The usual comparisons between Amazon and airline sales tend to focus on e-retailing and consumer profiling, but this recent article from Skift provides a fresh take on an otherwise overused paradigm. We believe that for airlines the key takeaway from “Prime”, Amazon’s subscription-based loyalty program, should be offering customers tangible benefits while retaining scalability from a commercial perspective. More precisely, any such “pay to win” benefits should not cannibalize the prospects of other customers: Prime’s free shipping is made possible because the same cargo trucks also carry other people’s packages anyway. For an airline, a comparable approach would be offering free flights only on standby or even something that’s not supply-limited such as priority lane access for security. An “unbundling” of regular loyalty benefits, if you will.