Month: March 2024

EDITORS NOTE: In 2024, I’ve introduced Guest Post Saturdays. If you’re interested in contributing, please reach out! Today’s guest post from community member George, who excels at automation, charity, and is an expert at bridging gaps. Donations for the 501(c)(3) non-profit Girls on Fire can be made online.

One thing I like to do in my free time, when I’m not working at my 9-5, churning, MSing, writing and sharing automation scripts for MSing, or going on trips because of churning and MSing, is mentoring student robotics teams. 

Trust me, I’m going somewhere with this, and it’s probably not where you think.

You may or may not be familiar with FIRST, which is a global robotics community preparing young people for the future. My favorite thing about it isn’t the robots or the coding or the competitions but how diverse the program attempts to be in what it teaches. They say they are “more than robots,” and that’s definitely true. 

One concept I particularly have learned to love is coopertition, which fosters innovation by promoting unqualified kindness and respect in the face of intense competition. I have been inspired by watching teams help each other during competitions and by helping other teams myself. Imagine Duke helping Carolina in the middle of the Final 4. Anyway, if you want to learn more, get in touch.

Now, here’s where I’m going: we should be more like these kids. We should cooperate.

Yes, there are reasons to be secretive in this game. It’s possible that if you give too much away, your plays will die out. However, have we run out of plays yet? Don’t new ones pop up all the time?

I’m not recommending radical transparency, but I do think we should share more. Certainly the more private and insular the group, especially if they are paid groups, the more information there is being shared. However, what credit unions were good for PPBP or what banks take credit card funding are still the kind of thing people often hold close to the vest. And again, yes, one just stopped allowing $15,000 in credit card funding pretty quickly after offering it, and that was probably our fault. But was that going to last forever without us? At least one person reports they were told that it was offered because of us.

Personally, I’ve found that at the right time and in the right venue, revealing sensitive information has come back to me positively multiple times over. Indeed, isn’t that the usual thinking when it comes to charity? Maybe you believe sometimes what you receive in return is some kind of “karma,” but sometimes, you get a new play from the person you helped.

Here’s what I recommend: next time you see someone, maybe someone new, asking for help…. help them. Oh, and if it isn’t obvious, this doesn’t just relate to churning.

Establish trust, then maybe give them a tidbit you wouldn’t share publicly. Even if they share it later, the chances aren’t so high that it will get out into the DOC comments or Reddit or wherever and ruin it, and if nothing else, you will have done a good deed. You may even get something better in return.

Waiting for a Chase Ink card application to stop spinning already.

  1. An update to the PSA about Google Pay and US Bank Altitude Reserve 3x mobile wallet earning: I heard from a few readers that Google Pay works for them at 3x, and Nick at FM said the same. At this point I think the criteria for whether or not it works is a combination of whether you’re on mobile or desktop, and when your Google Pay wallet was created, which probably dictates which technology stack it uses.

    I’ve also heard from several readers that Apple Pay doesn’t earn 3x for them either, but removing the card from your wallet and then re-adding it fixes the issue. What a mess!
  2. Starlux Airlines opened its schedule for travel between Seattle and Taipei, and business class is currently bookable for 75,000 Alaska miles. Award availability is currently better than average. Flights start on August 16.
  3. The American Express Hilton Business card was enhanced to a lower overall value proposition. The highlights:

    – Increased annual fee to $195 after July 1
    – No more free night certificates at $15,000 spend or $60,000 spend after July 1
    – Quarterly $60 Hilton credit
    – Base earning goes from 3x to 5x immediately
    – Bonus 6x categories are gone after July 1

    I usually have 2-3 of these in my rotation at any time, specifically for the free night certificate spending. Post this change, I’ll have between zero and 0 of these. #bonvoyed
  4. Priority Pass cards issued by Chase are losing access to restaurants on July 1. If you value this benefit, chat with Cookie Monster about your business card needs or become a Bank of America Elite.
  5. RobinHood is the new cool kid on the block with a co-branded card issued by Coastal Community Bank. It has no sign-up bonus and an effective annual fee of $60 because you’ll need a RobinHood Gold membership and that’s the current 12 month cost. The card earns 3% cash back everywhere and obviously will be huge in the right hands, which hopefully includes a lot of you.

