Jet Airways Air New Zealand parting ways on frequent flyer partnership

One of the best reasons to be a JetPrivilege miles collector has always been the number of partner airlines they’ve had where you could earn and burn miles. There have been tonnes of partners all along, although that list of JetPrivilege partners has been shrinking recently.

First, United exited their partnership in early 2017. Then, Turkish, Lufthansa, Swiss and Austrian were on their way out of the partnership in 2017. After that, the American collaboration was also discontinued. Air Berlin self-combusted. Behind the exit of some of the partners, the reason looks slightly simple, the cooperation with Delta, which may have meant that 9W would not cooperate with other airlines which would also be operating in the India-North America/Europe markets. Emirates & Gulf Air were shown the door recently. Alitalia, a member of the Etihad Airways Partners also got knocked off in April 2018.

Jet Airways Air New Zealand FFP partnership over

So, a lot of partners left the airline over the past one year, and this process does not seem to be slowing down anytime soon. The next partner going away is Air New Zealand. Now before we make it sound almost a sinister plan to take away all the partners, let’s keep two things in mind. First, new partners in Aero Mexico and China Eastern added over the past months.

Secondly, these partnerships are all reviewed from time to time. So, sometimes it works well for both partners and they extend it. Sometimes, it does not, and they decided to part ways. There is a cost of keeping the line open with the other partner, so sometimes if it does not make sense for it to work. For instance, if there was only 1 transaction in 6 months, whats the point of such a partnership.

Anyhow, back to the part where Jet Airways Air New Zealand is going away. As per a notice on the Jet Airways website,

Jet Airways will cease its Frequent Flyer Partnership arrangements with Air New Zealand. JetPrivilege members will not be eligible to accrue miles on or after Jul 1, 2018. Claims for travel on Air New Zealand’ flights prior to the discontinuation date will however be accepted for retro-credit up till six months from the discontinuation date; original boarding pass and copy of e-ticket will be required to process these claims. Award tickets that have already been issued prior to discontinuation date, will continue to remain valid for travel as per the booked dates, however no voluntary date or itinerary changes can be made to these tickets.

But having said that, Air New Zealand is a Star Alliance Partner, so you still get to earn Air India miles if you’d like an Indian mileage program.

Bottomline

It is bad news that one more partner is deducted on the JetPrivilege roster. However, like I’ve mentioned ahead, some of these are perhaps sitting ducks to make the program more streamlined in the long run. I hope that here on, we only have partner additions and not deletions with JetPrivilege.

What do you think about the new changes to the JetPrivilege program?