Category: Airlines

Editor’s note: I have a few straggler guest posts ready to go and a few more on the way, so for January and perhaps beyond we’ll be doing guest post Saturdays, making this a six day a week blog, or a 20% increase in content. Hooray for progress science math Stanley cups guest authors!.

  1. Do this now: Check for targeted spending bonuses on your Chase cards, both co-brand and first party. Offers reported:

    – 10x points at grocery, gas, and Amazon for up to $1,000 in spend
    – 5x points at grocery, gas, and Amazon for up to $1,000 in spend
    – 10,000 bonus points on $110 or more in hotel bookings in 2024
    – $35 back on HBO Max after $99 in cumulative spend through September 🤡🤡🤡

    It’s best practice with these to use a new incognito tab for each card in your portfolio. (Thanks to TIP)
  2. Alaska has a paid and award flight sale, and it’s one of the better ones in recent memory. I’m seeing:

    – Short-haul to medium-haul domestic: 4,500 miles
    – Long haul domestic: 9,000-10,000 miles
    – Hawaii: 9,000 miles
    – Mexico: 9,000-10,000 miles

    Book by tomorrow night. The sale seems to cover travel through the end of March, but I can’t find that written anywhere so look around.
  3. Southwest also has a paid and award flight sale running through tomorrow night, but it’s not a heavy-hitter sale like Alaska, but more of a lightweight 90 pound hot-dog leg kind of sale. This one is valid for travel between January 26 and May 22.

    For those keeping track at home, I repriced six upcoming flights all booked in the last week. Two were significantly cheaper, two were the same price, and two were slightly more expensive.
  4. Kroger is running a 4x fuel points promotion on third party gift cards and fixed value Visas and Mastercards Friday through Sunday, and brokers are lining up with fresh inventory like Starbucks shoppers lining up for pink Stanley cups I expect rates to be strong.

    Side note: I was today years old when I learned what a Stanley cup was, hockey jokes aside.

Happy Thursday!

Southwest’s award sale in humanoid-food form.

NOTE: I’ll be going on a blogging vacation between December 18 and 31, during which there may or may not be any posts. But, we’ll ring in the new year on January 1, 2024 with the 2023 version of Travel Hacking as Told by GIFs though, so no need to be up in arms. What’s this “may”, you ask? I’m soliciting for guest posts and I’ll use those during the regularly scheduled newsletter. They should be non-sponsored, non-promotional, non-political, and at least travel hacking or churning adjacent. Please reach out to me if you’re interested, it’ll be the third easiest gig you’ve ever gotten!

  1. Chase has a 20% transfer bonus from Ultimate Rewards to Aeroplan through January 15, 2024. The rate is almost high enough for me to do some speculative transfers, even though it’s generally a bad idea to do so because points devalue over time.
  2. Virgin Atlantic is devaluing award redemptions on Delta metal tomorrow for travel in 2024 or later. The not bad:

    – European rates remain the same
    – Flights shorter than 500 miles remain the same

    The bad:

    – Domestic economy flight costs increase up to 45%
    – Domestic economy flights between 501 miles and 3,000 miles in length increase up to 56%

    Speculatively transferring points to programs with outsized value is relatively more dangerous than to programs that have a value at or below the mean, which I guess means that I shouldn’t speculatively transfer to Aeroplan. How’s that for a flip-flop in a single page? (Thanks to Thrifty Traveller)
  3. One of my guiding principles is that knowledge for knowledge’s sake is a useful pursuit. In churning, knowledge from how internal systems work can often be applied in the future to something else. To that end, TDD at DoC shares a method for modifying the lower 75,000 points Capital One Venture X referral link to be a higher 95,000 points offer for the referred.

    I very much think this is instantiation of the technique is a bad idea and you shouldn’t apply it, principally because you’re bypassing the bank’s internal business logic by rewriting targeted referral codes to make the bonus higher than intended. Why share then? The same technique could be useful in the future for other aspects of the hobby that won’t be violating banks’ business logic.

Pictured: MEAB on Wednesday.

