Frequent Miler on the Air - 7 Big Atmos Oddities (Alaska's new rewards program) | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep320 | 8-22-25

Episode Date: August 22, 2025

In today's podcast episode, we unlock the LifeMiles mystery, look at Etihad's magical mystery refund policy, and examine 7 surprising oddities of Alaska's new rewards program, "Atmos". Giant Mailbag(02:02) - LifeMiles cancellationsCard News(11:23) - Chase will be ending the ability to transfer Ultimate Rewards Points to Emirates Skywards as of 10/16/25.(15:20) - 400 properties added to Amex Fine Hotels & Resorts and The Hotel CollectionAwards, Points, and More(18:20) - Nick: Canceling Etihad awards(29:38) - Accessing the Admirals Club with Strata Elite passes(32:36) - Frontier Gold for $69 through 2026 (maybe available through 9/9/25)Main Event: 7 Big Atmos Oddities (Alaska's new rewards program)(35:15) - Alaska MileagePlan is now Atmos Rewards(37:18) - The big picture(42:37) - Choose how you earn (coming in 2026)(53:29) - Top status (Titanium) will offer complimentary international business class upgrades(57:02) - Summit Visa Infinite Surprises/Oddities: Global Companion AwardsLearn more about Alaska’s Atmos™ Rewards Summit Visa Infinite® card here: https://frequentmiler.com/alaskas-atmos-rewards-summit-visa-infinite-card-review/(1:05:39) - Summit Visa Infinite Surprises/Oddities: Free Points sharing(1:07:52) - Summit Visa Infinite Surprises/Oddities: $50 Instant Travel Delay Credit(1:11:13) - Summit Visa Infinite Surprises/Oddities: Exclusive Lounge Bar Program: 2 complimentary signature cocktails or a selection from the elevated bar menu upon showing your Atmos™ Rewards Summit Visa Infinite® card(1:13:07) - Summit Visa Infinite Surprises/Oddities: 3x International spendQuestion of the Week(1:17:20) - Are Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card holders getting charged more for The Edit by Chase Travel℠ bookings than Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card holders? Subscribe and FollowVisit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media.Music Credit – “Ocean Deep” by Annie Yoder

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. On today's episode, we unlock the Life Miles mystery. We look at Etihad's magical mystery refund policy. And at most, we cover seven Atmosodities. Frequent Miler on the air starts now. Today's main event, seven. big atmos oddities. Atmos is Alaska mileage plan's new program. There's no more Alaska mileage

plan. It's now Atmos rewards. And that all happened on Wednesday, which is yesterday as we're recording this. And that's, that was pretty cool because last week, we asked loyalty programs, credit card companies, and everyone to stop revealing big news on Thursdays and start revealing it on Wednesdays, clearly Alaska was listening and all the big news. Yeah, thank you. All the big news broke yesterday on Wednesday as we're recording this. And so that was awesome. So we had a whole day to to absorb all the big news, which was a lot, a lot. And I'll tell you this. We'll get into details in the main event. But, you know, last week I talked about how a briefing by Aeroplane, Air Canada Airplane literally put me to sleep.

There is nothing about Alaska's news that made me sleepy. It's really... Alaska, woke you're right up, huh? Yeah, like it or hate it, the changes, there's nothing sleepy about these changes. No, no, it'll be interesting to discuss today because I think that this is perhaps the most, at least creative set of changes that we've seen. It's a truly innovative, whether you like it or don't like it. You can't say everybody else has done this.

And so that'll be fun to talk about. Remember, if you want to jump ahead to the... that discussion where you want to come back to something later on, you can always find the timestamps in the show notes, just expand the description box. And wherever you're listening to this or watching this, don't forget to leave us a review, give us some stars, like it if you're watching it in video form. We appreciate all of that stuff. So thank you very much for that. Now let's drag out this week's giant mailbag. Giant mailbag time. Speaking of oddities, Last week, I read a letter from T who reported a really weird situation with her Life Miles Plus subscription where Life Miles Plus gives you the ability to cancel awards for free.

And she said that basically the process that she encountered for when she canceled a flight was that Life Miles created a dummy flight to Medellin and told her, well, that's just the way we do it as we create these. other bookings and you don't have to show up for it and so obviously that was weird and and uh we speculated that that had to be a one-off oddity but it would be couldn't happen to anybody else it'd be kind of fun if it was like their actual practice the way a agent had told her it was their actual practice so we asked people to write in and I will say um most people who wrote in just said I've canceled you know through this program no problem no dummy booking nothing like that. It's exactly as you would expect. So that's most people's experience, but I wanted to read parts of three specific letters to us because they all have kind of

interesting nuances to them that are worth talking about. First up, Lisa says, I'm an Avianca Life Miles Plus member. I canceled two flights in March, and as far as I know, I was not booked on any flights to Medellin. I also canceled both flights. after the scheduled flight date and got all my miles refunded. So that part was very interesting to me because I was under the impression that you had to cancel at least three days before the flight date. Craig the Frequent Miler has not read somebody's post

at Frequent Miler about canceling Avianca Life Miles Awards. Yes, yes, keep going. There's more of the... Yeah, so the customer service rep told me I couldn't cancel two days before, nor one day after the actual scheduled flight date. But after that short window, I had up to one year after the purchase date

to request a refund of my miles. Yay. Yes, yes, it's absolutely true. And that is really a unique quirk of the Life Miles program. Most programs, if you no-show a flight, will not let you get anything back afterwards. You just lose everything, the taxes, and the miles. But Avianca Life Miles is pretty unique

in that you can indeed cancel after the fact, get your miles back. You pay the cancellation fee, of course. So that's going to say the same. We're actually, the no-show fee may be different than the cancellation fee. That I can't recall off the top of my head. But I do know that the quirk here is that like Lisa says, and this is worth knowing, you can't do it within the two days before departure. So I ran into this once where I called in, I don't know, a day or two before departure. And they told me, no, I can't cancel it until afterwards. And I was like, that can't be right. I kind of really remember this now.

Now, I'm confused. You said you'd have to pay the cancellation fee, but if you're a Life Miles Plus member, there should be no cancellation fee, right? Yes, I'm sorry. Yeah, absolutely. It should be none. I don't know about no show fee. So that's a question that I guess I have not explored because my experience with this was

before Life Miles Plus became a thing. So I don't know for sure. But I guess probably, yeah, you still get a way of fee, which is pretty incredible because if you could do it afterwards and still get the fee waived, Lisa, you're going to have to let us know if they waived the fee still if you canceled after the flight departed. That's kind of critical because I can imagine that the agent, you know, what the agent told you was more about cancellations in general

and not necessarily about the waive fee from Life Miles Plus. Yeah, so please do let us know about that because that would actually change my opinion about Life Miles Plus and the value of it because I was under the impression you had to cancel more, you know, three days before or more, and in order to get free cancellation. And if, and I think you might be right. That, that kind of limited the appeal for me because I often like to book flights as like, you know, well, this one's good enough. But if I find something better, I'm going to switch to that.

Well, if you find something better within three days and you can't then cancel and get your points back, then that's no good. but if you could do it afterwards that'd be great so yeah we need we need more information Lisa about that is critical that is critical because if the fee is I but you're right I do remember the 72 hour cancellation deadline with life miles plus and that's probably because of this weird rule that you just can't cancel an award within a couple of days of departure but yeah it's critical to know can you cancel it afterwards and get it waived yeah okay so that's from Lisa then stephen wrote in and Stephen says after canceling my ticket on the phone I received a conference information email of this and the refund request, which I expected. What I didn't expect was that

a few minutes later, I received another email about a cancellation and refund request to my same email, but addressed to another person I'd never heard of. The emails came about three minutes apart. Over the next few weeks, I received two or three more emails directed towards the same passenger that I've never heard of. After further review, it looks like a ticket number mentioned here was just one or a few digits off from the ticket number that I canceled. So perhaps the support report rep didn't log out of my case. I have checked my Avianca profile and everything is correct. Only my details. No one else is. I've contacted Life Miles for support, but it's slow going. Minus the weird email to me that's directed to someone else. All my experience canceling award

bookings was fine. So I don't know if that's a report in sort of support of what happened to T or opposite what happened to T. It's somewhere in between. Yeah, I don't really know. But I'm also at the same time, not shocked to hear that this happened, right? I mean, Avianca Life Miles is a little, I don't know, disorganized, and they have a reputation for, you know, oddities or they have a reputation for poor service that I have said might not really be reflective of the experience you'll have now. Maybe it was more so in the past. I think the service has improved, but at the same time, I mean, we had somebody tell us they

were put on a fake flight to Medellin, right? And so, and they have this weird thing where you can't cancel a flight within a few days. But after it's already taken off without you, then you can cancel it. I mean, they've got some weirdness. So I'm not shocked that you received an email with somebody else's name on it. That probably shouldn't happen. But, but it's probably probably not cause for concern. What do you think?

