United Airlines Distinguishes Between Loyalty, Rewards Programs

United Airlines grew its loyalty revenue by promoting loyalty rather than rewards, an executive said Wednesday (Jan. 21) during the company’s fourth quarter earnings call.

The airline’s loyalty revenue saw year-over-year increases of 10% for the fourth quarter and 9% for the full year of 2025, according to a Wednesday earnings release.

Andrew Nocella, executive vice president and chief commercial officer at United Airlines, said during the call that the company aims to continue the momentum of its MileagePlus loyalty program and enhance its growth potential in the coming years by “drawing a larger distinction between true loyalty programs and reward programs offered by others.”

Asked by an analyst about that distinction and about how MileagePlus is differentiated from other programs, Nocella said the main metric is churn of members.

The MileagePlus programs have very little churn, as members join the program and get the credit card and stay with them for a very long time, Nocella said.

“Therefore, we don’t need to do extraordinary things to attract people to United; we’ve already done it with a great product, a great network and rewards that they really want, which is travel,” Nocella said. “People really want a first-class seat or a Polaris seat to Tahiti as a reward.”

United Polaris is the airline’s premium business class experience, according to the company’s website.

“All of the other programs out there tend to use constant bonus points and other benefits and have a lot of revolve around customers going in and out, switching credit cards, so on and so forth, often to game the systems,” Nocella said. “I just think an airline program, and particularly the United program, is different.”

United’s MileagePlus loyalty program has over 130 million members, according to a company profile on its investor relations site. The program features miles that never expire, and no blackout dates for award seats, per the site.

Recent developments in the program include an integration with Lyft that will provide new ways for travelers to earn and use their rewards, the addition of a new debit card product, and a partnership with JetBlue that merges aspects of each other’s loyalty programs.

Nocella said during the call, when describing the distinction between loyalty and rewards, “We should harness the power of that to figure out how we can make it even stickier and grow it faster, which is what we’ll talk about in the next 10 or 12 weeks.”