Category: Airlines

Let’s wander through a few loyalty programs today:

  1. ITA Airways has a status match promotion running through April 15. The status is good through mid-April 2023 and recognized by the SkyTeam alliance. The major benefits of SkyTeam Elite status are free checked bags and preferred seating access on SkyTeam carriers like Delta, and SkyTeam Elite Plus members also get lounge access (including a guest) when flying internationally too.
  2. IHG is running an award sale for 20% off of stays through May 25, provided you book by April 5.

    Conventional wisdom says that buying points rarely makes sense (and I have plenty of thoughts on that for another day) — but IHG is often an exception to that rule. You’ll often find that buying points using the cash+points trick if needed and redeeming them will save you 25-50% off of cash rates at nicer properties; just don’t expect a huge discount at the Holiday Inn Express in Lubbock, Texas.

  3. Qatar Airways joined the Avios program, and to celebrate they’re currently offering 2,000 2,500 (thanks to just meer for the correction) Avios for signing up for Privilege Club with code FLYQR3. You can transfer these to British Airways Avios (or Iberia Avios) where there’s a nice economy award chart for short-haul flights (redemptions start at 4,500 miles outside of the US and 7,500 miles inside the US on AA or Alaska.) That means this bonus is:

    – 55.5% of an economy short haul ticket redemption outside the US
    – 33.3% of an economy short haul ticket redemption inside the US

    Not bad. (Thanks to crowd79)

  4. Point.app has a new streak for a 1,000 bonus points after making a purchase five days in a row before March 31, provided the sum of the purchases is at least $50. Debbit is a good way to knock these out with automation, and combine this with other Point store boosts when possible.

    If you don’t have the Point debit card yet and want to get one, ask around for someone that can refer you for a sign-up bonus of $150 after spending $200. The public sign-up bonus is either $10 or non-existent depending on how their IT is behaving, so do seek a referral.

    MEAB Note: Normally 1,000 points (worth $10) would be below the threshold for showing up on the site, but in this instance the referral bump to $150 pushed it above the line. Was that the right call? Ehh, I’m not so sure but here we are. At least it’s at the bottom.

I can say with certainty that taking a picture of a shark without protective gear in open waters isn’t the right call.
  1. You’ve probably heard that Chase Pay Yourself Back (PYB) has been extended through June 30. What you probably haven’t heard, or at least it’s received less attention:

    – Office Supply stores have been added to Ink Cash and Ink Preferred for PYB
    – AirBNB bookings have a limit of three cancelations per year which limits PYB, but all you need for a new AirBNB account is a new email address so there’s that

  2. Bank of America is sending targeted elite qualifying miles offers to Alaska Airlines personal and business cardholders. (I didn’t get one despite holding six Alaska cards). The offer is for 1,000 elite qualifying miles for $5,000 in spend. You can find Alaska tiers and benefits here, and without earning another elite mile in any way, you can reach:

    – MVP with $100,000 in spend
    – MVP Gold with $200,000 in spend
    – MVP Gold 75k with $375,000 in spend
    – MVP Gold 100k with $500,000 in spend

    If you don’t fly Alaska a lot, this probably isn’t worth your time. If you want oneworld status, an AA credit card will get you there with quite a bit less spend and you don’t need to be targeted.

  3. PSA: Brex is closing dormant accounts. I personally use it for 8x on rideshare. I like to churn these accounts too (which requires churning real businesses, which is actually not hard in most states) so if they close one out, I’ll just open another one (or let’s be honest, I’ll probably just open another one anyway).
  4. Friday’s deal for $750 in gift cards for $730.35 and hopefully some extra cash-back or miles through a shopping portal is back at GiftCards.com with new promo codes: SPRINGSALE, SPRINGVISA, and SPRING. The catch? They’re Metabank gift cards so have a liquidation plan.

Happy Monday!

A few simple mods and this churner for making butter turns into a churner for making companies.

Let’s wander all over the place today:

  1. The new US airline Breeze airways is adding new routes on its Airbus A220 fleet, and currently the new routes have one-way economy fares of $49 and one-way first class fares of $99. Their press release is the easiest way to see the new routes that I’ve found. The A220 is a very comfortable aircraft, especially in first class, so it’s worth looking into if their routes align with your travel patterns.

    In case you’re not familiar with Breeze, it’s founded by JetBlue and Westjet founder Dave Neelman. The airline is headquartered in Utah, but doesn’t operate flights to or from Utah because reasons.

