Frequent Miler on the Air - Airline loyalty shake up: Big news from Aeroplan, British Airways, JetBlue and more | Ep180 | 12-10-22

Episode Date: December 10, 2022

Aeroplan adds the ability to book Emirates awards, British Airways lets you pay more Avios and less money, JetBlue totally revamps its loyalty program and more. Greg and Nick discuss this week's big loyalty news and more. Join our email list to read even more: FrequentMiler.com/Subscribe 00:28 Giant mailbag: Etihad sweet spot on Asiana https://frequentmiler.com/best-ways-to-get-to-asia-using-miles-premium-cabins/ 3:16 What crazy thing....did Southwest Airlines do this week? 7:30 Mattress running the numbers: Necker Island is back and there's a 30% transfer bonus. Is it worth it? https://frequentmiler.com/necker-island-book-with-virgin-points/ 18:09 Awards we booked this week: IHG search results weirdness (don't forget to scroll to the bottom!) 20:49 Main Event: Airline loyalty shakeup: Big news from Aeroplan, British Airways, JetBlue, and more 21:05 Aeroplan adds the ability to earn & redeem on Emirates https://frequentmiler.com/book-emirates-through-aeroplan-econ-business-now-first-class-to-come/ 30:09 British Airways adds option to pay more Avios and less money https://frequentmiler.com/british-airways-adds-option-to-use-more-avios-less-money/ 36:26 Alaska adds the ability to book El Al online https://frequentmiler.com/transfer-partner-master-list/ 40:12 JetBlue's new loyalty program https://frequentmiler.com/jetblue-adding-multiple-elite-status-levels-in-2023/ 1:01:49 Question of the Week: How long does it take for Marriott elite nights to post when you get a new credit card? Music credit: Annie Yoder

Let's get into the Giant Mailbag. What crazy thing did Citi do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event. Frequent miler on the air starts now. Today's main event, airline loyalty shakeup. There's big news from Aeroplan, British Airways, JetBlue, and more.

We'll get into all of that. But first, of course, giant mailbag time. What's in our giant mail today is a comment from Seth in reaction to the post, best ways to get to Asia using miles. And the post is specifically about premium cabins, so like business and first class and Seth writes, I was doing some random award search, word chart research and found a decent sweet spot. I haven't heard covered much. Isiana business class from the West coast, LA and San Francisco to South Korea for 59,000 Etihad miles. So Etihad partners with Asiana and Etihad has a distance-based award chart for, I guess, most partners or at least for Asiana. And he found that flights under 6,000

miles price at 59K and that these two airports to south korea just happen to be uh just under that distance and so that's a nice sweet spot i wasn't aware of um he goes on to mention that any transfer bonus to edihad of course would make it a great deal right right oh yeah that's a good one to keep an eye on and and see what happens with it you know they used to also reliably offer a lot of space on their flights and it used to be the way that you get like six seats in business class to asia because they used to release that many very frequently though i think they have not been nearly so generous these last couple of years so and i don't know what's going on with the whole

takeover with korean is korean still taking them over? Are they becoming part of Korean Airlines? I don't know what's up there. I assume so. I have no idea. And I don't know that that'll make any difference with the Etihad partnership at all. But a lot of question marks for the future. But a really good one to keep in mind if you're West Coast based or willing to position there. Yeah.

Yeah. And sort of as an aside, I mean, you mentioned how they used to open all this word space. I feel like all the patterns like that, that we got used to pre-pandemic are now all up in the air. We just don't know anymore. So we're relearning. And I think airlines are continually changing how they do things anyway in reaction to change circumstances post-pandemic. And so it's just an interesting observation that not only are the old patterns no longer necessarily relevant, but even any new patterns we find might just be temporary because airlines are continually adapting. And so it just changes.

It's a musical segment of our show. And that concludes the musical segment of our show. And that concludes it. So let's move into what crazy thing Southwest did this week. So I had a flight booked on Southwest last week and I ended up changing and flying with JetBlue instead. But but I had gotten as far as check in for the flight. Now, the way we had this booked was my wife and my two sons were booked under one reservation and my wife had earned the companion pass. So she added me as her companion.

And if you're not familiar with Southwest, the companion gets a different PNR, a totally different number to check in and all the rest of that. So I was totally separate, but my wife and my two sons were on one reservation and my sons are young. They're like, you know, two and four. So a young kids with my wife. So 24 hours before the flight, I went to check them in. Like I always do right on the dot. Soon as the clock turned 24 hours, check them in successfully. And on the first leg of that trip, my wife's boarding position was a 45 and my two sons who were traveling with her and are four and two years old, got B 16 and B 17. How does that happen? Like good luck getting them to stand in line by themselves Southwest because they are not going to stay in B-16 and B-17 without a parent.

