As the boarding door closes on 2025, we're signing yearbooks and handing out superlatives on what was officially the biggest year for travel yet. Think of it like a high school yearbook for the travel industry – minus the “Never change, love ya!” signatures at the back.

There are plenty more memorable moments, big changes, and unforgettable characters to cover from the past year in travel. So we doled out some Senior Superlatives to celebrate (and tisk tisk) some of the biggest travel stories from 2025. 

From the most adorable couple, to best glow up, the best dressed, and best hair, read on to see who – and what – got a spot in our 2025 travel yearbook. 

Want the audio version? Episode 41 of the Thrifty Traveler Podcast dives deep into this list to celebrate and mock our winners and losers! 

 

In this post

 

Cutest Couple: Bilt and Japan Airlines

Bilt Rewards – an emergent travel rewards platform that is adding new transfer partners at a speed dating-like pace – added perhaps the most interesting one yet this year at a 1:1 ratio.

That new partner is little-known Japan Airlines. And while Japan Airlines Mileage Bank is little known now, you'd better get acquainted. 

Why? Because JAL Milage Bank is probably our favorite award program now. Seriously! Here's why.

You might be saying, “Well, Capital One added JAL as a transfer partner, too. Why are they not cutest couple?” 

Look. I'm not trying to start some high school drama in this love triangle here, but Bilt's transfer ratio to JAL is 1:1, while Capital One's is 2 Venture Miles to 1.5 Mileage Bank miles…ouch. 

 

Most Ambitious: Bilt

Like Japan Airlines, if you don't know about Bilt, it's time to find out. Bilt Rewards is a relative newcomer to points and miles, but unlike its competitors in Amex, Chase, Capital One, and Citi, Bilt is also so much more. 

It burst onto the scene as the only program allowing you to earn points on rent – a boon for travelers who were tired of watching their checking accounts get drained of rent payments without anything to show for it. But since then, Bilt has done so much more. It's become a loyalty program for every facet of life, from your Walgreens purchases to your business class flights and everything in between. 

This year, they announced Bilt 2.0, complete with a new suite of credit cards that promise to let members earn points on their mortgages, too – no matter who their mortgage lender is! 

Bilt points were already among the very best in terms of travel value thanks to a murderer's row of transfer partners – especially during their splashy rent day (i.e. the first of the month) transfer bonuses that are as high as 100% some months, but now Bilt points are getting easier to earn, too. 

Bilt wants to be everything to everybody, and they might just do it. That's ambition, baby.

 

Best Glow Up: Citi

Citi has been, frankly, and also-ran in the travel rewards space. It's held a reputation in the past for some clunky tech and a flexible points currency in ThankYou Points that was valuable, but didn't hold a candle to its competitors because the points were so hard to earn. 

But Citi has turned both of those things around recently. First, the bank overhauled its online experience and made it smooth and easy-t0-use, but it also signed an exclusive partnership with American Airlines and unveiled a new suite of American Airlines cards that allow you new and better ways to interact with the AAdvantage program, too. 

Then, Citi made American Airlines a transfer partner for ThankYou points – another major milestone in the glow up. 

And finally, to cap it all off, Citi launched the Citi Strata Elite card with a 100,000-point bonus and some serious premium credit card perks (and a premium annual fee of $595) including lounge passes, hotel credits, Priority Pass, Global Entry credit, and more. 

Citi showed up at school one day with a full makeover, a new wardrobe, and a new attitude, and we're here for it. 

 

Worst Glow Up: Chase Sapphire Reserve

The Chase Sapphire Reserve used to have it all….but now…it's just doin' too much…

One of the first great premium travel credit cards, the Chase Sapphire Reserve offered easy ways to redeem Chase Ultimate Rewards points at a reasonable annual fee of $550. That fee was easily offset by a no strings attached $300 travel credit and other perks that travelers loved. But then, they started adding credits and just couldn't stop…

In a revamp of the card this year, they jacked the annual fee up to $795 and started throwing credits at cardholders like two $250 hotel credits, a $300 dining credit usable twice a year, a Stubhub credit, and then monthly credits for Lyft and other restaurants, too. 

At the same time, the card removed its flat 1.5-cent-per-point redemptions that cardholders bet when booking travel through the Chase Travel portal, and limited how many points they could earn on travel from 3x on travel spend across the board to 4x…but only when you book through the Chase Portal. 

You might be saying, “Wait…didn't the Amex Platinum Card refresh look a lot like this? They increased the annual fee and added credits. Why aren't they the worst glow up?” 