  2. CashApp has a boost for 10% off of all Sam’s Club online purchases with a maximum discount of $20. It’s valid once a day for the next four days and works with gift cards including Disney, Visa, and Mastercard.
  3. DoC notes that the Paceline credit card has changed its structure, and now offers:

    – 5% cash back at groceries and drugstores (uncapped)
    – 3% cash back everywhere else (uncapped)
    – A $60 annual fee
    – An Apple Watch series 7 as a sign-up bonus ($429 in statement credits spread over the first year)

    There’s a catch of course, and depending on your personality the catch is untenable or is a home run: If you don’t have 150 minutes per week of elevated heart-rate, your cash-back rewards are cut in half to 2.5% at groceries and drugstores and 1.5% cash-back everywhere else.

If you’re lucky enough to live in Southern California, 150 minutes per week with an elevated heart-rate is called your weekday commute.

The DOT item in Friday’s post turned into a hot item for some of you, especially with regard to positioning flights (and to a lesser extent, with a term that reader Jason invented, “Allegiant math”). So, let’s talk positioning flights and go a little deeper with the DOT airline statistics report.

Positioning Flights

The dictionary defines a positioning flight (sorry) as booking a separate flight from your origin to another city, and then flying a new itinerary from that other city. They’re very useful to the travel-hacker because certain big-ticket international redemptions often have availability only from a few cities.

My typical positioning flights take me to LAX, DEN, DFW, PHX, or ORD, though sometimes you end up in a small city like RNO because AA will only release global first class availability to Tokyo if your origin in some small city. sigh

Guidelines for Positioning Flights

Because positioning flights are ticketed separately from your main trip, you’ll almost never be protected if the positioning flight gets delayed or cancelled and you miss your second itinerary. (That said, you can usually sweet talk your way into having an airline fix it for you if both tickets are on the same carrier, or to a lesser extent if they’re in the same airline alliance.) As a result, the DOT report helps with a few guidelines:

  • Don’t book a regional jet unless it’s operated by Endeavor or Skywest (see page 7)
  • Book a morning flight (they’re less likely to cancel, see page 21)
  • Choose Delta or Hawaiian for ticketing if possible (best on-time marketing carriers, see page 30)
  • Build extra buffer in June, July, and August (most delayed months, page 8)
  • Book a backup on Southwest since you can cancel for free (don’t use them as your primary positioning flight, see page 9)
  • Leave time for an extra long-layover for delays into LAX, EWR, JFK, LAS, and SEA (lower percentages of on-time arrivals, see pages 15-18)

Of course I have a few of my own guidelines too:

  • Make sure there’s another scheduled flight on the same carrier and same route for getting to your intermediate airport
  • Book a cancelable backup on another carrier to the intermediate airport if possible
  • If you’re positioning to the midwest in the Summer, leave a minimum of 12 hour buffer
  • For positioning to SFO, have a minimum of a 6 hour buffer
  • If you absolutely don’t want to miss a flight starting in another city, plan on arriving to your intermediate city at least 24 hours before the second ticket’s departure
  • Try and stay on the same carrier or at least within the same alliance when possible

Wrap-up

By following a few data-driven guidelines you can avoid most mishaps with positioning flights. Things could still go pear-shaped (like that positioning flights dictionary definition) though, so there’s that I guess.

Pictured: when your positioning flight goes pear-shaped.

This weekend will probably be a great weekend for portal bonuses so check the rates at Dell and at Saks to help offset the pain of liquidating American Express coupons credits.

With that out of the way, there are a few items to note:

1. Yesterday’s Chase Southwest Visa offer for 30,000 Rapid Rewards points and a Companion Pass through February, 2023 is now available as a public link, no need to find someone with a targeted referral.

2. Reader Dean let me know that Capital One waved the annual fee on his Spark Business credit card after calling and asking. So as always, don’t forget to give card companies a call and say something like “I’m considering closing this card, but before I make a decision on what to do, I was wondering if there were any spend bonuses or retention offers?”

Just make sure you watch out for Citi being Citi when you try retention offers with them.

3. On the subject of retention offers, word on the street is that Chase has recently started offering them on more cards than just the Sapphire line. I for one applaud Chase becoming more like American Express (in this regard).

4. I’ve talked to a few of you that have already done the US Bank $4,000 special, and a few more that are still in the planning phases. If the latter category describes you, consider adding a US Bank Cash+ card into the mix because the card has no-annual fee and now has 5% back on flights, cars, or hotels booked with the US Bank travel portal, up to $2,000 in spend per quarter.

Good luck out there!

As reader and Southwest pilot Ryan tells me, every seat on Southwest is first class. I’m not sure if he had these in mind though.

