Category: Airlines

  1. Do this now: Register for Southwest’s bonus companion pass qualifying points promotion. You’ll earn:

    – 2x qualifying points for paid flights
    – 3x qualifying points for paid flights booked through a corporate travel portal
    – 2x qualifying points for credit card spending
    – 1x qualifying flight for award tickets

    The promotion runs for all travel through November 30, and as far as I can tell from reading the terms and conditions it includes previously booked travel. (Thanks to the amazing Brian M)
  2. Choice Hotels has a 100% transfer bonus to United MileagePlus through October 15. This can be a good opportunity for a back door conversion from ThankYou Points to MileagePlus miles, especially if you’re shutdown with Chase:

    2,500 ThankYou Points → 5,000 Choice Points → 2,000 United MileagePlus miles

    Since ThankYou Points easily cash out at a penny each, you’re effectively buying United miles at 1.25 cents each with this promotion. (Thanks to Oliver for the link and excellent analysis)
  3. Citi Merchant Offers has a new offer for 3% back at Giftcards.com with no specified purchase limit through October 17. The offer is good for two transactions, unlike 2022 versions of the offer it doesn’t exclude gift card purchases, and recent datapoints all suggest this is working as it should for Visas and Mastercards purchases too.

    I found this offer on multiple cards and was able to add to each. (Thanks to GCG)

Happy Tuesday!

Acording to the Southwest promotion’s T&Cs, if you earn two companion passes you have to show up to the airport with body paint, as illustrated on their new safety card.

Let’s keep it short and sweet for Labor Day.

  1. Office Depot / OfficeMax stores have $15 back on $300 or more in Visa gift card purchases through Saturday. As usual, link your cards to Dosh, check for Chase Offers at Office Depot and then try and scale this slightly differently than normal.

    These are Metabank Pathward gift cards so have a liquidation plan in place.
  2. American Express has a 25% Membership Rewards transfer bonus to AirFrance/KLM FlyingBlue running through September 25. I don’t currently have an Unusng Heroes series for mileage programs, but frankly this one at least deserves an article in the future. In the mean time, a few sweet spots:

    – Delta short haul Economy and First
    – Business class to and from Europe (assuming date flexibility)
    – Europe short haul Business and Economy

    KLM is also an underappreciated airline in Business class. Fortunately, in a move that will surprise only someone with Alzheimers, it turns out that it’s possible to book KLM flights with the AirFrance/KLM FlyingBlue program.
  3. American Express has an offer for $50 back after $200 in airfare at JetBlue. As usual, gamers can game.
  4. Do this now: Register for Discover IT’s 5x merchants for October through December for up to $1,500 in spend. Amazon.com and Target are the, err, targets this year.
  5. Dell is 15x at Rakuten for the Labor Day holiday which means that now is a great time to place several orders that will be cancelled later this week.

Have a nice holiday!

The Dell Verification team cheerfully works the Labor Day holiday.

  1. Giftcards.com has a sale for 10% off of $100 Visa egift cards using one of the promo codes EOSSUMMER, EOS10OFF, EOSSAVE, or VISA10OFF. The limit per order was six based on my experiments, but you can place multiple orders provided you stay under Giftcards.com’s $2,000 in electronic gift cards per rolling 48 hours.

    Reader irieriley shared related good news: Giftcards.com has returned to airline shopping portals. While it’s not currently showing on cashbackmonitor.com, you can find it directly at AA (3x), United (2x), Alaska (2x), Southwest (2x), and Delta’s (2x) portals.
  2. Barclays is sending targeted spending bonuses on the personal AAdvantage Aviator cards, with 1,000 bonus miles per month for $2,000 spend per month, for both August and September. The promo was actually weirder than that, but the rest of it requires time travel back to July to complete, so we’ll just ignore that. (Thanks to Justmeha)
  3. Breeze Airways has 30% off of fares booked by tomorrow evening with promo code YOUDOYOU for travel from September 5 through December 19, excluding two weeks around Thanksgiving.

    Breeze is Dave Neeleman’s latest airline which attempts to answer the question: “What if you started an airline with service from Vero Beach, FL to Providence, RI and tried to make money doing it?”
  4. Southwest is having a fare sale through tomorrow evening for flights that are at least 30 days away, with two black-out dates around Thanksgiving and two black-out weeks around Christmas.

    I repriced all of my already booked award travel and without exception, all of the fares were cheaper with the current sale and averaged about 25% off of my previous points cost, so double check existing bookings.

Happy Wednesday!

Pictured: The festivities surrounding the return of giftcards.com to airline shopping portals.

  1. Breeze Airways has a promotion for $50 off of round-trip travel booked through the end of today, for travel between September 5 and December 19, but excluding two weeks around Thanksgiving using promo code EZ50.

    Breeze is a low cost airline that largely serves secondary cities, like my “favorite” route from San Bernadino California to Provo Utah. Dave Neeleman’s latest airline endeavor after a string of startups and reboots, including JetBlue, WestJet, and Azul.
  2. Kroger has a 4x fuel points promotion running Friday, Saturday, and Sunday on third party gift cards and fixed value Visa and Mastercard gift cards.

    As usual for those in the resale market, make sure you only work with brokers that assume account shutdown liability within a business day. (Thanks to GCG)
  3. VRBO has an offer for 2,000 bonus United MileagePlus miles when booking a stay by August 31. If you have any existing bookings it may be worth trying to rebook. Are there other ways to game VRBO? Of course, but they require quite a bit more work than normal. Do you have a spare bedroom? Do you have a P2? Just wondering, no reason.

