How Azerbaijan Airlines Turned Loyalty into an Everyday Digital Fintech Experience with Comarch

Building a Highly Advanced TravelTech Loyalty Ecosystem

For Azerbaijan Airlines (AZAL), loyalty has never been just about miles. Under the leadership of Araz Aliyev, the national carrier of Azerbaijan has continuously evolved the AZAL Miles program alongside changing customer expectations – moving from a traditional frequent flyer scheme to a modern, daily digital fintech ecosystem.

With cutting-edge dimensions of loyalty in tow, AZAL Miles redefines a standard earn/burn model into a relational pulse through continuous engagement. Interacting with the digital wallet becomes a primary means to nurture and deepen the customer's relationship with the airline brand.

What began as a traditional mileage program has grown into an innovative loyalty ecosystem powered by Comarch CLM, delivering:

Live Revenue-Based Model: Status miles accumulation perfectly optimized around real passenger spend on the PROD environment.
Cross-Border Scalability: Advanced mobility and lifestyle mechanics operating smoothly across 6 international markets.
A Vibrant Partner Network: A rapidly expanding ecosystem of retail, technology, and financial brands driving everyday value on the ground.

The Challenge

As AZAL Miles scaled its user base, the airline faced a new challenge: keeping engagement fresh in an increasingly digital and highly competitive TravelTech market.

Traditional airline loyalty programs frequently face low interaction rates because customers typically only engage with them a few times a year when booking a flight. AZAL wanted loyalty to become more interactive, more personalized, and more deeply connected to everyday digital behavior—intent on delivering continuous value back to the customer, commensurate with their relationship and lifetime value (LTV).

The company needed a platform capable of:

Supporting advanced loyalty mechanics at scale,
Enabling continuous fintech innovation,
Integrating seamlessly into the AZAL mobile app environment,
And creating experience-driven touchpoints customers would actively return to.

The Transformation

With Comarch, Azerbaijan Airlines began evolving the program beyond traditional loyalty mechanics.

The first major step was transforming the loyalty application into a Daily Digital Wallet, creating a central engagement hub for users. This opened the door to frictionless interactions and a streamlined conversion funnel, starting with secure biometric onboarding that allows new members to register with a quick scan.

Over time, AZAL introduced highly responsive, revenue-optimized, and experience-driven features:

Production-Ready Revenue Model: A strategic shift directly linking status miles to the actual financial amount spent on a ticket rather than physical distance. This keeps airline margins optimized while precisely recognizing top-tier spenders.
Everyday QR Scanning: An integrated QR scanner in the mobile app, allowing members to instantly earn and spend miles at physical partner locations.
Liquid Checkout Assets: The introduction of the "Cash+Miles" co-payment module, giving passengers maximum flexibility to blend cash and accumulated miles during flight checkout.

Global Mobility: Turning Miles into Bolt Rides

A standout milestone of this fintech evolution is the direct integration with the Bolt application. AZAL Miles participants can seamlessly exchange their accumulated miles for ride-hailing discount vouchers right from their user accounts. This advanced mechanism is fully operational across six international markets—Azerbaijan, Georgia, Spain, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom—with voucher values automatically localized to regional currencies by the Comarch CLM engine.

The active partner network continues to expand with top-tier brands across various lifestyle and retail verticals, including Azercell, Smart Electronics, Hertz, BCR, Azerconn, IOKIO, Mi Home, Premium Bank, and EV brand AVATR.

Creating Campaigns Customers
Look Forward To

AZAL also transformed standard loyalty promotions into highly targeted, automated customer acquisition and retention experiences.

The "Flight more, earn more" Campaign

Designed to stimulate real-time demand, this high-impact campaign runs until July 15, 2026. Instead of rigid percentage bumps, the Comarch CLM system utilizes a clean 1x bonus flight miles multiplier tied directly to ticket spend. For example, a ticket costing €500 automatically yields an additional 500 bonus points on top of standard tier-based earnings.

Advanced CRM & Promo-Code Mechanics

CRM Campaigns (Unique Codes): AZAL leverages the system to distribute unique, automated codes to targeted segments of both existing members and non-members. Redeeming a code instantly credits the account with a tiered point value ranging from 250 to 2,000 miles.
Promo-Code Enrollment Drivers: Focused on boosting acquisition, new users can sign up and enter a designated promotional code (e.g., from an influencer or partner campaign). Upon successful validation, the system automatically awards GIFT-type welcome points.
Automated Lifecycle Engagement: The underlying platform drives user delight effortlessly through automated Welcome Miles for new accounts and annual Birthday Miles credited automatically on the member's birthday.

The Results

Today, AZAL Miles is far more than a traditional airline rewards scheme. It has become an engagement ecosystem where travel, everyday retail, financial products (via co-branded cards with ABB Bank), and urban mobility work together to keep customers connected to the brand on a daily basis.

With Comarch, Azerbaijan Airlines continues to expand the program with advanced personalization, multi-market utility, and new progression mechanics designed to deepen long-term customer engagement. The result is a loyalty infrastructure built not just around occasional transactions, but around continuous interaction and everyday customer touchpoints.