Why flight subscriptions build the loyalty that points no longer can

A data-driven analysis of 600,000+ subscription flights revealing who uses them, why they use them, and what this means for the future of loyalty.

Many in the travel industry have spent the last few weeks debating one question:

Do flight subscriptions actually work?

The conversation was triggered when Ryanair shut down its Prime subscription barely eight months after launch, with commentary claiming the airline “lost money” because existing travelers used the subscription simply to reduce the cost of flights they would have taken anyway.

But the Ryanair Prime case does not prove that subscriptions fail. It proves that poorly executed subscriptions fail.

A closer look at Prime suggests two fundamental issues:

1. It likely did not attract new customers.
2. It did not deepen engagement with existing ones.

In other words: the model didn’t fail, but the structural setup and execution did.

Meanwhile, well-crafted subscription products do the opposite: they strengthen engagement, increase travel frequency, and attract high-value travelers who long ago disengaged from classical loyalty programs.

And this is where the industry’s confusion begins.

As we showed in our Loyalty Shift series, most travelers today don’t remain with an airline because of loyalty; they remain because they’re locked in:

• Chasing the status they earned last year,
• Avoiding the loss of accumulated points,
• Or sticking with a habit because switching feels cumbersome.

This isn’t loyalty. It’s inertia masquerading as loyalty.

Which brings us to the central question:

What product model actually earns voluntary, repeat behavior?

This is where subscriptions stand apart.

Across hundreds of thousands of active users via our airline partners, we at Caravelo have seen that when designed correctly, subscriptions do not push travelers toward deal-hunting. They shift them toward habitual, preference-driven flying.

Subscriptions are not a pricing gimmick. They are a behavioral engine that builds habits through:

• Predictable access,
• Greater control, and
• Dramatically reduced booking friction.

We call this the Relational Anchor of subscriptions.

And unlike traditional loyalty programs, subscriptions deliver these benefits in a way that aligns with modern mobility patterns, especially among travelers who matter most commercially.

In this analysis, we demonstrate the true power of flight subscriptions using hard data. We are not relying on hypothetical survey questions about willingness to subscribe, but on real behavioral evidence.

We analyzed more than 600,000 subscription flights enabled for our airline partners over the past few years, covering 200,000+ subscribed travelers across six airline programs.

The result is a comprehensive, multi-angle view of who uses subscriptions, why they use them, and how subscriptions reshape travel behavior in practice.

Let’s dive in by exploring five distinct data perspectives.

1. Subscriptions Attract the Travelers Loyalty Programs Have Lost

A key question we wanted to answer first was straightforward:

Who actually uses flight subscriptions?

To explore this, we analyzed the ages of about 600,000 travelers across six airlines between 2021 and 2025 who used one of Caravelo’s flight subscription products:

• Club Subscriptions (a recurring monthly, quarterly, or annual fee that unlocks a package of perks such as discounts, preferred treatment, and member-only benefits).
• Trip Subscriptions (a fixed-fee subscription that grants a predefined number of flights per billing cycle, enabling predictable, recurring mobility).
• Unlimited Subscriptions (a fixed, recurring payment that provides unlimited flying within the airline’s network, typically using last-minute access to unsold seats).

These three models cover the full spectrum of subscription-based airline solutions (perk-based access vs. predictable trip bundles vs. unlimited flying).

Our hypothesis was equally simple:

If traditional frequent flyer programs increasingly fail to resonate with modern travelers (as evidenced by research from BCG and others), then subscriptions should skew significantly younger.

The data confirms exactly that.

Across all subscription types and airlines combined, more than two-thirds of all flight subscription travelers are 44 years old or younger, with 44 typically considered the upper boundary of the Millennial cohort.

What does that mean? Flight subscriptions attract the high-value generations that classical loyalty programs no longer reach.

And this matters.

Gen Z and Millennials (that is, travelers under 45) already account for the majority of global air travel spending today, meaning we are talking about the most commercially valuable traveler demographic, not a fringe audience.

Given this purchasing-power distribution, it becomes even more important to examine whether this age pattern holds consistently across different subscription models.

And yes, when broken down by subscription type, the pattern remains consistent. Across all three subscription products, travelers under 45 make up the clear majority of subscribers. 

This is the first clear signal that subscriptions operationalize the Relational Anchor far more effectively than points-based loyalty models ever have.

But understanding who uses flight subscriptions is only the first part of the story.

The next question is: why did they choose them in the first place?

2. Subscriptions Are Not About Cheap Flying: They’re About Predictability and Freedom

A common misconception about flight subscriptions is that they are simply another way to access lower fares.

And naturally, price plays a role. Of course, travelers do consider potential savings when committing to any subscription.

But our data shows that flight subscriptions are not primarily chosen for cost savings.

To understand the true motivations behind subscription adoption, we surveyed the subscription users across the four Caravelo-powered airlines (kept confidential for commercial reasons) that offer Trip and Unlimited Subscriptions – the two classical (and higher-priced) subscription models in our portfolio.

Respondents were asked a straightforward question:

“What made you choose the Flight Subscription?”

They could select from five potential motivations:

• Price.
• Comfort / Convenience.
• Exclusivity.
• A combination of these factors.
• Something else.

The results were consistent across all airlines and both subscription types:

• Price was never the dominant decision factor.
• In every airline program we examined, fewer than 50% of travelers cited price as their primary motivation.

These findings make one point clear: price matters, but it is not the dominant driver behind subscription adoption. 

People subscribe because the experience is fundamentally better, and better experiences change travel behavior in ways price alone never could.

So if not price, what drives them instead?