NOTE: I’ll be going on a blogging vacation between December 18 and 31, during which there may or may not be any posts. But, we’ll ring in the new year on January 1, 2024 with the 2023 version of Travel Hacking as Told by GIFs though, so no need to be up in arms. What’s this “may”, you ask? I’m soliciting for guest posts and I’ll use those during the regularly scheduled newsletter. They should be non-sponsored, non-promotional, non-political, and at least travel hacking or churning adjacent. Please reach out to me if you’re interested, it’ll be the third easiest gig you’ve ever gotten!

  1. American Express Offers site has a few new card linked offers:

    – 4,500 Membership Rewards after $300 in Delta gift card spend
    – 15x points on $300 in Delta gift card spend

    It’s possible for both of these offers to appear on the same card, and yes, they do stack, and yes, Delta gift cards have a decent resale rate.
  2. American Express has a targeted 20% transfer bonus from Membership Rewards to Singapore Airlines through December 31.

    The best use of Singapore miles continues to be for expanded availability in Business and First class on Singapore metal. They’re occasionally useful for domestic first class on United too.
  3. American Express has a widely available 30% transfer bonus from Membership Rewards to Virgin Atlantic miles through December 31.

    The best use of Virgin Atlantic miles is domestic first or international business on Delta, or international first and business on ANA. Delta awards can be found with flexibility, and ANA awards can be found with timing.
  4. Alaska Airlines has announced that it’ll be buying Hawaiian Airlines in 12-18 months. There are two interesting bits here:

    – Alaska isn’t a transfer partner of any major bank currency, but Hawaiian is. You may be able to leverage transfers to Hawaiian in the future as a backdoor transfer to Alaska MileagePlan.
    – If you’re at all interested in a potential merger-arbitrage opportunity for Alaska and Hawaiian, you should keep a close eye on the Spirit-JetBlue DoJ antitrust trial for a potential blueprint of the future, closing arguments start tomorrow on that one.

Have a nice Monday!

The second easiest gig you ever got.

There’s a lot going on today, remember to focus on the bigger stuff and ignore the smaller stuff:

  1. H-E-B grocery stores have a $20 H-E-B gift card with the purchase of a $100 gift card in several travel related and bulk resale brands through tomorrow night, limit one per account. Your best options for resale is Home Depot, and Airbnb for travel.

    It may be worth a quick trip if you’re not already in H-E-B land if you’re confident in your ability to scale. It is possible to mint thousands of dollars quickly. (Thanks to GCG)
  2. Alaska has a paid and award ticket sale through Wednesday night. I’m seeing transcontinental flights, Hawaiian flights, and some international flights pricing at 7,500 miles each way in economy, short haul flights are showing at 4,000 miles each way in economy.

    The sale is for travel booked 21 days in advance for travel through March 9, and there are a few blackout dates in late February.
  3. The IHG mobile app has 20% off of paid hotel stays booked by tomorrow night for nights through April 30, 2024, and 15% off of points and cash stays for nights in January and February 2024.
  4. Amazon has holiday weekend shopping promotions for using a single bank point:

    – American Express 40% or 50% off
    – Chase Ultimate Reward 50% off
    – Discover 50% off
    – US Bank 50% off

    Of course you should combine these with buyers groups or gift card reselling activity when possible. If you’re not targeted for one of them, remove those cards from your profile, add them back, then wait a day and check again.
  5. Citi ThankYou Points are redeemable toward Apple e-gift cards today only with a 25% bonus (or 20% discount per Citi because they’re bad at marketing). The resale rate for Apple gift cards is well above a 20% discount making this a nice way to cash out ThankYou Points at above regular rates.
  6. Giftcards.com has 6% off of $100 Visa e-gift cards through tomorrow night with promo codes CYBER6, CYBERVISA, or VISACYBER, limit three per purchase. The limit makes it hard to get to $2,000 per rolling 48 hours but if you’re looking for cancels this is a low cost way to get there.

    These may be worth your time for American Express cards in particular, but only if you have a low cost liquidation channel, since portals are no longer tracking when a promo code is used. (Thanks to TeddyH)

The internet standard measurement of a banana for scale really isn’t big enough on cyber Monday. Instead, use comically oversized carrot for scale to filter through the madness.

