Category: Airlines

  1. American Express has new offers for 20,000 Membership Rewards after $4,000 in spend in six months for new employee cards, limit five per account for Business Golds and Business Platinums at last year’s generic links:

    – Business Gold
    – Business Platinum

    The POID on these is K4IY:9976, and the offer has been alive for several weeks (first discovered by reader Jon via MEAB slack), but just hit mainstream yesterday. It’s also been out long enough that American Express customer service confirmed that the offers are properly attached.
  2. Southwest has an airfare sale for flights to, from, and within California through the end of day today using promo code 29OFF. The sale:

    – $29 fares one-way with requisite asterisks within California
    – 29% off of fares on flights to or from California, also with asterisks

    Travel is valid between August 15 and February 14, 2024 for the continental US, and there’s some availability early next year for Hawaii too. For bonus points, do some schedule research and parlay this sale into Thanksgiving travel.
  3. JetBlue has $25 off of one-way flights and $50 off of round-trip flights using promo code FALLTRAVEL booked by this evening for travel between September 6 and November 15. Of course this one has a few asterisks too, because capitalism.
  4. Yes, earlier this week we reported that Kroger would have a 4x fuel points promotion on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. That wasn’t incorrect, but Kroger is laughing up at us from hell by having an overlapping 4x fuel points promotion on third party gift cards and fixed value Visa and Mastercard gift cards between today and August 8.

    If you’re playing this game with AmExes, just watch out for certain purchases to avoid points clawbacks; remember it’s them, hi, they’re they problem it’s them.

The cable industry learned their asterisk game from the airlines.

  1. Staples has a fee-free promotion on $200 Visa gift cards running through Saturday, limit eight per transaction. On a related note, there have been rumblings that Staples has been rolling out $500 variable load gift cards for the last month or two, and it seems like they may have finished that rollout. Those aren’t fee-free, but they are another option.

    These are Metabank Pathward gift cards so have a liquidation plan in place before you buy too many.
  2. Kroger will have a (probably) final summer weekend 4x fuel points promotion Friday, Saturday, and Sunday on third party gift cards and fixed value Visa and Mastercard gift cards.
  3. Costco is selling $500 Alaska Airlines gift cards for $449.99, limit five per member. (Thanks to GCG)
  4. Airfrance and KLM’s FlyingBlue program now allows stopovers on award tickets for no additional charge, either one-way or round-trip, which is an amazing opportunity for travel hackers, especially if you’re able to talk your way into multiple stopovers on a single itinerary, which may or may not be permitted. The quick overview:

    – The length of the stop-over can be between 24 hours and 365 days
    – Different airlines can be combined on a single itinerary

    You currently can’t book these online, so you’ve got to call FlyingBlue directly. In my experience FlyingBlue representatives are some of the most competent out there despite their reputation, the main downside is a typical 10-30 minute wait to talk to one, even as an elite. (Thanks to FM)
  5. PSA: American Express’s sign-up bonus system has been having teething issues for a little over a month. Previously sign-up bonuses on most cards would post within two business days of hitting minimum spend, but recently it’s taken between 7 and 10 days. When it does post, it’ll be back-dated to the day after hitting spend, so it can be hard to track if you’re not watching carefully.

    With AmEx, it’s like a middle-school breakup – it’s not you, it’s them.

Happy Monday!

A text message exchange extracted from American Express’s phone in 7th grade.

