Category: Airlines

Buckle up, there’s a lot going on today:

  1. Southwest has 20% off of award tickets booked through tomorrow for travel through December 15 using promo code SAVE20NOW. There are blackout dates for when you might want to travel most, November 18th through 23rd and November 26th through 29th.

    If you have any existing award tickets for the same travel dates, this is a good opportunity to reprice and see if you can get a partial refund on points.

  2. The Chase Sapphire Reserve has an 80,000 Ultimate Rewards sign-up bonus and it seems like the miles and points hive mind can’t stop saying things like “ZOMG much point! Very reward!” about this bonus. I’d say it’s skippable because:

    – The Ink Preferred has a 100,000 Ultimate Rewards sign-up bonus, a much lower $95 annual fee, an easier approval, and is churnable
    – The Sapphire Reserve isn’t churnable, at least not more than once every 48 months
    – The Sapphire Preferred sign-up bonus is currently small, so a Modified Double Dip with the Reserve and Preferred isn’t compelling
    – The Sapphire Reserve goes against 5/24

    The major use case for this card is 1.5 cents per point using Chase Pay Yourself Back, and unless you’re cashing out more than 500,000 Ultimate Rewards per year you’re likely better off with another card. Don’t feed into the hype.

  3. Capital One has a 30% mileage transfer bonus to Virgin Red through the end of the month (Virgin Red can be linked to Virgin Atlantic’s Flying Club and the miles then work for either). Sweet spots:

    – Business class to and from Europe
    – ANA first or business class to and from Japan

    (Thanks to FM)

  4. American Express has an offer for $300 back after spending $1,500 at the Qantas US site by November 30. Don’t forget about tricking it by breaking the correlation if your travel plans don’t pan out.
  5. Chase has a tiered brokerage bonus for opening a new account and bringing new funds or securities (see The Daily Churn for details on transferring securities to get bonuses without selling stock and creating a taxable event):

    – $25,000: $125
    – $100,000: $300
    – $250,000: $625

    Normally you should stay as far away from non-credit card Chase products as you would from a rabid giraffe with monkeypox, but because this is a brokerage account and because of how US banks comply with the Volcker Rule, I don’t believe this bonus is a risky proposition in the absence of a margin account.

  6. There’s a heightened sign-up bonus of 85,000 miles for the Citi AA Executive card being advertised in some Admiral’s Club lounges, which beats the current public offer by 5,000 miles. (Thanks to Welcome Offer via MEAB Slack)

The travelsphere talking about the Chase Sapphire Reserve 80,000 Ultimate Rewards Bonus.

  1. Southwest is having a nationwide fare sale for travel from November 29 through February 15 until tomorrow. It’s worth double-checking any bookings you’ve got during that time too, I had one particular flight drop from approximately 4,800 points to 1,111 points. The new price is the equivalent of a $16 fare, which frankly is bananas. (Thanks to Javier via MEAB slack)
  2. Bask bank accounts increased the earning rate on deposits to 1.5 AA miles per dollar on deposit. That’s nice I guess, but with interest rates climbing above 3% (or much higher with a little effort) I’d take this news item as a good point to evaluate whether or not your money is still best parked at Bask. I’d say it’s probably not.
  3. With the new month, there are new airline transfer bonuses running:

    – 30% Ultimate Rewards to Virgin Atlantic, use for business class to Europe or ANA business and first to Southeast Asia through November 12
    – 25% Membership Rewards to Choice Hotels (targeted), use Citi points instead for the Ascend collection through October 31
    – 20% Membership Rewards to Marriott Hotels (targeted), don’t bother. Instead, cash-out and use that to pay for your stay.

  4. Barclays has again increased its sign-up bonuses on business co-branded airline cards, including a statement credit that offsets the annual fee:

    – JetBlue 80,000 TrueBlue miles and a $99 statement credit after $2,000 in spend in 90 days
    – AA 80,000 AAdvantage miles and a $95 statement credit after $2,000 in spend in 90 days

    The Hawaiian business card also has an elevated 90,000 mile sign-up bonus after $8,000 in spend, but no statement credit. Don’t forget to read about clowning with Barclays to maximize your applications.