So, yeah, that was weird. How did that even happen? And then to make matters even weirder, I only checked myself in like 12 hours later or something like that. And I got a 25, 20 spots in front of my wife who checked in right at 24 hours. And, and, and neither of you have any kind of status,

a list status or some other kind of magical reason for getting better boarding position. Right. So absolutely not. No. Yeah. Okay. Well,

that definitely qualifies as a crazy thing. Crazy thing. Make any sense. Weird. Um weird um now before before listeners uh jump in you should mention probably that it wouldn't have really mattered because of because of their um family boarding uh that's that's right families after group a so after group a is done, they do elite status with Southwest and maybe military members, active military duty, and then family boarding. So families traveling with kids under six years old board before the B group anyway. So all four of us would have boarded before B group. So I don't always worry about checking in right at 24 hours because it doesn't really

matter. We're going to get the seats we want because luckily, you know, we're traveling with young kids. So none of that would have mattered. My kids wouldn't have really stood in line by themselves in the B group. It's just crazy that they would have put it that way. It's not even like she was A60 and they were B1 and B2 or something. They were like, you know,

30 people apart or something. It was crazy. Right, right. Well, just your check-in experience goes against everything we thought we knew about how Southwest boarding, you know, process and everything works. I mean, we thought that flight, right? So I had a 25 and I canceled. So what happens? Cause a 26 doesn't move up. They keep their a 25. So I guess the next person who checks in gets a 25. So that's where I guess that happened. And maybe that's what happened with my wife, a 45 had canceled. So she got that. And my kids got the next two spots. I

guess that's probably where it came from in hindsight. Now, I hadn't even thought about that until right now. So, but yeah. For the elderly computer people that are listening to this, you might remember that you used to have to defragment your hard drive to get it to speed up. And that's because like files would get saved in different places in the hard drive, wherever there was little openings. And that's kind of sounds would get saved in different places in the hard drive, wherever there was little openings.

And that's kind of sounds like what's happening here. They're putting whatever little openings they have in the boarding groups. They just stick people into those little holes and there's no defragmentation process to. Clearly not. Clearly not. So defragment your drive, Southwest. Defragment your drive. Defragment your boarding process.

That brings us, I think, to this week's Mattress Running the Numbers. Is that the next thing up? Mattress Running the Numbers? So this week's Mattress Running the Numbers, we have a transfer bonus to Virgin Atlantic, which is particularly interesting because this week, you wrote about the fact that one can once again book a celebration week on Necker Island. Tell us about that and what that means.

Yeah. So Necker Island is Sir Richard Branson's private island in the British Virgin Isles. And a number of times per year, let's call it 10, I don't know how many times, they set aside a whole week called Celebration Week. And they let people book a room basically on the island for around $35,000. And that covers two people for seven days. And everything's included, all the food, alcohol, activities, all kinds of great stuff. And Richard Branson is really there. I mean, he spends his time on the, a lot of time on the island. He works and plays on the island.

He joins guests for parties and for meals and everything. So as long as he's not off the whole week on business or some other kind of travel, you're likely to meet him if that's of interest to you. And for years, it used to be that you could book that celebration week with Virgin Atlantic miles. Originally, I think it was 1 million miles for the week. Then it became 1.2 million miles. And that's how much I paid when my wife and I went in 2016. And we had a fantabulous time. It was, it was spectacular. Like just a, it's, it's almost a haze. Like everything was so out of this world from, you know, arriving, you get to this little island near Necker Island. That's the closest place where you can fly into.

And they, they pick you up on a speedboat and take you that way. I mean, push, push champagne in your hand, first of all, and take you, uh, across to, uh, Necker Island and, and Richard Branson like steps out of a little building and comes and shakes everyone's hands. And, and, uh, then they had like an incredible spread of food and then they, you know, they, they um take us in little golf carts up to our rooms where our bags are already ready and everything and um and then the whole week was just absolutely incredible i um my wife and i made friends like so there's only i think there were maybe uh 14 or 15 couples on the island all together. And a couple of them, we made friends with a lot of

them. But a couple of them, you know, we made good enough friends, we've seen them a number of times since then. So we made friends in England and friends in Grand Cayman. And we've had the pleasure of like, you know, seeing them in their hometown, so to speak, afterwards a number of times. And, and so it's just like the, the great experience of Necker Island wasn't limited to just that week because of, because of those kinds of lasting things. And so it's an amazing experience, but it's now back. So the ability to book with Virgin Atlantic Miles went away. And actually, it hasn't come back because what has come back is ability to book with Virgin Red Points, which Virgin Atlantic Miles and Virgin Red Points are basically the same thing because you could connect your two accounts and it becomes one pool of points. But now it costs $1.7 million.