Would you be worried? I mean, just sort of generally worried that they have like weird messed up processes. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's something we already knew.

Right. From many other weird experiences. Right. All right. We're not done. So Sartuk wrote in and says, hey, Greg, I've canceled life miles tickets a few times, including one today. Every single time it was for a flight to Medellin. So in this case, he actually had booked to Medellin, not received a fake routing to Medellin like Tid.

And he says, it was converted to a way. list ticket on each instance. Since it is a waitless ticket, I assume it gets auto-canceled before departure. So maybe there's a key here to explaining what happened to T. Yeah. You know, maybe those emails she got were actually about a wait-listed ticket. Like, maybe they do issue a wait-list ticket as the process for canceling these things. And I'm also, this is complete just, you know, speculation here, but maybe there's

something about Sartukes and T's profiles that cause the life miles or aeroplanes, not aeroplanes, sorry, Avianca's computer systems to email them about these waitlisted flights, whereas other people maybe just don't get emails even though they exist, right? Right, right. Right. And I could, again, total speculation here, but I could totally see this being the process, that it gets converted to a waitlist ticket, probably that's meant to be for the flight that you're on, right?

So maybe they switch you to a wait list on that same flight and then it just gets auto canceled later. But maybe I could imagine a world where there's an agent who learned how to do this once with a flight to Medellin and then always creates a waitlist to Medellin. Actually, no, let's take that and say, maybe they do it on the flight you're on if it's an Avianca flight. But if it's a partner flight, they have to wait list you on an Avianca flight. And so it's convenient to do like just a flight to Medellin or whatever. and do it that way. Look at us reverse engineering. We just figured it out.

We figured it out. It's all done. So the mic drop moment right there. So if you have any experience that supports what we just made up, please write to us about that. If you have information that proves us wrong, we don't want to know. Just give it to yourself. We're very proud.

We're very proud of having figured this out. And if you prove us wrong, that's just going to be disappointing. Totally agree. Co-signed. All right. Let's move on to this week's card news. So Cart News, this week, we have some concerning news. Chase is going to be ending the ability to transfer ultimate rewards points to Emirates Skywords as of October 16th, 20205.

So you've got a couple of months, a little less than two months at the time we record this to transfer to Emirate Skywords if you would like to. Keep in mind, remember that City and Amex are both reducing the transfer ratio. It'll no longer be one to one. It's rather 1,000 to 800 to Emirate. So the only one-to-one partners left are Capital One and Built, both of those types of rewards, Capital One Miles, and Built Rewards, still transfer one-to-one to Emirates. What's going on here, Craig? Is everybody going to lose Emirates? I should add about Capital One and Built as far as we know.

We haven't received any notifications yet about changes, but who knows? Yeah, we don't know why this is all happening, but I'll tell you what. The good news is Emirates' points have become increasingly. increasingly useless, you know, over the last, I don't know, six months or so. They were already, like, only good for specific, specific situations, but now, like, that they've added high surcharges on their fifth freedom flights, such as the flights between the U.S. and Italy and Athens. Yeah.

You know, there's just not. So the reason it's good news is because, like, you probably don't want to transfer to to Emirates anyway. Obviously, it's bad news that they're making all these negative changes to their program. Yeah, I mean, even if you don't want to transfer them anyway, I don't know if I characterize it as good news. Less competition is usually not a good thing. I'd rather have more transfer partners than fewer because at least you have the chance for them to improve things at some point or for it to just happen to fit your needs. And Emirates does have some other partners. So there are some partners you can book. And they're not, it's not going to be your

cheapest option in most cases. But Condor comes to mind because I'm pretty sure you can book Condor with Emirates Miles, which you can book for a better deal with Alaska. I was about to say Alaska mileage plan, but now that's Alaska Atmos rewards. But if you don't have Alaska miles, they're much harder to get than Emirates points. So that'd be one that might be appealing for Emirates. Now, the only reason that comes to mind is because I'm stuck with a whole bunch of Emirates miles that I'm getting increasingly nervous or becoming useless. So, I've got a couple hundred thousand of them, and I don't want to have a couple hundred thousand of them for much longer here. Do you think everybody's going to lose this? Do you think Chase cut it

because Emirates was insisting on a less than one-to-one? Yeah, I mean, either insisting on less than one-to-one or just charging so much that Chase couldn't afford to keep them. Chase clearly wants to keep their program simple, one-to-one to everyone, even if it doesn't make sense. like one-to-one that IHG makes no sense. Why would you ever do that when you could often buy the points for half a cent each? But, you know, so I think they were like, well, yeah, we could lower the transfer ratio, but that would complicate our program. It's better just to eliminate it.

And I think that was probably the right choice for them. I agree. I agree. Yep. I agree. Right choice. Right choice to have made well done on that, at least in part, because I don't want other airlines to start getting any ideas here.

Yeah. All right. So a little tiny bit of hope for Nick's hundreds of thousands of points. Maybe Emirates has a long-term plan to make their points more useful, but didn't want to do it while points are so easy to get with all these transfer programs. We can hope. We can hope. I don't really think that's going to happen. I don't really think that's going to happen. I don't really have about another year before they expire.

So we've got to get on that fast, Emirates, please. all right well that's part of our card news this week the other piece of kind of card news to come out this week is that amics fine hotels and resorts and the hotel collection has added an additional 400 properties worldwide so that's pretty good news right oh yeah i mean i i think i think that's really good news if you're looking to use those programs uh your chance has just increased a little bit depending on where you're looking at finding a property that works for you and so that's good news in general. And then the reason this is under card news is, first of all, you need to have a platinum card to access this program. But even more important, as we reported on a recent coffee break episode, the platinum cards, the rumor is that the annual fee is about to jump up from $6.95 to $8.95. But in exchange, one of the things you're going to get is $300 per six months of credit towards fine hotels and resorts and the hotel collection. And so having more properties available to book with those credits will obviously make it easier to use them.

And this makes me even more confident that those rumors are true. Releasing this now is just smart business because it gives people some time in advance to find properties that they're interested in and then be excited when the change comes out. And it gives people like us the opportunity to go out there and look for places that, you know, as examples that we're like, oh, I'm excited about this or that. And I say us. I mean, not really us, but I mean, people in this space anyway. So I think that it was smart business for MX to add this now.

But keep in mind, it's 400 worldwide. So this does expand the footprint some and probably give you a couple of extra places here and there. But any one place you look, don't expect to see like 40 new options because you're talking about 400 period worldwide. They have properties like 114 countries. So it's an average of like three per country, right? And obviously some countries added far more than others. Yeah, I'll say one interesting thing is we recently lost the Inatt Bay Harbor from the Marriott program or about to lose it. I saw them show up on this list. They didn't used to be on this list. So there's still a way to get into that hotel. That's a hotel in northern Michigan, a resort there. So just one tiny example, but kind of interesting because I've talked about that particular property a few times on the show. Yeah, and it seemed to me anecdotally that I saw a greater number of properties that seem new to me in the hotel collection than in fine hotels and resorts.

