Expiry date extended: Go the extra mile with SAA Voyager mileage

A number of South Africans had accumulated large amounts of miles when flying as passengers on South African Airways (SAA) flights — under the airline’s Voyager loyalty programme.

When the airline entered business rescue last year, Voyager members were left wondering what would become of the mileage they had accumulated under the airline’s loyalty programme.

SAA keen to woo Voyager members back

Relaunched South African Airways chief commercial officer Simon Newton-Smith told BizNews that Voyager members were considered valued customers. The airline is doing right by its loyal customers and is keen to woo Voyager members back onto its flights.

“In a way, South African Airways is like a start-up airline that has got the benefit of a massive customer base already, and there’s a couple of things that we need to do. One is, we need to do the right thing for the existing members,” he said.

EXPIRING VOYAGER MILES EXTENDED

Newton-Smith said that the majority of Voyager members’ miles were due to expire in March next year. He said that the validity of these had been extended to prevent a surge of Voyager bookings for flights on the airline’s new slimmed-down flight schedule.

“One of the things that I learnt in my first week was that 60% of all of the miles in circulation were due to expire in March 2022. That’s not a good thing for our members and frankly, it’s not a good thing for the airline because when you start flying again, there’s a massive surge in demand to use up what mileage they have. So first of all, we’ve extended those miles,” Newton-Smith said.

LIFETIME PLATINUM MEMBERS

The Voyager Programme has a valued number of platinum members with lifetime membership.  SAA realises the importance of these loyal customers as they would have spent large amounts of money to accumulate a minimum number of miles over a specified number of years, to earn this status.

“The lifetime platinum members are a big deal. It’s a small population within the airline who are very elite. To earn lifetime membership, you need to do a minimum mileage for a certain number of years,” Newton-Smith added.

Newton-Smith said that Lifetime Platinum status has been given to Voyager members who earned Lifetime Platinum status in under 4 years, due to the absence of SAA flights for an extended period.

“Now, we’ve not been flying for the best part of two (years) so basically, we’ve wiped out the last two years. For those folks who earned Lifetime Platinum in under four years, we’ve given them Lifetime Platinum,” he said.

VOYAGER PARTNERS REMAIN

The Voyager programme has several programme partners, against whose services Voyager members may redeem their miles. Voyager miles may also be redeemed for services offered by all the airlines that belong to the Star Alliance group.

“Whilst we haven’t been flying, all of the partners within Voyager have remained. Now that we’re back in business, all of those partnerships are getting reactivated very quickly. Even though our network is relatively small, you’ve still got the redemption partners of all of the Star Alliance members,” he said.

NEW DEVELOPMENTS FOR VOYAGER

Newton-Smith said that South African Airways would be enhancing the Voyager loyalty programme as well as introducing new partners, which would stand to benefit Voyager members.

“Voyager is a secret weapon. Even when the airline wasn’t flying, it was still the best frequent flyer programme in the market. We are looking at some innovative partnerships with other lifestyle programmes that essentially could cross-fertilise the member base,” he said.