Thursday News Dump

EDITOR’S NOTE: Yes, today’s post has a lot of words (for MEAB), but there’s good stuff in there, or if not good stuff, there’s at least stuff. I promise.

1. JetBlue has a status match challenge for elites of all major US airlines except Southwest, which I can only assume was excluded out of spite. The matched status is Mosaic 1 or Mosaic 2, which are low-tier and mid-tier statuses and don’t include Mint upgrade certificates.
   
   Status lasts three months and can be extended through the end of 2025 by receiving 10-25 tiles within the same timeframe.
   
2. Bilt Rewards, the purveyor of fine food and dining to travel bloggers, the program founded by a gamer who hates gamers, has removed Hawaiian Airlines from its transfer partners page with no notice, apparently because contract negotiations didn’t lead anywhere fruitful for Bilt.
   
   Richard Kerr, the a VP of Travel at Bilt, “[is] confident the partnership [will] return shortly“. I like the confidence, but I don’t completely share it. My actionable take from this news is that I’m going to assume Bilt partners could disappear at any point without notice and act accordingly. For me that means never hold more than 50,000 Bilt Rewards, since the last transfer bonus was capped at that level and I expect future ones will be too.
   
3. Kroger has a 4x fuel points promotion on third party gift cards other than Amazon and fixed value Visa and Mastercard gift cards in-store tomorrow through Sunday, again. They’ve also got a single use coupon for $8 off of two $100 gift cards through September 3 which pairs nicely with the fuel points promotion, in the same way that politics pairs nicely with scandal.
   
   The bulk resale market for gift cards is currently wildly volatile largely due to Pepper; if there were a VIX for gift cards (GIX?), it’d probably be approaching historic highs. (Thanks to GCG)
   
4. The merger of Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines won’t be challenged by the DoJ, but the DoT may still put up road blocks. A few notes:
   
   – Alaska says they’ll “preserve the value of HawaiianMiles at a one-to-one ratio when they become Alaska Mileage Plan miles“
   – There’s a 20% Membership Rewards transfer bonus to Hawaiian in August
   – Hawaiian miles aren’t worthless, but they’re worth much less than Alaska miles
   
   I’ve seen the question “should I transfer miles to Hawaiian with the bonus?” in about a dozen places since the news dropped. My opinion that no-one asked for: Wait until August 30-31 to decide and see if we get any indication of the DoT’s feelings in the meantime. And also how many Alaska MileagePlan miles have you redeemed in the last 18 months? That should probably play into your calculus.
   
5. Southwest opens its schedule this morning for travel through April 7, 2025. Booking tomorrow gives you, statistically speaking, the best random choice odds for gaming schedule changes during Spring Break, 2025.
   
   Fair warning on these flights: Southwest will have some form of assigned seats in early 2025, so you may find yourself paying for a seat assignment in the new booking window. (Thanks to JR76)

Happy Thursday!

More calculus, but put to evil. Also the answer is π because mathematicians hate society.