I don't know whether that's true or whether some places just moved from fine hotels and resorts to the hotel collection. But that's probably good news because there's probably more breadth of use for most people in the hotel collection and HR. Yeah. In one city I looked at, I definitely saw more. There was only previously like one hotel that showed up. up and it was only under the hotel collection. And now I saw four or five different properties to choose from. So that's, that's really good news. Yeah, that's great. All right, let's talk about awards points and more. So for awards points and more this week, first up, I've got a little bit about my experience canceling an Etihad booked JetBlue Awards. So last week, I talked about that process a little bit about how actually, no, I talked about something entirely different, didn't I,

than the cancellation. I guess last week we discussed the birthday problem that was causing me not to be able to check in on time. My experience with canceling in Etihad Ward was a little bit different. So I, well, let's back up. We've talked before about how Etihad has probably the worst or second worst cancellation penalties in the industry because they charge you a percentage of the miles that you redeemed in order to cancel. And that starts at 25. percent of the miles you redeemed. And then it goes up as you get closer to departure. So I was looking to cancel a jet blue operated flight booked with my Adjahad miles. And I was right on the edge because at eight to 21 days in advance, you would lose 50% of the miles. And within seven days

of departure, you'd lose 75% of the miles. And I was just a little bit more than seven days in advance. In fact, when I called, I was like 10 minutes more than seven days in advance of departure. Yeah. So it was really close to the wire between losing 50% of the miles and losing 75% of the miles. So I was really hoping that we were going to get this done very quickly. And I wasn't very kind. I, truth be told, I had forgotten about it. I meant to do it early that morning. And I'd forgotten about it, looked at the clock and said, oh, my goodness, let me try and call right now. And so, uh, so I did get through to an agent in about five minutes. So, again, I had about five minutes to go before we were within seven days of departure,

explained that I wanted to cancel, and the agent had to go to verify what the cancellation penalty, but it came back and verified the 50% literally about one minute before we would be seven days in advance departure. And I said, yes, I want to cancel it. Let's cancel it right now, please. And so they confirmed that it was canceled, but said that it would have to go to a different department to process the refund, and that I would get an email in a few days from that department. And that made me nervous because I thought, uh-oh. She just quoted me 50% of the miles as the penalty. But if some other department has to actually do this, by the time they get it,

I'm within seven days of departure. I'm going to lose 75%. Is that going to, like, slow things down because they're going to see that she quoted 50% and then they're going to have to, you know, confirm that I want to cancel the 75%. Plus one, you know, plus they have to send it over to Avianca Life Miles to get them to figure it out. To wait, list you on a flight to Medellin. Right. And then there's the whole Spanish to whatever language translation going on.

It's complicated, yeah. Yes, yes, it is. So that email didn't come until days, almost a week after the flight itself. So it was like two weeks, basically, between when I canceled and when I got the email confirming the refund. And then I was really confused. So I had paid 6,030 miles per passenger. And I was expecting a 50% cancellation penalty. so I expected I'd get about 3,000 miles per passenger back,

or in the worst case, if they charged me the 75% penalty, maybe I'd only get 1,500 miles per passenger back. But I got 5,100 miles per passenger back, which I didn't, I couldn't make any sense of immediately. I was like, wait a second, a 930 mile penalty. That's like, what, 15.42% I think is what it was. So it's not even a 25% penalty. Yeah.

What is going to make any sense at all? So then I went back to Tim's post about when they changed. They recently had changed the cancellation penalties or at least made some changes because they created different fare buckets. And within that, he linked to an award wallet post where a word wallet explained that it's not as simple as losing 50% of the miles or 75% or whatever it might be, that rather what they do is Etihad takes the miles you used and values those at two cents per mile to convert the fare you paid from miles to a money amount,

and then they add the taxes and fees, and then they take the cancellation penalty from that total dollar figure. And whatever's left, they reconvert back to miles and give you the miles back. So if I paid 6,000 miles at 2 cents per mile, that's like $120, plus I paid like $18 and change in taxes. So it came out to like $139 or so was what I paid for the flight. if you value the miles at two cents per mile. And so then if you take the 25% out of that and, you know, or the 50% rather,

out of that and give me 50% back, well, guess what? It's still not 50, 100 miles. So I don't know what happens. Well, of course not. Who could possibly figure out what it should actually be in that kind of crazy scheme? That's, that is the most insane thing I've ever heard. Move this under what crazy thing. Yeah, well, that's true.

That's true. I probably ought to have been there, right? So the moral of the story here is that, number one, it's really complicated. I take a word while it's word for it, that they're probably right about how it's probably supposed to happen. But like Greg said, I mean, what are the chances that any random person whose job is just to clock in and calculate cancellation penalties and clock out to get all that math right, I guess? So even if they're right, I think there's a high chance that it's not going to work out right in the end. And in my case, I guess I benefited from that. Now, the number of miles I got back was like close to 25% of the total fare if you use their formula.

But not quite 25% is either a little more, a little less depending on how you figure it. It gets a little complicated. You can see the post for more detail. But it doesn't quite line up. And there's no reason I would have gotten 75% of the miles back because that would have required canceling more than 21 days in advance. and I was a week in advance. So I really don't know, but my moral of the story is that it may not be as expensive as I thought to cancel a NetTad award, especially on these really cheap jet blue, like low mileage flights.

If I'm only going to lose 930 points and the $18 in change I paid in taxes, that's not so bad. I mean, it's not great. It's not as good as free cancellation, but it's better than Air France's cancellation penalty. Yeah. For a cheap award like that. Right, right, right. Does Air France, no, I know like Virgin Atlantic, for example, if you have a really cheap award with low taxes, they just, they don't charge like the full penalty. They just don't give you back the

taxes, right? Or sometimes they do. I can't remember. But Air France doesn't do it that way. I've never seen that before. And my experience with it is that I'm still waiting to, to get it back and or get charged because they don't, they also don't process things immediately. You can cancel online with Flying Blue, but then it takes a while before they confirm what you're going to get. back and whatever. And one time it took so long that by the time they finally emailed me, they were like, you know what, this took so long. We're just waiving the penalty. Oh, nice. Cancellation penalty entirely. All right. So with both programs, there's a random element to what

you're going to get back, right? Yeah. Yeah. And both a random element to how much, because you don't know, really, at the time when you make cancellation, and a random element in terms of how long that's going to take. Sure. Right. Who knows? That one I just mentioned, it was like, like eight months before I got those miles back. That was Air France. Yeah, that was Air France. Eddie Hudd, how long did that take? Two weeks. Two weeks. Two weeks. Two weeks.

So, you know, not as good as... Two weeks. Two weeks of intense calculations. Someone's an abacus or whatever. Yeah, okay. Thousand miles a person, yes. It's tough. It's a tough formula, Greg. Come on now. Totally, yes. Oh, my gosh. So anyway, you may be okay. I would love to have been a fly on the wall in the meeting where they decided on how to process

a 75% or 50% refund on these awards. Well, you know, we've talked before about how mileage brokers ruin a lot of stuff for us and create some of these rules that they want to avoid people buying miles and using them to book stuff. And this type of policy and process would eliminate that, right? That's true. I can't imagine there's a market for that to add miles. Good point.

Good point. Maybe they'll become the most valuable miles out there because no one will ever want to book a cancelable flight. But seriously, I would. If 6,000 miles a person, if that's going to be the penalty, some of these, like some of these JetBlue flights, I put an example in the post with one that was available next week from New York to Nantucket for the weekend. And it was 6,000 miles one way throughout, or 38,000 miles through JetBlue. So like, you know, when the stakes are pretty low like that comparatively, there's times when I think that'll be more appealing. But maybe I'm crazy. No, I mean, that makes sense to me also because, like, we don't really think.

much about it when booking Alaska mileage plan, the old program, awards with partners that where they charge the $12.50 fee and that you don't get back when you cancel. So you can think of it as like a $12.50 cancellation fee in a way. I mean, it's not really a bit, but you get what I'm saying. So it's pretty similar. I mean, that's more. That's worth more $12.50 than $6,000. Eddie had points, I think. So, oh, wait, no. Sorry. I did know that. totally is more than 600 i was thinking like 600 points yeah no this is no it's actually a lot more yes well and the cancellation penalty is obviously not necessarily 6 000 who knows what it right right but some random amount so you might get lucky it was pretty small yeah exactly yeah

all right so there you there you have my experience canceling an attiaad award and then the other update was that on last week's show gregg had asked me if i so i explained last week that booking jet blue flights through Etihad causes some sort of a problem or there's some sort of a problem transmitting the birthday information. And we had heard from readers who said they were not able to check in online for their Adiad booked jet blue flights because the birthday information wasn't transmitted correctly. I had to get that fixed at the airport. And I had that experience where it showed no birthday. It said birthday none for my wife and I. And so I went to the airport with our IDs and got that sorted out. And then you said, well, did you try chatting with JetBlue to see if that would have, if they

would have been able to fix it? And I said, no, I mean, come on. Jeblu is going to tell me to call Adjahad, and Addaat's going to tell me it's JetBlue's fall. But of course, Greg the frequent miler was absolutely right. Because after we got done recording last week's episode, I hopped on JetBlue chat support, which you can do via WhatsApp. That's what I chose because I figured I could start on the computer. And when it took three hours to get to an agent, I could leave my computer and continue the conversation on my phone. But, as it turned out, it only took about two or three minutes to get to somebody. And from there, it took less than five minutes for someone to add our birthdays to the reservation.