There’s plenty to overwhelm you out there, this weekend more-so than normal. My quick advice is set a profit threshold for yourself and skip anything that doesn’t look like it’ll pass that amount as fast as you can. I promise there are other things around the corner that will. In the mean time:

  1. Rakuten has 5x or 5% cash back for in store purchases at Staples through December 24, but unlike past variants this one is limited to three redemptions per account and $15 cash back per transaction.

    Fortunately for us, we have the technology to combine Rakuten’s card linked program, American Express Business Gold or Chase Ink cards, and Staples fee-free gift card promotions to help make this a good use of time. (Thanks to Douglas)
  2. Avianca LifeMiles has a 15% transfer bonus for incoming transfers from American Express Membership Rewards accounts through December 10.
  3. The Bilt card has double points on 1x categories other than rent between today and Cyber Monday. They also have 16x through linked Visa and Mastercards on Bilt Restaurants, but uh, good luck finding one of those and wanting to eat there this weekend.

    Double points on general spend that can transfer to AA and Hyatt is worth a double take.
  4. Kroger online has $10 off of $150 or more in Visa or Mastercard gift cards using promo code THANKFUL23 through Wednesday of next week. These are US Bank issued cards.
  5. Breeze Airways has a tiered fare sale running with promo code CYBER for flights booked by Monday night. The discount is between 10% and 60% based on how far out the flights are, with the closest flights having the largest discount.

    As is custom at MEAB, a new promo code for Breeze means another drawing for “Breeze dartboard route map bingo”. Ladies and gentlemen, today’s dartboard route is: Cincinnati, OH to Providence, RI! If this completes your Bingo board, please collect your prize (spoiler alert, the prize involves the word CYBER).
  6. Virgin Atlantic has a 33% discount on flight award redemptions on Virgin Atlantic metal through Monday evening for flights through September 30, 2024. (Thanks to FM)
  7. It’s been dead for a minute,

Have a nice weekend!

A sage reader once told me that with hoarders, you really need to think in terms of three dimensions, not just floor space. Ditto for deals this weekend.

  1. The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards card has mid-month offers for online spend by December 14. Reported offers, and this stacks with other offers sent at the beginning of the month for spend at utilities:

    – $40 off of $600 in spend
    – $50 off of $750 in spend
    – $80 off of $800 in spend
    – 200,000 Shop Your Way Points for $600 in spend
    – 7,500 ThankYou Points for $750 in spend
    – 12,000 ThankYou Points ofr $800 in spend

    (Thanks to irieriley, David 99, Greyo, Dave 37, Fish, Bryan G, and Charlie)
  2. Chase Ultimate Rewards has a 25% transfer bonus to JetBlue through January 20, 2024, which for the right redemptions beats booking with a Sapphire Reserve through the Chase travel portal at a fixed 1.5 cents per point, but make sure to run the numbers first.

    Side note: if you’re paying close attention to the arbitrage opportunity for the JetBlue/Spirit anti-trust case and want to collaborate, please reach out to me.
  3. The American Express Business Platinum card has a targeted 190,000 Membership Rewards bonus link that’s been floating around for a few weeks and various ways to pull up that version of the offerhave come and gone and have had limited success. There seems to be a new repeatable way to pull it up: Open the application page from Dallas, TX. Geographic targeting has been more prominent over the last year, and it may be worth getting a VPN with multiple city endpoints as part of your churning toolkit.
  4. American Express offers has a targeted promotion for 17,500 Membership Rewards after $700 or more in spend at Princess Cruise Lines through February 15, 2024. Lately it seems like we might need to say ‘gamers gonna cruise’ instead of ‘gamers gonna game’? (Thanks to Rich)
  5. The Capital One Spark Cash Plus Select business card, which probably is missing at least three words in its title because clearly the marketing team is slacking, has a $750 sign-up bonus with $6,000 spend in three months. The card has no annual fee, but earns only 1.5% cash back on spend, which I guess means those three missing words should be “sock drawer bound”.

The NordVPN Dallas, TX datacenter.

  1. Clear has a $75 Uber credit for new accounts with promo code WBTGUBER23. Incidentally Clear only requires a new email address to be considered a new account. Assuming you have a few AmEx Platinum or Business Platinums under your belt, this is a backdoor cash out. You may need multiple Uber accounts to take advantage of the promotion multiple times though, the jury is still out.

