Grant Martin

It's becoming clear that airlines are not done with their loyalty experimentation.

The big three U.S. carriers are excited about their business class products. But it's easy to argue that they are playing catch up.

The new flight attendants' contract at United, coupled with other steps CEO Oscar Munoz is taking, could finally enable United to make up some serious ground against its competitors.

With American Airlines capitulating, in-flight entertainment on all three legacy carriers is now completely free. The next phase of competition will likely revolve around the quality of that content with each airline trying to out-do the other.

While Delta has among the best on-time performances in the industry and arguably one of the better products, one wonders how the new CEO, who assumed the role only three months ago, will whether the storm.

United is refining how it defines a stopover and cranking up fees for award ticket changes -- but we get a better award booking tool in the process.

Southwest CEO Gary Kelly is dismissing union calls for his ouster but if profits slip, or there is another major tech outage, then the CEO's future will get more interesting.

We're not sure of the pilot's complaints, but we do know that improved on-time arrivals these days have much in common with schedules that don't always represent reality.

What will the next generation of loyalty programs look like? We're just getting started.

Can we now say that the radical evolution of loyalty and premium upgrade is nearly complete?