So it was very easy to do. I was able to check in online for that ad hoc JetBlue Awards. So thank you very much for the suggestion. Awesome. Awesome. That's great to know. Okay. And then tell us, you also visited an Admiral's Club using your new Strata Elite Card.

but that was maybe not as straightforward as you had hoped how it worked. Yeah, so if you get the Strata Elite card, when you apply in the application process, you can enter your American Airlines loyalty number and then like pretty much instantly after you're approved, well before you get the card, like within minutes of being approved, the lounge passes show up in your American Airlines account. So if you got the American Airlines app, they show up in the app. You got to kind of hunt around to find them with their QR codes. you get four day passes with with the strata elite card and so i went to an admirals club in

chicago and i had the QR code pulled up in the app ready to go and the agent looked at me like i had four heads and wanted our boarding passes and said we didn't have a membership to the admirals club and i said no we got the strata elite card it comes with these four annual passes showed her the QR code again then she wanted to see the credit card and she never heard of the credit card which didn't surprise me it's only been out a few weeks and so yeah yeah but i get these passes and so long story short eventually she's like oh these are like day passes okay this is what we do we got to you know scan the QR code first and then your boarding pass and once she did that it was fine it was easy so if i had known that to lead at the beginning it would have been easier

she was very friendly and nice and willing to continue trying to figure out how to use these sure i could imagine an american airlines agent somewhere that's like no you don't have anything you can't come in and just turn you away so that's why i share the story because if you run into somebody who's having a bad day or a crowded lounge or whatever else, that little tidbit of information that's like an American Airlines day pass I have here might help you out. Yeah, yeah. So it sounds like to, like, first show the QR code to get in. And if there's any confusion, tell them it's a day pass.

That's a day pass. It's like a day pass. And that Nick told you to scan the QR code before the boarding pass in case I try to do it the other way around. Yes. Notable though. So the reason I just said, it's like a day pass is because in the comments on my post, someone asked, well, what about

when they're not taking day passes? Because when they're really full, they sometimes don't take day passes. And a couple of readers said that they were able to get in with the Strata Elite pass, even when the lounge was not accepting day passes. Now, I have no idea whether that will be broadly true or useful, but anyway, maybe we'll still be a good tip. So if that's the situation, do not tell them it's a day pass that's yeah that's that I would start by leading with the QR code and if they're like I don't know what this is say you just have to scan the QR code first and then the boarding pass and they're like but what is this and you can be like well it's like a day pass it comes from the new city credit card and yeah it's not a day pass but it's like one yeah yeah I mean I don't

know whether that's going to help you but that's that's the approach I would take all that sounds good that sounds good luck all right but that's not all for awards points and more frontier is out with an exciting new promotion not sure I'd say exciting but if If you're interested in Flying Frontier, I think it's a really good promotion. And they do this pretty regularly every now and then. The latest one, it's a way to get sort of matched to Frontier Gold status for $69. And the nice thing here is the status then lasts through the end of 2026. So you get about a year and a half of gold status, which will give you free seat selection, free carry-on bags,

and seat upgrades. We think this offer is going to be available through about September 9th, but I'm not 100% sure about that. They say that when you pay for this, the status will be awarded within 24 to 48 hours. At least one reader, though, said that they got the status instantly after doing it. In order to do this, you don't have to have elite status with another program. You have to belong to another program before this offer came out. So you can't go sign up for one of these programs now if you're not already a member. But as long as you're already membered one of these, the following, then you can do this. Southwest Rapid Rewards, JetBlue, Spirit, or Alaska.

So any of those programs, then you can sign up for this. So how do they know that you're a pre-existing member? I'm wondering about that, too. I'm just curious. Anyway, but probably most people listening to this have been a member of one of those things for, you know, more than a minute. Yeah. Or if you're not, you are a member. You know, the free spirit gold status thing, though, well, I framed it as not that exciting by my sarcastic tone. You're right. It's a very good deal if you live somewhere with good frontier service. And I have not lived in a place with good frontier service before. But if I lived in a place with good frontier service before, but if I lived in, in a place where they served a lot of airports. And I think if I was a longtime Southwest loyalist, which I am, and I didn't have one of the Southwest credit cards,

this would start to look pretty appealing because it's cheaper than getting one of the, like the priority card with Southwest and gives you some somewhat similar benefits, free seat selection, carry on bags. This I think could be intriguing. I could see this being worth it for a single, round trip flight, you know, potentially save on the fees for all those things. So yeah, take a look if you plan on flying frontier in the next year and a half. There you go. All right,

this week's main event. Main event time. Seven big, Atmos oddities. So once again, Atmos, Atmos rewards is the new name for Alaska's rewards program. So there's no more Alaska mileage plan. It's now the wonderfully named Atmos. Now, I have a question for you. So I hear you pronouncing it Atmos this week, and last week you were pronouncing it Atmos. And so I'm wondering, do we have an official word on whether it's Atmos or Atmos? You know, I don't know. I haven't watched any videos of the Alaska reps, you know, talking about it.

So I think I switched in my head to Atmos. As you should. For one, you know, one, so that it didn't sound like Atmos, which is one. is what I see when I read it, but also because we talked about how it evokes like the thought of atmosphere. And so I think atmos like that. It's probably what they're going for. I heard some people on social media just like seeing some reels and whatnot that we're pronouncing it at most. And I was like, I think that that's probably not what they're going for because it does sound like at most. But I was just curious if we had atmos is probably what they're going for. I mean, if you want to,

you want to under, shoot, what's that, what's that saying, under, under promise and over, over deliver. That doesn't sound exactly right, but you know what I mean. If you want to do that, what better way than to leak that the name of this new program is at most, and they couldn't even be bothered to add the tea to the end. So that, that gave us really low expectations, but then, you know, surprise everybody. There's a lot of stuff that's surprising about the program, and most of it's good. stuff. Yeah, it is. And so I really applaud them, again, not for the name, but for the delivery of

what they've concocted up here. 100% agree. All right. So let's start with, I'm going to go over sort of the big picture of what's happening now and with Atmos rewards. And then we'll get into what are the seven big Atmos oddities from this new program. All right. Here's a big picture. As I said, Alaska Miles plan is now Atmos Rewards. Hawaiian Miles will be rolled into Atmos Rewards by October 1st of this year. And so again, there will still be Hawaiian Airlines and they'll still be Alaska Airlines, but they'll both have the same rewards program. So this is similar to how Air France and KLM have the same Flying Blue rewards program. But separate airlines, same idea there.