I’ve learned of a super-secret, not-at-all-publicized, private sale called “Prime Day” that’s happening tomorrow and Wednesday at Amazon. If you’re a buyer’s group gamer, this is potentially the World Series of sending stuff to some place in another state that you’ve never heard of, so make sure you’re ready. In the mean time:

  1. Office Depot / OfficeMax stores have $15 off of $300 or more in Visa gift cards through Saturday. To scale:

    – Try for multiple transactions
    – Link your cards to Dosh
    – Buy the “Everywhere” variety for lower fees if you can liquidate them

    It’s still relatively easy to liquidate the $200 variety of cards in store, and there’s always BravoPay to liquidate from home.
  2. Dell is currently 10x at Rakuten and 4x at the AA shopping portal, so get your Business Platinum cancelations in at higher rates.
  3. The Chase Aeroplan Visa card’s sign-up bonus is back to 100,000 Aeroplan points. The bonus is:

    – 60,000 points after $4,000 spend in three months
    – 40,000 additional points after $20,000 spend in the first year

    You can turn this into a $1,250 statement credit via Chase Pay Yourself Back. Just don’t use Pay Yourself Back on points earned outside of the Aeroplan card or you may find your Chase accounts shutdown.
  4. Meijer stores have to good promotions through Saturday. Both are limit one per account:

    – 10,000 MPerks Points with $100 or more in Happy, Choice, or One4All gift cards
    – $10 off of $150 or more in Mastercard gift cards

    Meijer stocks both Pathward and Sunrise gift cards. Now if only it was possible to have more than one email address so you could have more than one MPerks account.
  5. The American Express random number generator is back in full force with a new 170,000 Membership Rewards sign-up bonus on the Business Platinum card at the normal card landing page. To get the offer to appear, you’ve got to have the random number generator roll a 4 on its internal dice, which really means to keep trying with:

    – Incognito or regular browser sessions
    – Clicking the link or pasting it into the browser address bar
    – Different browsers
    – Hitting the application through a search engine
    – While being connected to a VPN

    I consider this application and link to be completely safe. This application has lifetime language, but that doesn’t matter for most purposes; instead just stop if you get a popup telling you that you’re not eligible for a sign-up bonus before submitting the application.

Happy Wednesday!

Pictured: “We Buy MyPFS Deal Buyer Retail Maker” buyer’s group HQ. Totally not sus.

Introduction

When you book a British Airways award ticket on AA or Alaska metal, you may want to swap your frequent flyer number from the British Airways Avios version to an AA AAdvantage or Alaska MileagePlan account so you can use elite benefits or co-branded credit card benefits on your award tickets. Yes, you can call the airline to do this manually over the phone, but who wants to do that? (Answer: masochists, duh)

There were four ways to do this, but the only one I chose to write about in the past stopped working a few months ago because karma:

  • The FinnAir trick (no longer working as far as I can tell)
  • Call the airline and have them swap it
  • The Royal Jordanian trick
  • The British Airways “I swear I’m not me” trick

We’ll focus on the third one.

The Royal Jordanian Trick

Royal Jordanian is a oneWorld airline based in Aman with a serviceable but forgettable hard product. Their IT is above average for an airline though which is great for us. To swap your frequent flyer number:

  • Visit rj.com
  • Click “Manage Booking”
  • Enter your British Airways record locator and last name
  • Click “Update my Contact” and enter your new frequent flyer information

Note that sometimes the Royal Jordanian website will give an error when you save your updated information, but the number is saved anyway. It usually takes about five minutes for AA and Alaska’s systems to see the updated number and apply benefits accordingly.

Happy booking!

Using RJ.com to update a BA booking on AS metal with an AA frequent flyer number, but as a backpack.

  1. United has 10% off of paid flights in the continental United States booked by July 24 using promo code TAKEOFF10 for travel from July 24 through September 26. This is a (widely) targeted promotion that will work one time if targeted for up to nine passengers on a single reservation, round-trip or one-way.
  2. Do this now: Link your Bilt and Lyft accounts in the Rent Day tab in the Bilt mobile app. You’ll earn a $10 Lyft credit if you don’t hold a Bilt credit card and $20 if you do. (Thanks to DoC)
  3. Smart & Final grocery stores have a promotion for a $10 off your next purchase when you buy a $50 Choice gift card through July 11. Choice cards can be converted to high resale value cards easily from home.

    Usually you can’t use the $10 off coupons directly for another gift card purchase, but if you have a friendly cashier you may get away with it. (Thanks to GCG)
  4. Kroger has a 4x fuel points promotion running through July 11 for third party gift cards and fixed value Visa and Mastercards.