Happy Wednesday!

An airline frenzy — given the state of the airframes I’d guess these are meant to be Allegiant planes.

  1. Morgan Stanley has announced that they’ll no longer accept applications for new Access Investing accounts starting on December 1. We care because the Access Investing account is a cheap, backdoor way to get access to the American Express Morgan Stanley Platinum card. That particular variant is interesting because:

    – It gives a free Platinum authorized user card, which also gives that authorized user access to Delta SkyClubs and a Priority Pass membership
    – It usually has retention offers
    – It’s mostly churnable

    In other sort-of-related news, Credit Suisse account holders with the co-branded Credit Suisse American Express Platinum may lose everything at around the same time 😬, so I guess cash out those airline credits?

  2. October’s AirFrance/KLM FlyingBlue promo awards have been released for travel through March 31, 2023. This round has discounted economy with good availability and some spotty discounted business class redemptions too. The awards are for travel to and from Europe and LAX, JFK, MIA, IAD, SFO, or SEA.
  3. Chase’s credit card IT systems are currently preventing product changes. This should be cleared up quickly, so don’t lose sleep over it. Update: We now have reports that some product changes are working again, no surprise (like Credit Suisse?)
  4. Check your AmEx offers for 20,000 Membership Rewards or $200 back on $1,000 or more at AirFrance/KLM. Normally I’d say that you should buy in a foreign currency to break the correlation thanks to variable foreign exchange rates, but the T&C specify that the transaction has to be in US Dollars so you’ll need to use another method, and believe me they offer plenty.

Exclusive picture of the Credit Suisse American Express Blue card, as seen in December, 2022.

In case you hadn’t heard before now (maybe you didn’t read this post’s title), Virgin Atlantic announced yesterday that they’re joining SkyTeam. What that probably means:

  • Delta award availability will get better, but cost more (#bonvoyed)
  • ANA, Singapore Airlines, and Air New Zealand award redemptions will go away since each of these airlines is in Star Alliance, a SkyTeam competitor
  • Virgin Atlantic award availability will probably get better for SkyTeam partners
  • The 50,000 Virgin Atlantic mileage redemption for Delta business class to and from Europe loophole will likely be closed

As a result, I’d do the following, and do it quickly:

  • Book any ANA business class or first class round-trip awards to Japan and South Asia now, especially since Japan is opening on October 11. At 90,000-95,000 points round trip for business class, and 110,000-120,000 points round trip for first class, it’s hard to find a better redemption in any program
  • Book any Delta business class award tickets to and from Europe right away, again assuming that you can find availability
  • Book any Air New Zealand awards to Australia and New Zealand right away, also assuming you can find any availability

Don’t forget that American Express has a 30% transfer bonus for Membership Rewards to Virgin Atlantic that runs through Friday. Good luck!

Act fast on V05 too. Soon you’ll lose access to use it a toothpaste and mouthwash.

  1. Southwest seems to be counting award travel for A-List and A-List Preferred status as of last week. Is this intentional? I dunno, but my guess is that if you get status this way that you’ll keep it whether or not it’s a just a bug. Notably it still doesn’t count toward earning a Companion Pass.

    Hopefully Southwest is trying to copy Delta’s change that allows award tickets to earn Medallion status. (Thanks to Brian M via MEAB slack)

  2. JetBlue cardholders can now earn a referral bonus for referring new card members. The link to generate a referral is in your inbox from Barclays, if you can’t find it, customer service can have it resent though it may take a few tries to find the right person.

    The referral offer is as good as the best public offer, 80,000 points after $1,000 in spend in 90 days, and 10,000 points for the referrer.

  3. Check your American Express offers for $100 back on $500 or more at Alaska Airlines.

    Buying a non-refundable, non basic-economy ticket that costs around $500, waiting 24 hours, and canceling the ticket will allow you to bank $500 in your Alaska wallet for a net cost of $400, though eventually those wallet funds do expire so this is a short to medium term play, not a long-term one.

  4. Rakuten has 2% back or 2x Membership Rewards on Safeway purchases via their card linked program. I’m sure you can find an interesting use for this one.

A-List and A-List preferred status get you unlimited complimentary upgrades to the economy cabin.