It's different from Ovos, British Airways Avios, Iberia Avios, and many other obios. They share the same currency, the same points, but they don't share the same rewards program. They have separate paths to elite status and separate award charts and all that kind of stuff. So that's the difference, what's going on there. Alaska's $95 cards, they have a personal and business cards. Those have both been rebranded, but otherwise stay pretty much the same as before. So the personal card is called the Atmos Rewards Ascent Visa Signature card, and the business is called

the Atmos Rewards Business Visa card. And the big news about their credit cards, they introduced their premium card finally. And it is called the Atmos Rewards Summit Visa Infinite card. It's $395. dollars. There's so much to say about it. In this show, we're just going to talk about some of the surprising benefits that it has, but we'll do a full coffee break about, you know, the pros and cons of this card soon. More in the big picture. They've changed the name for elite status earnings from elite qualifying miles to status points, which to me evokes like what American Airlines did

with loyalty points. So with Alaskan wine, you now you have status points to get to elite status. Which might make you nervous initially because you're like, oh, they're going to points and not miles anymore,

but don't worry, we'll come back to that. We've got something good, sort of good cooked up there. The status levels will have new names. In the old world, you had MVP, which now will become silver.

MVP gold will now be, I'm sorry, silver requires a 20,000 status points. MVP gold becomes just gold, Atmos Gold, which still requires 40,000 status points. So when I say still, I mean, that's the same as it's been with, in terms of how many EQMs to get to gold. MVP gold 75K becomes Atmos platinum. Now, for 2025 only, the 75K threshold how many points you need to get there remains the same but in 2026 it goes up to 80,000 so they're rounding that up a little bit and then MVP gold 100k which is the top published status

becomes at most titanium status and titanium status will require 100k loyalty or status points in 2025 but 135,000 in 26 so that goes up quite a bit yeah big bump there it's the top tier. So if you're a top tier, I'll ask a flyer. That makes a difference, although there are new ways to earn status points. So it may not be as bad as it initially sounds when you think, oh, it's a 35% increase. Yeah, that's certainly true and not great. But also you've got some more paths now to bridge that gap. Yeah. All right. And the last big, big picture thing to talk about is that there are big welcome offers out for all of these cards. The Summit Visa Infinite has a 100,000 point offer plus a 25K companion certificate thing, which we'll explain later.

But both the $95 cards and the Hawaiian Airlines card from Barclays, so all the rest of these, all these Alaska cards are from Bank of America, but the Barclays Hawaiian Airlines card, so all of these like under $100 cards are out with 80,000 mile offers right now. So there's lots of good welcome offers available right now as we record this. Yeah, and that's pretty interesting, especially because we have long assumed that the Barclays issued Hawaiian cards would go away at some point. And I still assume that, although we think. We think it's, who knows, I guess. I don't know. I did not expect that they would increase the welcome offer on any of the Hawaiian cards this year. So that's great news.

If you haven't yet gotten a Hawaiian card and you're interested, I think it's particularly good news. Although the Summit Visa Infinite, I think, is probably the star of the show in a lot of ways. And we'll come back to that in a little bit. But you promised me seven big Atmos oddities. And so I'm really curious. What's odd? Yeah. Yeah.

All right. Let's start with, I think the biggest surprise of all is they're introducing in 2026, choose how you earn. Nick, I think you need to explain this. What is choose how you earn? And why are we surprised by that? Well, so traditionally, if we go back to, you know, like back in the day, if you've ever seen the movie up in the air with George Clooney,

the way that frequent flyers earned status was by distance flown. And so you'd earn a mile for every mile flown. And so anybody who kind of got into this, I think, under that model, enjoys the idea of earning status through the distance they've flown. And the switch to earning points sounds an awful lot like most airlines, which have now switched. Many airlines have switched away from that distance flown model, and instead now award you some sort of status points

based on how much money you spend with the airline. That's the new model these days. And so there's a little friction between, you know, the old guard that prefers distance-based and kind of the new model everybody's going to, which awards spend. And so I think we were all worried that Alaska was going to switch away from distance-based and go to a more revenue-based program, but they really surprised us. And, you know, I sat in on a meeting with Alaska representatives last year, where they said they knew distance-based awards or distance-based status was important to some people, but the industry

was going in a different direction, and they really wanted to give people the opportunity to choose. And I thought that there was maybe just some amount of marketing to that where they were trying to say that they were going to go revenue based. But as it turns out, they really wanted to give people the ability to choose because you're going to have the opportunity to choose how you want to earn status, which is totally innovative. We have not seen something quite like this. I don't think from any other program. So starting in 2026. Let me just correct one thing. You said how to earn status, but it's both status and points from paid flights.

So you're earning both. You're earning redeemable points and status points. There you go. Yes, thank you. That is very important. So you can choose to earn based on distance flown. And if you choose that metric distance that I was just talking about, you'll earn one point for every mile you fly and you'll earn your status points based on distance.

So if you fly really far, then you're going to earn a lot of miles. And if you fly a lot of short flights, that may not work out. out as well for you. But this is sort of the traditional distance-based model. So you could choose that. And again, this is for flights starting in 2026. The program change is coming in 226. Or you could choose to earn points based on the price that you've paid. And if you choose that model, you'll earn five points for every dollar you spend on flights, which is more similar to what we've seen from many other airlines these days that have gone more revenue-based. So you'll learn one, or rather five points per spent, and you'll still be able to earn status points from award flights, but that'll work a little

bit differently if you choose the points based on spend as the way you earn your Alaska points. Then if you do that, your award flights will earn one point for every 20 points you redeem. So when you redeem 20 points, you'll earn one status point. So that's if you choose that metric, or you could choose to earn by segments flown. And if you choose this, you'll earn 500 points. points per segment flown, and award flights will also earn 500 points per segment towards status. So if you're somebody who flies a lot of the short West Coast routes, I could see potentially this might work out that you earn 500 points per segment. Maybe that works out to be

better than earning five points per dollar spent. If you're flying a lot of very cheap sort of short distance flights, then this may work out to be better for you. And you can change which of those ways you earn points, both in terms of redeemable points and status points, once per year. So if this year you know you're going to be spending a ton of money on Alaska flights or your employer is going to be spending a ton of money on your Alaska flights and you want to earn points that way this year, great. And then the next year, if you know you've got some really long distance award flights booked and you want to go to distance space instead, then you may change it the next year. So that's pretty cool. It's really cool. And a couple of things.

one is that in no matter which one you choose you can continue to earn status on award flights even awards booked on partners which is really great so today as we report this in 2025 all you get as distance flown is the way you get rewarded and and on award flights you get rewarded based on how far you you fly um you get rewarded in terms of um the equivalent in terms of status points not not uh redeemable points And, you know, they figured out how to award these status points, regardless of what you choose, I find really cool. So, you know, Nick mentioned, well, what if you fly a lot on the West Coast, those short flights, those short Alaska flights? But another option, you might on the East Coast be flying lots of those short American Airlines flights for only 4,500.

I was about to say Alaska miles, 4,500 at most, Atmos Miles, each segment, and earning 500 status points for each of those. And that might be a good way for you to do that. So it's really great. I have a little bit. The one downside to it is I think it causes a little bit of anxiety about which you choose, because you don't know. But, like, I book a blend of long-distance awards and those short American Airlines awards,

which one is, am I going to do more in order to get the most out of this? I'm not sure. I hope that when they roll this out, they'll have something that tells you, you know, like, based on your flight pattern last year, this will be the most rewarding for you if you do that again. Yeah, maybe. That's interesting. It's an interesting dilemma to consider. I don't know. For me, it's a clear, one clear choice. I don't spend enough on paid flights for choosing the five points per dollar spent. So that one's an easy one to eliminate. And distance flown to me outpaces the 500 per segment based on my travel patterns by a wide margin. If I fly one round trip to Europe a year, that's got to be 5,000 miles or so in distance. So I'd have to be booking more than 10 of those short American Airlines type awards.

that you're talking about to come out ahead with 500 points per segment. So for me, it's pretty easy because I would probably fly at least once a year to Europe using Alaska miles for the foreseeable future anyway for the next few years. So distance flown wins for me by a wide margin. And then if you include the distance on those short American Airlines awards, there aren't very many of those that I'll take that are shorter than 500 miles traveled. There may be a few, but not enough for there to be enough margin there. to matter. Yeah, that's a really good point. Usually they're very close to 500, if not 500.