This Lubbock VRBO is extra cheap, because reasons.

  1. The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards card, the 1990s Hakeem Olajuwon of credit cards and a MEAB Unsung Hero, has a few new targeted offers for online spend through September 14 via email. We’ve seen:

    – $40 statement credit with $600 spend
    – $80 statement credit with $800 spend
    – 7,000 ThankYou Points with $600 spend
    – 200,000 Shop Your Way Rewards with $600 spend

    This offer will stack with the current offers for utilities too, provided you can pay your utility bill online. (Thanks to Mike, Santosh, and Jacob)
  2. Promotional Southwest Companion Passes from Southwest’s April offer are now active for bookings through September 30, and are working on both paid and award bookings. (Thanks to sctrader)
  3. Costco has $500 Alaska Airlines e-gift cards on sale for $449.99, limit 10 per member. These can be loaded to your Alaska wallet too which makes it easy to track, but wallet funds do quasi-expire. (Generally Alaska will renew soon expiring wallet funds after asking nicely on Twitter X, a great tip courtesy of Sam at Milenomics)

    UPDATE: Mike sent a correction about Alaska wallet fund expiration; funds added directly with a credit, debit, or gift card don’t expire.
  4. Safeway and Albertsons family stores have unlimited 5x Just4U points earning on Uber gift cards $50 or greater through August 28. These can be a back-door way to earn Alaska miles too. (Thanks to GCG)

Happy Wednesday!

If Olajuwon is the Shop Your Way Card, churners are the referee, I guess?

Southwest announced that they’ll implement same day standby for all passengers by the end of the month, joining Delta, American, and United. [Insert rah-rah puff embellishments here about how shockingly great this for mothers, business owners, toddlers, dead presidents, African swallows, firefighters, and walruses here. Readers will eat that up, right?]

With that out of the way, let’s talk about how I use this flexibility more often than I care to admit.

The Problem

Sometimes I need to book a flight within the next day and prices for both award travel and paid fares are at a premium for desirable flight times.

The Solution

I book a cheaper flight that I’d take if I had to on the airline that has the desirable flight time, but then do a same day standby for the more expensive flight that I actually want.

Tips For Success

  • Some airlines let you see how many seats are available and the depth of the standby list on flights departing in the next day, which means you can make an educated guess about your chances of success both before and after you book. Using this technique I’ve got roughly a 90% success rate.
  • If you have elite status on a legacy airline or you bought a Wanna Get Away Plus fare on Southwest, you’ve also probably got the option to do a same-day confirmed change to the flight you want at no additional charge directly in app, no standby needed. This works better on United or Southwest than other airlines in general due to their more generous same day change policies, but there are hacks with Delta and American too.
  • If you’re departing from a major airport, you can double or triple your chances for success by booking refundable award fares and staggering your stand by flights across multiple carriers, canceling the rest after the earliest one works out.

Good luck!

Using same day standby, this walrus made it back to the Canadian tundra long before it melted while waiting for its original itinerary.

  1. Southwest has a new promotion flights booked to and from a couple of cities booked by this evening. Travel is valid for September through February within the Continental US, or for Early next year for Hawaii and international destinations:

    – Chicago MDW and ORD: CHICAGO30
    – Denver and Colorado Springs: COLORADO30

    Brain M sent a reminder that Southwest now flys to Chicago O’Hare in addition to Midway, and at O’Hare they use Terminal 5. That’s interesting because T5 is where most long haul international flights operate so Southwest could be a good option for positioning flights on, let’s say, less modestly appointed airlines. Just watch out for the worst Priority Pass lounge in North America, also in ORD’s T5.
  2. Alaska has an award and paid ticket sale through tomorrow for travel between September 6 and December 13. This one has some serious teeth as far as I can tell, for example, I’m seeing:

    – West coast to and from Hawaii: 7,500 miles
    – West coast to and from Mexico: 7,500 miles
    – West coast to and from Chicago: 7,500 miles
    – Transcontinental flights: 10,000 miles

    Now, if only there were a good way to earn a ton of Alaska miles. Oh wait, there is.
  3. Discover is sending targeted offers via email for extra cash-back on spend through the end of September, which obviously stacks well with Discover IT’s 5% Q3 bonus categories of gas stations and digital wallets. Offers reported:

    – 2% back on up to $2,000 in spend
    – 4% back on up to $2,000 in spend

    (Thanks to MtM)

The best photo ever taken of the Priority Pass lounge in T5. Believe me, they’re doing us all a favor.

The Avianca LifeMiles online search and booking platform seemingly hasn’t been working for several weeks, and you can find complaints about it in just about every nook of the internet that’s remotely adjacent to frequent flyer miles.

There’s an easy workaround though, courtesy of Joe M via MEAB slack: you can still search and book online if you use Firefox on a desktop PC or Mac. Mobile browsers, the Avianca app, Chrome, Edge, Opera, and Safari all fail. Booking over the phone works, but that’s about as painful with Avianca as rowing a boat across the English channel. In other words, we try and avoid such monstrosities when practicle.

Happy booking friends!

Even this rusty pipe’s forum dedicated to the Columbian frequent flyer landscape is whining about LifeMiles bookings.