As my friend and coworker Kyle Potter wrote for us earlier this year: Chase forgot to put the frog in the water first…

You know the old allegory: Throw a frog into a pot of scalding water, and it'll jump right out. But put the frog in the pot first, and it won't notice as the water eventually warms to a boil.

American Express has spent the last decade boiling the frog, steadily introducing more credits for travel, dining, and shopping over time to more and more of its travel cards … to the point that most longtime Platinum cardholders celebrated last week's unveiling of an $895-a-year card with more than a dozen different use-them-or-lose-them statement credits.

In its rush to copy pieces of that lucrative playbook with its own premier Sapphire card, Chase forgot to throw the frog in first. While pushing the card's annual fee from $550 a year to $795 this summer, Chase added a slew of benefits that didn't excite travelers. 

 

Most Likely to Succeed: Premium Cabins

Rich people win again. It's the best travel advice I can give: Don't be poor. 

In episode 32 of the Thrifty Traveler Podcast, we broke down all the ways in which airlines are doubling and tripling down on the premium travel experience. The 1% are more important to the airlines than ever. That's why their investing in first class and business class seats as well as in lounges and premium check-in areas, and so much more. 

Why? Because the big spenders are making the airlines way more money. The margins in the front of the plane are way better than for you and me, booking the cheapest flight possible to sit in the back. 

In this episode of the podcast, I argue that there may be more opportunity for every day travelers to capitalize on this trend, but one thing is super clear in air travel right now: It pays to pay. 

 

Best Dressed: American's New Retro Plane

Step 1: Check out this new American Airlines 100th Anniversary Retro Livery on our Instagram.

Step 2: Swoon.

This certified beauty is an easy best dressed. A retro livery is a soft spot for us, but this is crazy good. 

One of the airline's Boeing 777s will be painted with this signature new look. While it'll sport an old school look on the fuselage, AA says it's upgrading the interiors with new Flagship business class suites inside.

It's expected to debut sometime next month. Currently, the plane frequently flies from some major U.S. hubs to London as well as down to Sao Paulo, Brazil.

 

 

Most Likely to Get Cancelled: Newark Airport

Not cancelled in the modern social discourse way, but like in the “we're not going to Florida tonight” kind of way. 

Newark-Liberty International Airport (EWR) struggled this year. Planes lined up on the tarmac, delays and cancellations came in waves, and operations at the already strained airport were brought to its knees by the government shutdown. 

But even well before that air traffic control issues were hurting things at the airport – even as far back as May. 

 

Best Hair: Turkish Airlines 

Sometimes high schoolers are mean to each other, so for this one…we got mean. But not as mean as Ryanair, whose crack social media team beat us to the punch with this savage tweet. 

If anyone was going to take this title, it had to be Turkish Airlines … or should we say, Turkish Hairlines? Congrats to the easiest joke on the internet, and the first-ever repeat winner of our travel superlatives! 

It's true that Türkiye is a popular destination for medical tourism, including – you guessed it – hair transplants. Social media is awash with videos and memes of Turkish Airlines passengers walking around the Istanbul (IST) airport – dubbed the “Hair-port”  – fresh off their procedures. But don't expect to see a bunch of beautiful, flowing locks on your next Turkish flight, though … try more like bandaged scalps. 

 

Most Likely to Cheer You Up: Ryanair

Like we showed you in the section above, Ryanair's social media is absolutely hilarious. Someone on that team has elite timing and is seemingly unafraid of consequences. 

The latest hilarious salvo this tweet of someone who whipped up an AI image of travelers in standing room seats envisioning the future of aviation and suggesting Ryanair might overcharge you if you have large feet. Their reply? Well…just look at this tweet for yourself. 

Self aware, truly funny, pithy and perfect. Comedy gold. 

Follow Ryanair on Twitter; you'll be glad you did. 

 

Most Likely to Ruin the Group Trip: The Gov't Shutdown

Is this really a high school yearbook superlative? I'm not sure about that, but we wanted to shoehorn in a mention of the worst thing in travel this year: The Government Shutdown. 

The more than 40-day shutdown crippled operations at many major U.S. airports, cancelling hundreds of thousands of flights and generally making things all over the country tense. 

As air traffic controllers, who weren't being paid, started skipping work, the government forced a sweeping cut of flying capacity to ensure the safety of the skies. The end result was a cascading effect of far more than just 10% of flights being cancelled.