Yeah, no, that's a great point. Another thing I just noticed as you're talking is that one thing that makes things very different about booking partner awards is right now with distance-based, you'll earn the same number of status points regardless whether you're booking economy, business class, or first class on a partner, or I should add thrown premium economy, which is another possibility. But if you do it based on price paid, you'll learn more status points for the more expensive awards. And so there may be situations where you're booking business or first class, even a long distance, where it might work out better. But as I think about the few that I've booked in the past year, that's not true in those examples. I think I earn more by distance, but it's close.

Yeah, I mean, it depends. you know, so if you, if you're in one for every 20 points, you're redeem, if you redeem, you know, 20, 200,000 miles for flights, let's say, you're going to earn, you know, what, 10,000 status points. So would you fly more than 10,000 miles using that 200,000, you know, depends. You have to look at where you're traveling. I think it's not hard to imagine earning more based on distance flown there, but it's also not hard to imagine that somebody might be just flying shorter routes that don't earn as much. So you'll have to do the math. But like you said, I really commend Alaska on the creativity required to come up with a way to, A, give people a choice, and then B, still make the award flights rewarding in a way that makes sense along with those different metrics, and that doesn't make one necessarily the clear winner for everyone. So, like, I just gave that example of redeeming 200,000 miles earning 10,000 status points if you are choosing the price paid method of being rewarded and saying, you know, probably you would fly a little bit longer, but then maybe not, you know, it's like it's not, it's not

lopsided. It's pretty even. And I, yeah, hats off to whoever ran the numbers and did the math to figure that out. Right, right. And also hats off to them not having all kinds of exceptions and limitations to all this the way the airplane guys. We're doing some, I mean, they don't have this type of redemption, but they were doing similar types of work to their program, and they just made it so complicated. Anyway, so this is kind of complicated in a way, but I think in a good way because it's giving you choice, and I don't know how you could not like that, appreciate that. Yeah, no, I totally agree.

It does somewhat perhaps sound complicated explaining it, but really, I think that this is an amazingly simple, innovative change for how much variation there is here. I think they simplified it as much as possible. And again, just really innovative. They made something different, whether you love it or hate it, even if you look at this and you say, I hate this, which I think I'd have a hard time wrapping my mind around why one would hate this over the current system. I'm not really sure that there's any loss. There's just additional choices here. There's not much loss anyway, if there's anything. Yeah.

But even if you hate it, you have to at least look at it and say, well, they didn't copy what American and Delta and United are doing. They did something different. They totally did. And that's awesome. All right. The next oddity is you have to understand most airline loyalty programs that advertise, that elite status gives you free upgrades.

The way they usually work is that you are on an upgrade list. at the airport or some number of days before your flight, but only for domestic or regionalish flights. Like they have different definitions of what qualifies, but the point is long distance international flights, I can't think of any program where they're published status levels include that you can get on a free upgrade list. You have to get some kind of upgrade certificate

in order to have a hope of upgrading on an international flight to, like business class. So Alaska's bucking that trend by offering their top tier titanium status members, complementary international business class upgrades starting, I think, sometime next year. I forget the exact date. This is really interesting because like you said, we haven't seen this before. Now, the complementary international business class upgrades, as I understand, will be only in the day of departure. These will clear. But I find this fact. fascinating for somebody who has the flexibility to book an award and see if the upgrade clears.

And if it does great and if it doesn't, then maybe you don't go on that if you have the flexibility to make that kind of last minute change. So I think that's going to be awesome for those people who are able to take advantage of A, the flexibility and then B, the people who obviously can just use it because they're flying economy in a long distance award. And now suddenly their top-tier status gives them something really meaningful. I mean, the difference between flying an economy or even premium economy on one of those international awards and a flatbed seat in business class will be a huge upgrade. Yeah, yeah. You know, I would guess that when you're flying out of Seattle, it might be, you might have a lot of competition for, against other

titanium members, but when flying back from somewhere or flying some other route, you know, from some other location, you know, maybe it won't be too bad, but I don't think it'd be anywhere near like what United or Delta, they have so many top-tier elites that, you know, expecting an upgrade even for a regional flight can be really tough. In this case, you know, I think if you saw a few days before that there's still a bunch of business class seats for sale, I would guess that you have a really good shot. So this is pretty nice, pretty nice change. Yeah, I mean, it certainly makes it appealing to stretch for that top tier status. You know, the, obviously they've increased their requirement, but I can imagine some people will stretch

for that, you know, they're close to it anyway or that can get there in order to have that. Now, obviously, it's not going to happen every time. And like you said, there are situations where it'll be very unlikely to happen. But cool benefit that I'm surprised nobody else offers, because When there's the space right before departure, why not reward those people who have been most engaged with the program? I think that makes a lot of sense. The additional cost of upgrading one of those people to one of those seats, slightly better food, maybe a little bit more in terms of drinks.

It's got to be minimal. So, well done. Thank you for doing that one. Yeah, totally. All right. The next set of oddities all have to do with the Visa Infinite card, the Summit Visa Infinite. card. These are things that are benefits tied to having that card. The first up is that the card offers two ways to get something called Global Companion Awards. First of all, every year that you

have the card, you get a 25K Global Companion Award. And each membership year with $100,000, no, with $60,000 spend, you get 100K Global Companion Award. Now, what is a Global Companion Award? Now, what is a Global companion award and why are we surprised by it? Well, first of all, if you, you know, you think of credit card benefits as being gimmicky, these are anything but these are really pleasantly surprising. So these are a certificate you can use to, for a companion, flying with you or flying with someone on an award, doesn't even have to be you traveling. And it gives you that face value off of the second passenger's award. So the 25K certificate, for instance, if I were an award, if I redeem points for my wife and I to travel somewhere, let's say to Europe,

then that 25K certificate will take 25,000 miles off the cost of her award. You can top off so we can be booking an award that costs 50 or 60,000 miles and I can top off with the rest, or maybe we'd be flying a round-trip domestic award and hers would be entirely free, perhaps, if mine was only 25,000 points round-trip and there was enough space for that. So these are a straight up discount for that companion. Now, you won't get anything back if you don't use the full value, but if you want to use more, you can top off with additional points, which makes these worth pretty close potentially to their face value, depending on how you'll use them, or at least the 25K one is pretty easy, I think, to get full face value out of. After 60,000 spend, the 100K

K certificate works the same as the 25K one. That one might be a little tougher because Alaska has a really good award chart. So in order to get the full face value out of that, you'll, in many cases, probably have to be booking a round trip award, which we often, I know you and I both talk about how we more often book one way awards internationally than round trip. So that might make the 100K one a little bit harder to get full value out of. But again, very similar to what I just described. If you want to book an award that costs more than 100,000 miles, you can just add the additional points for your companion. And like I said, it doesn't actually have to be your companion. I could be booking an award for, you know, my sister and her husband to go somewhere, and I could

use one of these companion certificates to save on the second person's ticket, which is amazing. I am really surprised. You know, so on the one hand, these are kind of like bogos, buy one, get one at a discount, coupons. On the other hand, like, there's so much less restrictions to these than any other companion award I can think of out there, except Southwest. Southwest is great. But, you know, if you think about, like, both Virgin Atlantic and British Airways have companion certificates that you get that are kind of like this, but they're only good on their own flights, and they also have other restrictions about under which types of flights you can book with these things. There's no restrictions here. You can

book, you can book flights on American Airlines, on Japan Airlines, whoever, and just get a discount off the second passenger's flight. So, you know, as long as you have a second passenger, these are really easy to use. And so I applaud them for that, for sure. Yeah, I mean, it's amazing you can use them on partner awards and awards that aren't operated by Alaska or Hawaiian at all. It's pretty incredible that you can use them on all the partner awards and that you could use them for somebody else. So, you know, if you, if you happen to get to a point where it's going to expire, or you just want to treat somebody with something, you know, you want to give them something that would be worth far more to them than what it's essentially costing you. There, I think there's just

a lot of opportunity with these. They'll expire a year after they're earned, but that 25K companion certificate is just an automatic benefit every year with the card. And you get that hour, however many weeks it is, it'll take for it to, to post. And then it should expire a year later. And the K again after 60K spend. It'll expire after a year. But keep in mind that you could use that for travel that happens until the end of the booking calendar. So for instance, if I opened that card right now and got one of those 25K certificates, my 25K certificate would be valid until August of 2026. But you know, come June, July, August of 2026, I could book a flight that is in 2027 potentially with that companion certificate. So really got a pretty wide range of time to use.