  1. Do this now:

    – Register for Marriott Bonvoy’s super-lame promotion
    – Register for AA eShopping’s sweepstakes
    – Register for Alaska MileagePlan Shopping’s sweepstakes
    – Register for Southwest Rapid Rewards Shopping’s sweepstakes
    – Register for United MileagePlus Shopping’s sweepstakes

    The Marriott one is awful (2,000 points points per stay after your second stay September 21 – December 15, or 4,000 if you’re a Marriott credit card holder). The other ones have low odds, but the prizes are great (250,000 AA miles + $2,500, 100,000 AS miles + $2,500, 100,000 WN miles, 100,000 UA miles + $2,500).

  2. Southwest is opening their booking window through April 10, 2023 sometime this morning. If you don’t already have a spring break travel locked in, this is a good opportunity to get something booked.
  3. Staples online has fee-free $200 gift cards for sale, limit three. Worth noting:

    – Sometimes card linked programs track on staples.com online gift card purchases
    – Sometimes lesser used portals track on staples.com online gift card purchases

    These are Metabank gift cards so have a liquidation plan in place.

  4. Nutella shares that tomorrow is the last day for Citi Dividend card holders to opt-out of automatic conversion to the Custom Cash card. To do so, you have to call Citi at (888) 872-2214 and let them know.

    The automatic conversion date is apparently September 19, although there are mixed reports on whether or not the automatic conversion will actually occur.

Another candid of Citi’s IT room, illustrating why Citi’s CS reps always have their wires crossed.

  1. Southwest has a companion pass offer for booking a single round-trip or two one-way flights by tomorrow evening for travel before November 17. After you qualify, you’ll receive a companion pass valid from January 4, 2023 – March 4, 2023.

    (Thanks to the ineffable Brian M’s report via MEAB slack)

  2. Barclays has increased its personal JetBlue card’s sign-up bonus to 80,000 TrueBlue points after $1,000 in spend in 90 days. The card has a $99 annual fee and isn’t waived the first year. (Thanks to DoC)
  3. The Citi Shop Your Way Mastercard (a MEAB Unsung Hero) has been sending out targeted offers since last week. We’ve seen:

    – $40 back after six purchases of $50 each month for three months
    – 4,000 ThankYou points after six purchases of $50 each month for three months
    – 15% in statement credits up to $60 in travel purchases each month for three months

  4. Meijer online has $5 off of $100 Visa gift cards, limit 10. They’re Metabank gift cards, but Kroger, Walmart, and Safeway still universally allow $99 swipes with these and the cards will auto-drain a small balance at most grocery stores, so liquidation is possibly more straightforward than is typical.

    Unfortunately I have to counteract the good Metabank news with some bad: These are fulfilled by BlackHawk Network and won’t code as grocery for any credit card category bonuses.

Good news: Meijer sells sushi for less than a dollar and will auto-drain your Metabank gift card. Bad news: This is the sushi.

Editors note: Sometimes I can’t help but get academic and nerdy; but stick with me, the results are good. There’s good stuff in the academic community, and we can apply it directly to your travel to make it better. I don’t know of anyone else doing anything like this, so here we are.

Introduction

There’s an interesting statistics thought experiment that comes up in academia called The Monty Hall problem. The gist of the problem is:

  • You have three doors with something behind each door, 2 doors have something lame and 1 has something great
  • You choose a door but don’t yet know the results
  • The game-master tells you that one of the doors you didn’t pick has a lame prize, and shows you which door

Ok, so there are two doors left: The one you picked and the other door. Unless you’re trained in statistics, you probably think you’ve got a 50% chance that your door has the great prize and a 50% chance that the other door has the great prize, because there are only two left. But, the math behind the Monty Hall problem says that your door is 33% likely at that point to have the great prize, and 67% likely to have the lame prize. (See the Wikipedia page for the math behind the result if you’re interested.) In other words, the other choice is now twice as likely to be the best choice, so choose it if you can!

Applying This Result to Flights

We can apply this result to airline delays with some fuzzy mapping: one door is your on-time departure (your original choice, a delayed flight might be un-delayed and is thus still an option), one door is your delayed departure, and the third door is a an alternate flight.

