany, which develops marketing for airline loyalty programs. “The model for the big three airlines [American Airlines