it. They're pretty flexible. They are still something that expires in a year, and it may be difficult to get full value out of them depending on your travel patterns. Obviously, if you're booking really cheap domestic awards, you may not be able to get full value out of the 25K certificate. And the 100K, like we said, almost requires that you're booking a round trip award potentially. So there are some limitations, but these are about as good as it gets. Yeah, it really is. I do, you know, it's not all roses in that like I when I look at that 100 K certificate I don't see it for me at least as being worth a hundred thousand points it's very very complicated like so when I first looked at I thought oh 60,000 spend and you get this 100 K certificate that's that's more than one point extra on that spend not that 60K spend is easy to do I'm just saying it sounded like you know it's getting close to 2x on top of whatever the card's already earning um so uh you know that sounded great but then as i thought about how i've actually used uh alaska mileage plan in the past year i've i've often booked

multiple people on one reservation that's not an issue but i haven't had a single award that cost more than 45 000 points that i've booked with this program so if i had the certificate what i don't think it'll be saving me 100 000 points i think what it will be doing is changing changing my behavior in certain ways. For example, in some cases, they offer more award inventory, even on partners for higher award price. And I usually don't look at those awards, right? But I can imagine saying, oh, I really want to fly to Japan on this date and I could get

this price that normally is like way more miles than I'd want to spend. But, oh, wait, for the second person, let's, I'm just going to make them a number, $120,000. points. So yes, I'd have to pay 120 for me, but for my wife, I would pay a total of 20,000 because I'd be using that 100,000 point certificate. So 140,000. So on average, it's 70,000 for passenger. So I'm going to book that and enjoy the fact that it gave me a way to get a cheap price on a flight that I couldn't find available at cheap price anyway. So it would still have a lot value in that situation, but it's nowhere comparable to saying it's equal to 100,000 points, if you get what I'm saying. Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. It's not, A, if it's changing your

behavior, and B, if you're mostly booking awards where you wouldn't get full value. But I think that there are a lot of people, or there must be a lot of people that do book those expensive awards also, that they say, you know what, this is my schedule, and I want to fly business class, and I'm going to pay the 175,000 miles or whatever it is. And if you're that person, you're that person, you're, Well, this is going to save you a real 100,000 points. That's true. So I think that there are people that will be able to look at it and say, no, that's, that's going to be worth it to me. And even in your example, you would, you know, take a situation where perhaps there weren't any awards available at a reasonable price.

And all of a sudden you create a situation where there is. And that that's pretty highly valuable too. So but, but like you said, I don't usually book round trip. So it would complicate my award searches. It would make my life a little bit more difficult because I'd have to. define those situations to use it. So you're absolutely right. I wouldn't value it at 100k either, but even if we only valued it at 50K, that's still a pretty decent additional return on spend. Sure, sure. Yeah, I think that's pretty cool. Yeah. But that's not it. That's not all.

It is not all. Another thing that the summit card gives you is free point sharing. So you can create a point sharing group of up to 10 people and move points between. people for free. There's no limits to how many you can move. There's no limits to how many times you can move points. And so, yeah, so that's something we were worried because the Hawaiian airlines cards give you the ability to move points for free from person to person. And we thought once this became one single program, we'd lose that ability. Now we see a path forward where as long as someone in your sphere has a, has this somewhat visa infinite card, then moving points between your group will work for free.

You know, this also gives me faith in the promises that Alaska makes because, again, last year they had said that they found that benefit valuable and intriguing and didn't want to have it unlimited the way that Hawaiian did, but that they were working. working on how they could incorporate that into the program. And here you have it. So sure enough, they found a way to make that doable. And this is all I really want. I don't really need the ability to transfer to anybody. If my kids, I can move their points to my account or mine to my wife's or whatever the case may be. That's really what I want. So I love that they've added this. I wish other airlines would add this as well. Other U.S.-based

airlines, if you're listening, a way to share your points with the rest of your family would be really nice and sure would and you know some airlines have done some things towards that like united has their pool link but um but it has limitations on it and and so it's just refreshing to be able to just have a straight up way to just move the points and and you're done um so that's uh that's great yep all right now they've got this $50 instant travel delay credit and this fits in the seven oddities for sure. What is this about? Explain this to me how it works and what the deal is. So the way it's supposed to work is if you're flying Alaska Airlines and there's a two-hour or greater delay, you should just get a message from Alaska saying you've qualified for this $50 instant

travel delay credit. And the ideas, then you can use that. It's kind of like how some airlines, when there's a delay at the airport. They might issue you like a little voucher, like a food voucher or something. You can go buy like $20 worth of food at one of the airport restaurants. It's kind of like that, except it's tied to your credit card automatically.

You get it automatically, if this all works as advertised. And then you can go to any of the stores in the airport, or it doesn't even have to be in the airport, but within the next 48 hours, use your Atmos Visa Infinite, your Summit Visa Infinite card, and you should get $50 rebate on whatever you spend. You know, it's not for all merchants everywhere, but there's a very wide list of merchant codes that are eligible. And they describe it as restaurants, clothing and retail stores, grocery and pharmacy stores, department stores, and more.

That's incredible. The breadth of it is incredible. That's, if it works out well, if it works as advertised, that's awesome because, you know, if your flight gets canceled or something, you may very well need to go buy something, not just food, but you may need something else even more importantly and more urgently. So, so I think it's great that they're doing that. I think it's a little weird because I don't yet know. Are you going to text message?

Are you confident that you're going to get a text? Is that how you're going to find out that you've qualified for this? I don't know if they said text or email or something. Okay, but you would receive some notification that you're eligible for it. Well, that's good. I was picturing that you were going to have to just spend and hope that you get the credit later on. But if it's automatic that you'll get notified, that's great. It'll be nice to have that.

I mean, it's kind of like the trip delay coverage, which this card does, I believe, also have trip delay coverage on top of that for six hours or more than you get additional coverage. But with like a two or three hour delay or something, I could certainly see this coming in handy, 50 bucks would be nice for my family to be able to grab a bite to eat in the airport at least if we had a long delay. Yeah, I said in my post about the card that I really wish Delta would copy this.

I would love for United to copy this. I don't want American Airlines to copy this because their flights are so often delayed that they'll go out of business and then they'll be gone. We won't be able to use those, we won't be able to use those 4,500 point awards to fly American Airlines.

anymore because they won't exist. Oh, so true. I laughed out loud when I read that. It was so true. You know, somebody's going to make out really well on this because they're going to be in a situation where there's a weather sort of a thing. And so they get this for the first flight that gets canceled and then they get put on another flight and that flight gets delayed.

I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure you're limited to like one a day or one per some period of time. Yeah. All right. Thanks so much for that. Go ahead. All right. The next.

The next. oddity is their exclusive lounge bar program. And I had to throw this in here just because it's a fun little perk, but it's just so weirdly specific, I think. So this one, if you have the summit card, then you get two complementary signature cocktails or a selection from the elevated bar menu upon showing your Atmos Rewards Summit Visa Infinite card at an Alaska lounge. So go into an Alaska lounge, which by the card, by the way, this wasn't an oddity I'm calling out, but the card only gives you two Alaska lounge visits per quarter, but when you use those or when you get in some other way, then you can get two complimentary cocktails just by showing

your card, which I find that interesting too, because I'm pretty sure this card has free authorized users, just saying. Greg's going to the bar. All right, so, I think it's kind of interesting. They also mentioned selection from the elevated bar menu, so I don't know what that looks like. I haven't been in an Alaska lounge in a long time, so I don't know exactly what to expect. But I mean, kind of cool. Like you said, there's only the two a year, though, so kind of limited, although if you've

got access some other way, you know, flying business class. No, not two a year. I believe this is two for every time. No, two quarter. Oh, two every time. That's right. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

You only get two Alaska. Lounge visits per quarter, but unless I'm wrong about this benefit, I think it's anytime you show your card, you get two, but you're limited to for that visit. Yes, no, I think you're right. I think you're right. Very good. All right. So that's an interesting little oddity. I'm curious what motivated that and how popular that will be. But we'll see. All right. All right. Finally, go ahead. One more out of it, right? Because I don't count six so far. Right. The last one, we knew this was coming. for a long time, but it was hard to believe.