Based on the math behind the Monty Hall problem, if you’re told that your original flight is delayed, then switching to an alternate flight is more likely to get you to your destination without a late arrival; twice as likely all things being equal (which they’re not). If you’ve ever experienced rolling delays on your original flight, you’ve got some intuitive feel that switching to another flight is probably less likely to lead to an arrival delay too.

Making it Real

There’s a problem with that analysis though: It’s highly unlikely that you’ve got an alternative flight to switch to that leaves at the same time as your original flight. So, to make this actionable for real-world scenarios, we’ve got to factor average delay time into our analysis. To do that, I downloaded the last 12 months worth US airline flight on-time data for a deeper-drive.

First, let’s assume that your airline posts a delay of 45 minutes or longer. In the last year, this is what each major carrier’s average arrival delay looked like:

Operating
Airline		 Average Arrival Delay, August 2021-July 2022
(For Departure Delay ≥ 45 Minutes)
AA 2 hours 13 minutes
Alaska 1 hour 36 minutes
Delta 2 hours 1 minute
Frontier 1 hour 51 minutes
JetBlue 2 hours 17 minutes
Spirit 1 hour 49 minutes
SkyWest 2 hours 21 minutes
Southwest 1 hour 23 minutes
United 1 hour 53 minutes

So when your airline posts a delay of at least 45 minutes, if you’ve got an alternate flight that leaves within an hour and a half or so, you should switch to that alternate flight (especially if your flight is operated by SkyWest).

Next, let’s assume your airline posts a delay of 90 minutes. In the last year, you’re looking at an average arrival delay of:

Operating
Airline		 Average Arrival Delay, August 2021-July 2022
(For Departure Delay ≥ 90 Minutes)
AA 3 hours 23 minutes
Alaska 2 hours 35 minutes
Delta 3 hours 19 minute
JetBlue 2 hours 54 minutes
Frontier 2 hours 54 minutes
Spirit 2 hours 49 minutes
SkyWest 3 hours 36 minutes
Southwest 2 hours 19 minutes
United 2 hours 59 minutes

The conclusion from this one: If your departure delay is posted as 90 minutes or later, switch to an alternative if you can get one in the next three hours or so.

Finally, let’s look at the data by major airports instead of by airline, sorted by the total number of delayed flights (these major airports are also the airports most likely have alternative flights):

Airport Average Arrival Delay, August 2021-July 2022
(For Departure Delay ≥ 90 Minutes)
DEN 1 hour 42 minutes
ORD 1 hour 52 minutes
DFW 1 hour 49 minutes
ATL 1 hour 43 minutes
MCO 1 hour 50 minutes
CLT 1 hour 42 minutes
LAS 1 hour 37 minutes
LAX 1 hour 50 minutes
PHX 1 hour 40 minutes

The statistics aren’t very different for other major (top 50) US airports. However delays are much more likely to extend beyond two hours at small airports, where you likely don’t have another option anyway.

And for my last analysis, I looked at the reason for the delay when it was available. In cases where the data is available, the longest delays are caused by (from the biggest contributor to the smallest):

  1. Carrier delays (crew problems, mechanical, etc.)
  2. Late aircraft delays (delayed inbound flight)
  3. Airspace delays (ATC traffic management programs, etc.)
  4. Weather delays

tl;dr

The internet: “Ok poindexter, enough with the nerdy stuff, how about a summary without all the goo?”

MEAB: Sure thing boss, also here’s the data in CSV form in case you want to be a nerd too:

  • If your flight posts a delay of 45 minutes or longer, switch to an alternate if there’s one available in the next two hours
  • If your flight posts a delay of 90 minutes or longer, switch to an alternate if there’s one available in the next two and a half hours
  • If you’re flying out of a major airport, a delay isn’t likely to carry on past two hours
  • If you’re flying out of a small airport, that delay is probably going to be a long one, sorry
  • If the reason for your delay is a carrier or late inbound aircraft issue, the delay is likely to be longer than for weather or other reasons

Happy Tuesday friends!

When United Express inevitably has a delay for something like this, switch flights (trust me, been there).