Over the years, JetPrivilege has moved in many ways to be the best loyalty and rewards program from an Indian perspective, given the newfound autonomy they’ve had after a 50.1% stake was acquired by Etihad Airways.

The program has done many positive changes since 2014 and is ever evolving. There was a complete program revamp in 2016. Members got the opportunity to become elite faster because they had a new tier-points system introduced which was one more way to judge loyalty. Kids could finally earn miles as well. 

Additionally, like you see from time to time, there are multiple new ways to earn miles, including shopping, hotels, dining, lifestyle and so on. If you still couldn’t get enough miles, you could pool miles with your family members to get to the redemption number you wanted.

JetPrivilege also extended the validity of JPMiles for co-branded cardholders by 2 years. If you were working towards a redemption goal, you could now keep the miles for 2 more years, just for holding the co-brand cards. JP Platinum members, however, could keep their miles from expiry as long as they had the JetPrivilege Platinum status.

Now, going forward, there will be one more change in the program coming into effect from June 30, 2018, onwards. JetPrivilege is moving away from expiring miles for their members, as long as you have one eligible activity in your account during the preceding 18 months. So, even if you earned 1 JPMile via shopping, you could now save all your JPMiles from expiring. Or if you made a redemption for a flight or a toaster, you are clear.

JP Miles Expire? Never!

So what counts as an eligible activity? As Per JetPrivilege:

• Flying with Jet Airways
• Transacting with over 150+ programme partners
• Redeeming JPMiles for an Award Flight
• Redeeming JPMiles on JetPrivilege Reward Store

Simply speaking, miles need to be added or deducted from your account in the prior 18 months to keep miles from expiring.

As for the older miles in your account, they will currently be protected per the old rules. First, let’s see the JetPrivilege stance on this:

There will be no change to the validity dates of JPMiles accrued prior to 30^th June 2018. For e.g. If 100 JPMiles are stamped for expiry in July 2020, they will be reviewed for expiry basis the new Activity based expiry rule only on 31^st July 2020 and not before thereby honoring the expiry dates they were stamped for.

But don’t let that make you complacent. On the other hand, if you have miles earned in July 2015 or before, and no activity in your account for the past 18 months, then they’d expire, unless you made an activity by June 29, 2018, to protect those miles from expiring. I reached out to JetPrivilege, and they explained, that any move would count for saving your miles (not anticipated miles from Shopping, but anything that hits your account.) For instance, if you decide to do a family pool on your account now, you’d be able to save all the miles from your family for the next few years.

This move clearly works for everyone in the long run. Members have an excellent opportunity to continue to earn miles, given JPMiles are the prevalent reward currency in India for the moment and I’ve met tonnes of people who are working towards goals for their honeymoons or round anniversaries and what have you. For the program, it gives them another opportunity for member engagement, since the expectation is to get members to not go dormant and do something or the other with the program to ensure their miles survive the death swoop, as I’d like to call it.

Here are the complete T&C. One thing to take care of is that mileage expiry happens on month-ends, not mid-month, so you do have until the end of whatever month to add the activity and it counts all the same.

Bottomline

This is a huge member-positive change from JetPrivilege, and I really can’t stress enough how this works for everyone in the long run. I’m of course waiting to see this in action, and hoping there is a counter somewhere warning people about a looming expiry. Having said that, we’ve finally moved one step closer to the American way of doing things, where members are kept engaged frequently.

How do you see the new change from JetPrivilege? Does it make them more friendly for your use?

PS: Here is a great way to earn 4000 JPMiles by booking hotels as long as you signup for the promotion before May 31.