    Kroger has taken a page from office supply stores and decided to run a gift card promotion more often than not running one, and that means that in the last two weeks and next two weeks we’ll have had exactly four days without a promotion. #slay

Grocery clerk Jimmy shows us what it means to slay, Kroger style.

1. PSA: You’ve essentially got today and tomorrow to spend your first half 2023 American Express Dell and Saks credits because neither posts charges before items ship, and shipping delays are common with both. In the case of Saks, I believe it’s just because they’re a legacy company that’s still working on its digital supply chain chops. For Dell it can only be because so clearly and obviously they hate their customers.

To juice the Dell side, Rakuten currently has 10x earning at Dell and 2x at Saks.

2. Tap Air Portugal has a 15% transfer bonus added to incoming Capital One mile transfers through June 30. Sweet spots for US travelers:

– The Caribbean, Central America, and South America in business
– Europe in economy
– Open jaws within a region (regions are big in this program)

This program can also be a reasonable way to have open jaw award tickets purely in North America on United metal, provided that you can find United availability. (Thanks to FM)

3. Kroger has a 4x fuel points promotion on third party gift cards and fixed value Visa and Mastercard gift cards running Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Resale markets continue to be strong even after running the same promotion for the last two full weeks ending on Tuesday.

Happy Thursday!

Kroger’s newest third party gift card product, ripe for resale.

  1. Citi ThankYou points has a 15% transfer bonus to Cathay Pacific AsiaMiles through July 22. Sweet spots:

    – JAL award flight availability before most partners can see the award space
    – Trips with up to five (!) stopovers and 2 open-jaws
    – Qatar Q-Suites for 75,000 miles each way
    – East coast to Europe in business class for 50,000 miles each way
  2. The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards Card has been sending targeted offers for online spend through July 14. In my experience online spend is the same as a “card not present” transaction, so it’s easy to hit. Offers:

    -$50 statement credit with $750 spend
    – $30 statement credit with $500 spend
    – 150,000 Shop Your Way Rewards Points with $500 spend
    – 225,000 Shop Your Way Rewards Points with $750 spend

    These stack with other grocery, gas, and restaurant offers that are running concurrently. Also, yes it’s possible to knock some or all of those out online.
  3. Data points have been piling up for months that it’s possible to get unbanned from Citi. The key? Clean up that credit report.

Happy Monday!

Citi’s new “Citi Bits” cereal looks and tastes exactly as bad as you’d expect.

  1. Southwest’s schedule opens through January 7, 2024 today. This booking window includes Thanksgiving and Christmas travel and while now might not be the absolute cheapest time to book travel around those holidays, it probably is very close and it’s also the time where you’re most likely to be impacted by a schedule change that lets you book into anything else ± 2 weeks between the same city pairs. (Thanks to Brian M)
  2. In addition to the relatively lucrative Citi ThankYou Point to Avois transfer bonus, there’s a 25% ThankYou Point transfer bonus to Avianca LifeMiles through June 30. LifeMiles are even more (relatively) valuable since the recent United devaluations. Sweet spots:

    – US to and from South America in business class for 50,000 points
    – East coast to Lisbon in business class for 35,000 miles
    – East cost to Zurich in coach for 16,500 miles
    – To or from Europe in business class while tacking a coach leg onto the end
    – Economy flights to or from the Caribbean for 12,500 miles each way
    – Short haul domestic US economy for 7,500 miles each way

    This promotion is bonused on the LifeMiles side, not on the ThankYou Points side.
  3. Rakuten’s in-store card linked program has 3x at Food Lion stores, and last I checked Food Lion sells plenty of things that a manufactured spender may like. If you’re lucky maybe something extra cool will shake out of this. This promotion needs to be re-added to your account an hour after each transaction to keep going.

Happy Thursday!

Pictured: Another “Thursday Triple” as seen as a carry-on on a Southwest holiday flight from Food Lion territory.