JPMiles in Limbo
Jet Airways grounds fleet, JPMiles left in limbo, affecting countless balances. The airline's suspension serves as a lesson to not hoard miles in unstable programs.
India’s premier full-service airline stopped flying on April 17, 2019. Jet Airways grounded its entire fleet overnight, and with it went the redemption engine behind JPMiles — the currency that had been India’s most-loved airline program since the Mumbai–London days of 2005. Countless balances were stranded mid-hoard.
The Etihad-backed loyalty arm rebranded to InterMiles and soldiered on, but a miles program without its own metal is a coupon book: every JPMile earned on years of flying and card spend was suddenly worth whatever the surviving partners felt like honouring. Members who had “saved up for the big trip” watched the big trip’s airline disappear from the departure boards.
Our take: this is the single most important event in this tracker for how you should behave in 2026. Miles are an unsecured IOU from a company that can fail — so never hoard in a program whose issuer looks shaky, and treat every large balance as a booking deadline, not a savings account. Earn, transfer to a specific seat, fly. The Jet lesson is why our valuations discount currencies with concentration risk, and why “book before the route disappears” is the house strategy.