But it's here, 3x for all international spend. That is indeed surprising. And, you know, some people look at that and I think probably say I don't travel abroad enough for that. But on the flip side, if you're an expat, this is the card to get probably, right? I mean, 3x on all international spend. Wow. It's a no-brainer.

Yeah. Yeah. Pretty wild. Yeah. You know what's why this is. so surprising is, is many countries outside of the United States. They limit interchange fees. So, so the banks cannot charge much per transaction for credit card swipes. So this is a big loss leader, I believe, for Alaska and Bank of America for doing this. And, you know, I'm assuming

they're they're assuming that it won't be used to such excess that it all bankrupt them and I hope not but I mean if I was living abroad or even you know there's a bunch of people that live like months at a time abroad you know I I think it'd be crazy not to have this card and just use it for almost everything yeah I mean or you had a particularly expensive overseas charge that you're going to incur then it could certainly be worth it if there you're buying something that was super expensive. I could definitely see situations where this will be really appealing. I think if you travel a lot internationally, this may not be wildly exciting because, I mean, you made the point I think in your post that things like restaurants

and trains and car rentals, if you're somebody who travels a lot and you have a collection or credit cards, you probably have a card in your wallet that already offers three X on most travel type purchases and dining. It's more so if you've got everyday types, spend like grocery stores or if you could pay your rent on a card i don't know as though there's anywhere overseas you could do that but if you were living overseas and that was a possibility or you were buying a vehicle and you were able to put it on a card again those are things that may not be very easily doable overseas but i bet there are places where you can so um so yeah i can totally see it being a cool thing for those folks it's again kind of odd but i think when i look at

the overall situation here i think that most airline and hotel credit cards are like sock drawer cards, right? There are things that you get maybe for the benefits they have unless you're spending towards elite status and otherwise it kind of goes away. Alaska made that a lot different here. They really, I think, tried to make it a card that they want you to, well, of course, they all want you to spend on it, but they give you a lot of reasons to spend on it. Like that $50 credit, I think you only get that if you use the card to pay for your flight. And so there's a bunch of those types of things. And then you got the the big spend benefit, obviously, at 60K,

and the 3X when you're overseas so that you will carry this card and use it and create that habit. So I think that's a lot of stuffed in there to motivate your behavior. And I think they did well with that. Right, right. It also gives you one status point for every $2 you spend, which is better than what the other Alaska cards gives you. And, you know, so again, I can imagine someone living overseas

earning elite status, maybe earning, you know, enough to get to one world, you know, Sapphire or Emerald, so that you get into the nice lounges when you're traveling on a one world airline. So you might be traveling entirely like on British Airways and Iberia and those kind of those, if you're in Europe, for example, and getting into the nice lounges, even though you're just flying economy. And that would be pretty cool. Yeah, absolutely. And we'll talk more about that. Like you said, I think there's enough to discuss on a coffee break that's entirely dedicated to the card, but that's certainly a number of the addities with the new Atmos program, certainly spring from the summit card. So more to say on that in a coffee break coming

soon. Yep. I think that ties that up and brings us to this week's question of the week. This week's question of the week came in via email, and I thought this one was worth discussing, even though I think maybe the answer will be obvious to you, Greg. I think it's, probably worth talking about for other folks out there who run into this and aren't familiar with it. So let's see, Megan wrote in and said, I have a Sapphire preferred card and my husband has a Chase Sapphire Reserve card. When booking our first The Edit booking, we found that the Chase Sapphire preferred price for the property we were looking at was about $66 cheaper than the Sapphire Reserve price for the same hotel. We booked it despite the higher price. It's our best option

using the edit for using the edit credit. They wanted to use the edit credit that exists for new Sapphire Reserve cardholders. So I'm betting a bunch of your readers might have a household where one person has a Sapphire preferred and one person has a Sapphire Reserve. While I know the Sapphire Preferred booking wouldn't come with the edit perks, I'm wondering if Chase charges two different prices for other hotels outside of the edit hotels. Have you done any analysis on that? Are they charging Sapphire Reserve cardholders consistently more compared to Sapphire Preferred

card holders outside of the edit. What do you think? Is this something that is happening? Do you think that they're charging Sapphire Reserve cardholders more? Does it surprise you that a Sapphire Reserve cardholder sees a higher price for a the edit booking than a Sapphire preferred cardholders? This is a great observation, great question. What I'm sure is happening here is that they're not charging one person more because they

have the Sapphire Reserve and another person less because they don't. what I think is happening is they are charging more for a the edit booking so the edit is is the program where you get all those extra perks when you book including I think a hundred dollar property credit and and so you know right there could explain why they they need to charge more for those bookings and so I think that's all that's happening there is that chase is unfortunately not making it possible when you're logged into your sapphire reserve card to choose. I don't want this to be

the edit booking. I want this to be a regular booking so I could save some money. It would be really nice if they'd do that. I think it was, what was it the Stratacard that lets you do that?

Yeah, I don't recall. I don't recall. You might be right. One of the elite programs that are, one of the hotel booking programs that are through a credit card company will actually let you pick.

Do you want the higher price with more perks? or the lower price without those perks. And I think that's a really customer-friendly way of doing it. It really is, yeah. And so worth mentioning is that you may notice different pricing with the edit or find hotels and resorts or whatever else than what you can get elsewhere. And it's worth shopping around sometimes because it may or may not be worth the additional

cost. Now, programs like the edit, find hotels and resorts and city reserve, I think, or whatever they call their program. is that usually they are offering what the standard rate is for the hotel, whatever the standard rate is. Now, if you're booking a hotel that's in some sort of a membership program, that's perhaps a chain property, for instance, or you're booking a hotel where you could have a AAA discount, et cetera, there may be other better rates available for that place. And we've talked about that before. You might be, if you're booking a Marriott property, it may cost less

if you're booking in the Marriott app, then it will if you're booking in Final hotels and resorts, because in the Marriott app, you might have access to the Marriott member rate or AAA rate, different other things. And so you have to decide are the edit benefits worth the additional cost. And so my bet here is that any particular property you're looking at, when you're looking at it through the Sapphire preferred, you may be seeing a rate that is one of those discounted rates. Maybe it's non-refundable and the edit booking is refundable. So there may be some other differences between them. So it's not just, best price you got to look at the cancellation policy and benefits as well. But yes, I think that

it is interesting that they don't offer you the opportunity to see both prices with most of these booking platforms. It would be nice to have access to either or. Right. I found the information directly from Tim, our very own Tim, who said, City is the only one I know of that on the booking page allows you to choose whether to pay more for the reserve benefits. That's what they call their hotel, luxury hotel collection, or less for booking without those benefits. Yep, very good. And if you use a program like MasterCard, what is it, MasterCard, Travel, oh man, I can't remember what it's called. There is a, yeah, there is some sort of like a luxury booking platform through MasterCard. And that platform, which is totally separate from any particular

card issuer, gives you similar opportunity to choose whether you want to book with benefits. Some of them come with varying credits. It's not. standardized and simple like most of FHR and the edit but rather it could vary from like a $20 credit to a $50 credit or whatever and you can choose to book with benefits or without there as well so maybe that's more of a mastercard thing and that's why a city is able to offer it I don't know but anyway there you have it so that's the answer to this week's question of the week if you would like to ask questions like that on a more regular basis you could join our frequent myler insider's facebook group and ask there wherever you're watching or listening don't forget to like this

give us a thumbs up. We appreciate that. Thank you very much for joining us this week. If you have a question that you'd like to be considered for a future question of the week or a piece of feedback for a giant mailbag, you can send that too. Send it to mailbag at Frequentmiler.com. Bye, everybody. stories from 75 countries, from backpacking tips, epic adventures and plenty of travel inspiration. Alongside that, I host guest interviews every two weeks. Check it out at voyscape.com.