    The expiration date isn’t specified, but I assume it won’t stick around past black Friday. (Thanks to caseyrobinson2)
  2. Target will have its annual promotion 10% off of up to $500 in Target gift cards on December 2-3, limit one per Target Circle account. Normally I’d wait until near that date to write about the offer, except having seasoned Target Circle accounts is the way to scale and if you want to scale it, you should start seasoning approximately [checks notes] now. (Thanks to DoC)
  3. Kroger has a new promotion for 4x fuel points on third party gift cards and fixed value Visa and Mastercard gift cards starting today and running through December 5. Secondary market fuel points rates have recently been sky-high because:

    – Gas is expensive
    – There are fewer suppliers
    – There hasn’t been a long-running 4x promotion for a while

    I expect though that a week or two into this promotion we’ll see rates come back down to recent norms. As usual, make sure you’re working with a fuel points broker or end-user that assumes liability for frozen accounts within a day or so.
  4. Hy-Vee stores have $10 off of $150 or more in Visa gift cards through November 23, limit one per transaction. If you live in Hy-Vee territory this one is almost certainly worth your time. (Thanks to GCG)
  5. American Express offers has a targeted $50 back on $200 or more in JetBlue airfare through December 31 (or travel wallet funds if you book a non-Blue Basic fare and cancel it after 24 hours).
  6. For some reason the second tier airlines are colluding to run fare sales for travel booked by tomorrow night:

    – Southwest for travel from December 5 through May 22 with surprisingly few blackouts
    – Alaska for travel to and from Mexico
    – JetBlue for travel from December 3 to January 31

    The Alaska sale in particular has some great rates, assuming of course that Alaska serves your airport.

Ok, which one of you is responsible for this ending up in my inbox yesterday? 😭

According to recent airline earnings calls, the demand indicator for domestic, low-cost travel has an indicator light and it’s blinking red. That means (1) there’s opportunity in the stock market, and (2) that we’re going to see airfare and award deals over the next couple of months. In fact, today’s news items are dominated by them:

  1. United has an award sale for flights to Maui booked by this evening for travel between November 12 and December 16. I’m seeing one way fares of approximately 16,000 miles and round-trip fares of 30,000 miles, even on Thanksgiving week.

    Unfortunately first class seats don’t appear to carry any discount, so you’ll fly in the back and you’ll like it (or else).
  2. Turkish Airlines has an award sale for half off of flights to and from Chicago for travel either in the next three days or between January 16, 2024 and March 31, 2024, but again, only in economy. Sorry bourgeoise. (Thanks to FM)
  3. Breeze Airways has 35% off of base fares booked by tomorrow night for travel all the way through September 3, 2024 with a few blackout dates around Thanksgiving and Christmas using promo code BENICE. This discount includes spring break and summer travel 👀.

    As always when a Breeze fare sale comes up, it’s time to highlight another route on the “Breeze Dartboard of city pairs”. Today’s winner is CAK-ORF, or Akron Ohio to Norfolk Virginia.
  4. Southwest has 30% off of base fares to and from Hawaii booked by tomorrow with promo code SAVE30. There are blackout dates around Christmas, President’s Day, MLK Day, and lots of March. (Thanks to David 99)
  5. GiftCards.com has 5% off of $100 Visa gift cards through November 19 using promo code HOLIDAY5 or GIFTVISA5. As usual, go through a portal and don’t forget the current round of portal spending bonuses. A few caveats though:

    – GiftCards.com emailed affiliates that commissions wouldn’t apply when codes were used on the last round, but apparently that email wasn’t sent this round
    – The back-to-school portal bonuses seem to have been delayed and haven’t paid out, whether or not GiftCards.com was involved
    – The maximum per-order discount is $15, so stick to three per order

    You’re all adults though, do what’s best for your situation.
  6. There are a few interesting American Express offers:

    – 50% off of Uber or Uber Eats, up to $25 spend
    – $90 statement credit with $350 spend at Hertz

    As usual, gamers can game. (Thanks to TeddyH)

The official airline demand annunciator panel is currently indicating softening demand for economy travel.