    When a new product comes out there’s always a trade-off between hitting it as hard as possible in a short time on the assumption that it’ll be cut quickly, and being moderate to take advantage of the product over years because the long-term value will be huge. This one almost certainly falls into the former category.
  6. Staples has fee free $200 Visa gift cards starting Sunday and running through the following Saturday, limit eight per transaction.

    These are Pathward gift cards. (Thanks to GCG)

Have a nice weekend!

A black cat walking under a ladder near your wallet is another potential fix for US Bank 3x earning.

If you follow churning blogs or forums, you’ve no doubt seen that US Bank has double cash back rewards running through Saturday. But, I think based on the content out there, most of the major content creators haven’t actually used it, so let’s add some practical notes:

  1. There are multiple aspects of the double cash back promotion. Not only are card-linked offers doubled for the next three days (which is the only thing I’ve seen written), but the US Bank shopping portal’s earnings are also doubled for the next three days.
  2. It can be really hard to find US Bank rewards landing pages. So, I’ve linked to both variations, just make sure you login to your US Bank account first before trying these links:

    – US Bank rewards hub (login to your US bank account first)
    – US Bank card linked offers page (login to your US Bank account first)
    – US Bank shopping portal (login to your US Bank account first)

    Did you even know US Bank had a shopping portal, and that it earns points on point earning cards? Did you know that Lubbock is considered the one of the world’s capitals for burrowing owls? Did you know that owls can even burrow in the ground? (Wow, we’re off track today, my bad)
  3. The card linked offers are their own kind of special:

    – You have to add card-linked versions of the offer during the promotion or they won’t double
    – They work for any personal card on your account, and maybe for any business card too
    – Grocery stores occasionally show up
    – Gaming works like Chase Offers or BankAmeriDeals
    – The card-linked portal often just shows a spinner, and when that happens, try later (I don’t have a better solution, but if you do, please let me know)

This promotion is actually much more lucrative than you’d probably think. Always be probing, and good luck!

Mr. burrowing owl is shocked that content creators aren’t always experts when they write on a topic.

The Bureau of Transportation Statistics has now released on-time data for all months in 2023, which means I get to play data geek, specifically with an eye toward positioning flights and how much time to build in to connections to have a great chance of everything working out, at least as long as this year is like data from 2023.

Marketing Carrier Arrival Stats

First, let’s look look at the 90th and 95th percentile for arrival delays by marketing carrier (or, in other words, how many minutes past scheduled arrival captures 90% or 95% of all carrier arrivals)? Note that this includes regional jets operated by partner airlines like SkyWest, Endeavor, and United Express.

Marketing Carrier90th Percentile Arrival Delay
(minutes)		95th Percentile Arrival Delay
(minutes)
American Airlines5183
Alaska Airlines3153
JetBlue83138
Delta3163
Frontier73120
Hawaiian3454
Spirit66113
United4385
Southwest3662
2023 Arrival statistics by marketing carrier.

I’m most surprised by JetBlue here, given that to have a 95% chance of arriving in time for your connection, you need to pad your connection time by nearly 2 hours and 20 minutes. On the other hand, I wrote this on a JetBlue flight that was delayed by about 3 ½ hours, so I guess confirmed? Well played JetBlue.

Operating Carrier Arrival Stats

Now, let’s look at the same thing for major airlines flying mainline aircraft, excluding any regional jets, since often we’re able to avoid regional jets for positioning flights or connections and historically they don’t perform as well:

Marketing Carrier90th Percentile Arrival Delay
(minutes)		95th Percentile Arrival Delay
(minutes)
AA5197
Alaska3155
JetBlue83138
Delta3166
Frontier73120
Hawaiian3454
Spirit66113
United4385
Southwest3662
2023 Arrival statistics by operating carrier, major airlines.

Note that AA’s operation has worse (!) performance when its regional partner airlines are excluded from the statistics and we only consider mainline flights. I had to go triple check this data because wow, that sucks AA.

What about data for the regionals only, when they’re operating on behalf of one of the majors?