For the majority of travelers, the value of subscriptions lies in:

• Not having to shop around for flights,
• Not worrying about price volatility,
• Not losing time to comparison loops, and
• Not feeling constrained by traditional fare rules or restrictions.

Subscriptions shift the traveler’s mindset from deal-seeking to travel-planning, and from reactive booking behavior to proactive, confident choice.

This brings us to a related question, one we hear frequently inside airline organizations:

“Will subscription travelers simply use their plan to replace flights they were already planning to book, and therefore cannibalize existing revenue?”

To assess this, we moved beyond assumptions and analyzed actual traveler intention across our subscription programs.

3. Do Subscriptions Substitute Existing Business? The Data Says No.

To directly evaluate cannibalization risk, we surveyed subscription travelers immediately after they booked a subscription-covered flight, capturing their intent at the moment of decision rather than relying on post-hoc rationalization.

We asked them a simple but revealing question:

“Why did you take this particular flight as part of your subscription?”

Their answers enable us to break down each trip into one of three categories:

• Substituted Flight (They would have taken this exact flight anyway, meaning true cannibalization.)
• Competitive Win (They planned to fly, but with another airline.)
• Stimulated Demand (They took the flight because the subscription enabled it.)

Across four different airlines, the results were consistent and conclusive:

Only a minority of travelers replaced flights they would have taken anyway.

As the chart shows, depending on the airline, only 13% to 28% of respondents said they would have taken the same flight regardless of their subscription. This is the only segment that qualifies as cannibalization, and it is small.

The majority of subscription travel, however, is either incremental or competitively won.

More than two-thirds of travelers indicated that they either:

• Took the flight because their subscription enabled it (incremental demand),
• Would have flown, but with another airline (competitive shift/market share gain).

What does this mean for airlines?

Cannibalization is far less of a risk than assumed, especially when subscriptions deliver value beyond price. 

And airlines can actively safeguard against cannibalization through product design. For example, the Unlimited Subscriptions we structure for our airline partners focus on distressed, last-minute inventory, meaning these flights are, by design, incremental revenue rather than displaced demand.

Having addressed the cannibalization concern with real traveler-level intention data, we now turn to a deeper question: what truly motivates subscription travelers to use their subscription? 

To answer this, we shift from stated intent to observed behavior because usage patterns provide the clearest window into underlying motivations.

4. Subscriptions Fuel Purpose-Driven Discovery 

Understanding how travelers use their subscription flights is central to understanding subscription value.

Rather than relying on additional survey questions (which are limited by how accurately people can articulate their own motivations), we examined actual usage behavior.

Across 200,000 subscription travelers from six Caravelo-powered airline programs, we analyzed the route patterns of subscription-covered flights.

Specifically, we looked at whether travelers:

• Relied heavily on one primary route (so-called One Routers, which use ≥80% of flights on the same origin–destination pair)
• Or distributed their trips across multiple routes (labeled Explorers, who use their flights across various routes and destinations).

This behavioral distinction reveals the underlying purpose behind subscription usage.

Across all six airlines analyzed, Explorers make up the majority of subscription users.

These travelers use their subscription to:

• Explore new destinations,
• Seek cultural experiences, and
• Broaden their travel horizons.

This points to a strong appetite for purposeful discovery.

This pattern is particularly pronounced among Unlimited Subscription users.

Unlimited products tend to attract travelers who view travel as a form of self-expansion, identity expression, and life enrichment, mirroring broader generational trends in which travel is increasingly woven into lifestyle and identity.

5. Subscriptions Support Essential, Relational Mobility

While route patterns reveal how subscribers use their flights (exploration vs. repetition), they do not fully explain why travelers choose to fly. 

To understand the underlying purpose behind subscription usage, we complemented our behavioral analysis with one additional, tightly framed survey question.

This question was intentionally broad and non-leading:

“What is the main purpose of this trip?”

Because it focuses on a specific, imminent trip rather than abstract motivations, it avoids many of the pitfalls of traditional survey-based loyalty research.

Across all six airline programs, the results reveal one clear insight:

More than half of all subscription travelers (by far the largest segment) use their subscription to visit family and friends.

This reflects a defining pattern of modern mobility. People rarely live in the same place they grew up. They study in one region, work in another, form relationships across borders, and maintain family networks spread across countries and regions.

This creates a constant need for essential, relational travel, which subscription models support exceptionally well.

Conclusion: Subscriptions Deepen Relationships

Whether travelers use their subscription to explore or to connect, the underlying insight is the same:

Subscription travel is mostly purpose-driven.

This places subscriptions squarely within the logic of the Relational Anchor:

• Access to meaningful mobility.
• Control over how and when travel happens.
• Convenience that removes friction from relational and experiential travel.

Subscriptions align with the way modern travelers live and the way they want to move.

Across all our analyses, the signal is consistent that subscription travelers do not “abuse” the system. This is essential for airlines to understand.

Well-crafted subscription solutions do not undermine airlines’ business model. They reinforce it by creating predictable, recurring engagement; the kind of behavior traditional loyalty programs were meant to generate but no longer do.

A key part of this craft lies in the right product architecture: aligning subscription access with inventory economics. For example, offering Unlimited Subscriptions through last-minute access to distressed seats ensures the model drives incremental revenue rather than displacement.

If done right, subscriptions represent one of the most powerful levers for modern loyalty: they create habits.

And habit formation (not points, perks, or thresholds) is the future of airline loyalty.

In an industry where AI will increasingly mediate search, comparison, and booking, these anchored, habitual relationships will be the most defensible (and the most valuable) asset airlines can own.