I’m sure you’ve seen it elsewhere but in case you haven’t, Frontier is buying Spirit. What color do you get when you mix Frontier green with Spirit yellow? I can’t imagine it’ll be pretty. Anyway, here are a few items for your Tuesday radar:

1. PSA: US Bank Visa and MasterCard gift cards have all had their PINs reset by US Bank, presumably due to rampant fraud. Plan on calling or registering the cards online to set a PIN before using them. These cards are versatile but holding them has always been like holding a live grenade; fraudsters are good at draining them after you buy. Hopefully this move helps. (Thanks to Put-Grouchy)

2. Simon Mall has 75% off of gift card fees (including the $1,000 denominations) using code 22HAPPY75. These are Metabanks so make sure you have a liquidation plan.

3. There’s a 20% transfer bonus from American Express Membership Rewards to Hawaiian airlines. Sweet-spots:

  • Coach awards between Hawaiian Islands (7,500 points one-way)
  • Virgin Atlantic Business Class/Upper Class to Europe 125,000 (points round-trip)
  • East coast to Hawaii in Business Class (40,000 points one-way)

Now, by show of hands how many of you still have Hawaiian miles left over from when their portal worked for all purchases at Amazon? Keep that in mind before deciding to transfer miles; they’re not worth anything if you never redeem them.

4. Check for an American Express offer for $100 off of $300 at Delta. For tips on turning this into a longer term airfare credit, see this post, the same techniques will apply.

Spirit yellow mixed with Frontier green, which coincidentally also demonstrates how I feel when I “get to” fly one of those airlines.

Let’s start today with a friendly warning: If you see headlines about thousands or millions of PayPal account shutdowns, don’t stress, you almost certainly weren’t involved and don’t need to follow the click-bait. The shutdowns were focused on accounts that generated thousands or tens of thousands of referral bonuses using bot-farms.

Here are a few things that are worth focusing on:

1. Hot on the heals of yesterday’s devaluation, we have, err, another devaluation. This time it’s ANA, which doubled its fuel surcharges for award tickets.

The ANA fuel surcharge is actually tied to the price of oil which turns out to be a novel concept in the airline world, and with oil prices jumping, the surcharge had a corresponding jump. So in addition to setting award alerts with ExpertFlyer, now apparently we should set crude oil price alerts with Yahoo finance.

2. American Express has a new targeted link for a 30,000 Membership Rewards bonus when turning on Pay Over Time. As always, consider shutting off Pay Over time on all of your charge cards to be targeted in the future. (Thanks to Matthew via DoC)

3. Check for a targeted spend offer on your Chase United cards at this link. This offer is very Citi Shop Your Way-esque in its detail: You earn 250 bonus miles for making three purchases over $50 each per month, for February, March, and April, and another 750 miles if you make all three months. (Thanks to DDG)

4. The offer for 70,000 SkyMiles, $200 statement credit, and first year’s annual fee waived for both the personal and business American Express Delta Gold cards is back. To trigger it, make a dummy booking for a cash domestic ticket in incognito mode and you’ll see it on the payment page. (Thanks to geauxcali)

Four fingers for the Thursday Quad.

Introduction

Incidental credits (not to be confused with generic travel credits which are much easier to liquidate) show up on the PenFed Pathfinder Visa, the American Express Platinum family, BoA Premium Rewards, the Hilton Aspire, and UnionBank Rewards cards. Now that we’re in the middle of January, we’ve had enough time in 2022 to figure out what’s working with turning airline incidental credits into airfare instead of using them as intended, so here’s the 4-1-1 (cool kids still say that, right?).

If you want to be low maintenance, United gives by far the easiest option with its TravelBank wallet, which so far works for all card issuers. There’s bad news with TravelBank though: you’ll be flying United, which means it’s automatically worth somewhere around 90 cents on the dollar.

The Deets

  • United: Buy TravelBank credit directly. It expires in five years and can be used to pay for United flights; if you get an error during checkout at TravelBank, add your card to your United profile as a saved payment then try again [more info]
  • Delta: Buy airfare and pay partially with a gift card or travel credit, pay for the remainder with your card (don’t go over the incidental credit amount though). Alternatively if you have a co-branded American Express Delta card, pay partially with miles and the remainder will be credited [more info]
  • Alaska: Buy a seat upgrade after booking or buy a flight less than $100, then refund to your wallet after 24 hours [more info]
  • Southwest: Buy a flight less than $100, or book an international flight with taxes under $100 per ticket, then refund to a travel credit [more info]
  • American: Buy cheap airfare, then change it to a flight that you really want that costs more and pay with your credit card (don’t go over the credit amount though). If you want to gamble, you’ve got roughly even odds that award taxes and fees will count [more info]
  • JetBlue: Buy a flight less than $137 then cancel the flight after 24 hours and refund to your JetBlue wallet [more info]

Other Options

Of course you could use these incidental credits as intended if you’re basic, like for checked bag fees or pets flying with you [more info, but boring].

Why are United travel bank credits worth 90% on the dollar? Allow me to reference my favorite graph about United’s domestic fleet.