Marketing Carrier90th Percentile Arrival Delay
(minutes)		95th Percentile Arrival Delay
(minutes)
Endeavor2763
CommuteAir3682
GoJet4080
Envoy3262
PSA3270
SkyWest3270
Piedmont2562
Horizon2245
Mesa68129
Republic2353
Air Wisconsin61114
2023 Arrival statistics by operating carrier, regional airlines operating for another carrier.

My mental model for regional jet carriers is usually: avoid GoJet and Mesa, SkyWest is most likely to get you there. The data proves that’s only somewhat correct for 2023 though.

Major Hub Arrival Statistics

Ok, but what about a given hub? We all know that some function better than others, so let’s look at arrival delays at the top 15 airports by total number of commercial flights, plus one bonus airport.

Airport90th Percentile Arrival Delay
(minutes)		95th Percentile Arrival Delay
(minutes)
ATL3371
DEN4486
ORD4186
DFW4694
CLT3883
LAX3974
LAS5085
SEA2753
PHX3770
LGA4385
MCO63109
IAH4492
EWR4893
DCA3673
BOS56102
SFO4784
JFK56107
LBB4481
2023 Arrival statistics by airport, ordered by total number of air carrier flights in 2023.

So I guess avoid positioning flights to Orlando, Boston, or JFK if you can help it.

Also for fun, these are the worst airports for delays:

Airport90th Percentile Arrival Delay
(minutes)		95th Percentile Arrival Delay
(minutes)
PVU87160
PSE93152
BQN86137
SFB73130
TTN83129
2023 Arrival statistics by airport, ordered by biggest 95th percentile arrival delays.

So, don’t expect to fly to Provo, UT in any timely fashion. Maybe the late arrivals explain why Provo, part of what’s affectionally called “Happy Valley”, is the number one spot in the nation for anti-depressant prescriptions per capita.

By Season

We can dissect this data in a million different ways, but we know winter storms make things worse and summer thunderstorms don’t help either. So let’s look at when you’re most likely to be delayed, by month.

So, build extra time in for positioning flights in June and July.

What about breaking this down by day of the week?

The takeaway here is probably that the day of week doesn’t matter much, unless it’s Tuesday.

Conclusion

If you’re interested in seeing the raw CSV data (which ended up in an SQL database), let me know, I’m happy to share. Otherwise, good luck on those award flights!

MEAB today, prolly.

First, a warning about Google Wallet, renamed to Android Pay, renamed to Google Pay, which split into Google Wallet and Google Pay, and then was all renamed to Google Wallet once again (I wish I was kidding about all of this, but I’m not):

Since around December, Google Wallet purchases aren’t earning 3x points on the US Bank Altitude Reserve card. They’ll probably fix it retroactively at some point, but for now stick to Apple Pay or Samsung Pay, both of which have been much less schizophrenic about their names and still earn 3x.

  1. Southwest has a promotional companion pass offer valid through August 5 and October 2 provided you register and book two one-ways or one round-trip flight by tomorrow night, and then fly those flights by May 22. The qualifying flights need to be paid flights, and they have to be booked after registration.

    The bad news is that you’ll be flying Southwest, but the good news is it might be half priced Southwest this fall.
  2. Do this now: Register for double elite rental credits on weekend rentals with National for rentals between April 4 and June 9. If you maximize this promotion, they’ll also throw in a few empty bottles of no-name soda underneath the passenger seat of the rental car. (Thanks to FM)
  3. Do this now: Register for Wyndham’s 10 bonus elite qualifying nights with a single stay in the next 90 days. This is a targeted promotion in theory, but in practice likely works for everyone.
  4. American Express offers has an offer for $180 of of $1,200 or more in airfare booked by June 23. If you’re playing games on this one, know that you’ll probably have to call British Airways to cancel and refund.

Happy Tuesday!

Extreme couponers can parlay National’s free empty soda bottles into chiz stick.

  1. Preferred Hotels brand properties are now bookable via Choice Points at a special link. There are some great redemptions here, and a dare say that some of them are competitive with Hyatt or Hilton redemptions, especially given that Citi ThankYou Points are transferrable to Choice at a 2:1 ratio for Premier card holders.
  2. American Express has new employee card offers for 5,000 Membership Rewards after $2,000 spend for up to five employees:

    – Business Gold
    – Business Green

    The POID is K4IY:9897. Note that Blue Business Plus cards may also be eligible, but that’s unconfirmed. If you try, I’d suggest chatting with AmEx after three business days to see if a spend offer is attached before spending. (Thanks to MicroChurn)
  3. Do this now: Register for double Hyatt elite qualifying nights at Dream hotels for stays through June 10.
  4. Norwegian carrier Play has 25% off of fares to Berlin, Dublin, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Paris, London, and Norway booked by tomorrow night for travel between April 2024 and February 2025, excluding July and December.

    Play is a low cost airline, so you’re going to have to fly economy and suck it up, buttercup to take advantage of this one.

Play Airlines headquarters’ official welcome sign.

EDITORS NOTE: In 2024, I’ve introduced Guest Post Saturdays. If you’re interested in contributing, please reach out! Today’s guest post from community member Hank, who’s least memorable travel experience was flying 70 hours of AA economy with an unknowingly broken kneecap.

Continuing our “study the past to know the future” theme lets see how the miles world has evolved over the last 15 years.

  • Affiliate marketing payouts. Banks pay hundred of dollars per credit app a website can lob their way. That’s actually quite new. Historically there wasn’t any money in blogging, so the tiny crowd in it did so as a passion project. Ben was a broke college kid with an insane tolerance for mileage runs.  Brian Kelly was still a marketer at Morgan Stanley.  Gary was…. pretty much exactly the same.

    Because there was no financial incentive to spell out deals they lasted years, not weeks or days. There were no spoon feeding mega blogs, just arcane hints on Flyertalk. There were under 1% the current number of people in the miles space because everything was smaller…
  • Scale. Back then earning 1.2 million miles got you written up in the WSJ and a movie deal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Phillips_(entrepreneur) For some people nowadays that’s a bad month. The highest signup bonus was 20,000 miles, not 200,000. All that means…
  • Award space everywhere. There were 20+ interesting ways to go to Asia every day. Cathay Pacific had 6 daily flights from NYC by itself, usually with F award space. No one had any miles. That means if you did you likely enjoyed some amazing travel experiences because…
  • Things were harder to monetize (a good thing). If you had 120,000 US airways miles you were heading to Hong Kong in first class for lunch because there wasn’t anything else to do with them. They’d be devalued in a year, award space was plentiful and liquidation wasn’t a serious option.

    Now that same trip is costing you 300,000 Amex or Chase points. Those have real cash value, at minimum $3,000. Would you spend that on a lark for weekend lunch? A passionate hobby has evolved into a successful business, but as is often the case the magic and allure sadly begins to fade.

– Hank

“A duck looking sadly back at a small pond with a Lufthansa first class duckie in it, while a giant ocean filled with dollar signs fills the background.”

  1. Southwest has extended its schedule through January 8, 2025, which includes Thanksgiving and Holiday travel dates. Now isn’t guaranteed to be the cheapest time to book holiday tickets, but it’s certainly not the most expensive time either and if prices do drop you can collect the differences as mileage refunds or travel credits. (Thanks to Brian M)
  2. Staples has fee free $200 Mastercard gift cards starting Sunday and running through the following Saturday, limit five per transaction.

    These are Pathward gift cards, so have a liquidation plan in place. Current Pathward liquidation limits at major retailers are $480 every six minutes. There are still in-person and online liquidation plays, always be probing.
  3. United now allows pooled mileage accounts for up to five people total, but there are some serious caveats:

    – Pooled redemptions are only for United and United Express flights
    – Members have a 90 day block from leaving a pool and rejoining another

    That first point bears repeating: You’ll be flying United, or even worse, United Express.
  4. Southwest is running a fare sale for travel from April 9 through June 5 for continental US fares, and slightly different dates for fares to Puerto Rico.

    At least you won’t be flying United Express.
  5. Weis Markets have 4x points on $100 or more in third party gift card purchases through the end of March. (Thanks to GCG)

Have a nice weekend friends!

Pictured: Flying the friendly skies with United Express.