So the price has gone up substantially. The inflationo it's tough these days it's tough it is it is um so but you know with the this uh 30 transfer bonus from mx you can go to necker island for a week all inclusive for 1.3 million mx points i mean that's a do it i mean that's a savings of almost 400 000 points right i mean it's huge savings and and i mean you know realistically for people who have been playing this game for the past two years if you've been playing it pretty intensely amex has been throwing points at us like crazy. I bet lots of listeners are, you know, I think a few years ago, if we said, you know, you only have to transfer 1.3 million, most listeners would say, I'm never going to have that many points. How am I going to do

that? But I bet you we have a lot of listeners that have that many points and could consider it if they want to. Oh, I'm sure. I mean, my wife and I together have earned over 2 million membership rewards points this year. So that's and I think that it's possible to keep earning significantly more than that. I mean, a lot of people have earned even more or have not necessarily earned as much, but haven't used as many as they had in the past, perhaps because you didn't travel as much for a year or two. So you might just be sitting on a bigger pile than you ordinarily would be since you had a couple of years of less travel.

So, yeah, I mean, I think it's certainly possible that there are more people in position to do this now than at previous times. And also, not only that, but we talked recently when we talked about the value of miles, about replacement costs, right? And it's not all that crazy to replace those miles either. You know, when you look at these like targeted business platinum bundles, if you know, and that have no lifetime language, if you and your partner are both targeted for that, you know, you could replace what 460,000 of those points, almost a third with that one offer, if you're eligible for

it. So I look at it and I say, well, I think it's more reasonable now than it was back then probably because the points are so much easier to come by. I agree. It's strange but true. And we haven't even mentioned the fact that you could also transfer from Chase, Citi, Capital One. So there's plenty of ways to get the points. It's just that Amex is both the easiest to get large number of points and has that 30% transfer bonus. So that combination makes it the most compelling.

Amex also lets you, as long as if you and player two both have Amex points, and as long as one of you is an authorized user for the other one, you could transfer, for example, player one could transfer their Amex points to player two's Virgin account or vice versa, as long as you've had 90 days of sort of authorized user status. So, you know, you really could merge those two together. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's very much doable. And if you have Capital One miles, you could

transfer them from one cardholder to another if you both have Capital One cards. So there's certainly ways you can put all these together. Don't forget the built card, built points also transfer to Virgin. So you could certainly put these together. I think a lot of people listening could, but should they, Greg? I mean, like, let's go back to that same conversation a few weeks ago where we talked about the costs of things. And 1.3 million Amex points, if you cashed them out via Schwab, you'd have more than $15,000. We're talking about cash dollars here.

Is this week worth 15 grand? Wow. You know, when you put it that way, it's really tough. But you wouldn't have spent 30 on it, right? I mean, you've said that you wouldn't spend 30 in the past on it, right? Right. I mean, so yeah. And that's where it's like the whole joy of free comes in. If you stop thinking about your points as like cash equivalents then you could just enjoy doing things like booking you know a week on this island a thing that you would never dream of spending cash for um and you could just enjoy it because you'd be like well it's kind of free because i

use my points but if you think of it as like oh well i could cash out for $15,000. I mean, that's still a big discount off the cash rate for the island, but it makes it a little bit less, you know, fun for those that wouldn't normally spend that much money for a week, for a one-week vacation. Right, right. And some do. Lots of people do. I mean, lots of, like, you know, tours and safaris and things cost more than that for two people. So, you know, it's definitely not an at Necker Island. And that doesn't mean that you personally couldn't book up to 15 weeks. It means that, you know, once 15 people have booked,

they're going to cut off award bookings for the year. And then you'll have to wait till the next year for those awards to open up. And I think about once a year, they decide which weeks are celebration weeks. And starting then, you can book your stay. So I would guess it's roughly around December to find out the year after, but it might be later in the year. I I don't know so there you go it's a possibility you can do it Greg has given it his stamp of approval and he's talked so highly of Necker Island that I think it'd be a reasonable redemption

but of course I'd have a hard time parting with that many points on one stay of course flip side out part with that many points over a few trips so what difference does it really make I guess but but it's an interesting, intriguing option. Also, I'm going to mention what Greg mentioned in our ask us anything this week. And that is that the price that we're talking about is for two adults.

If you try to add a child or two, it's going to cost you dearly. So, you know, unless you're prepared to pony up many thousands of dollars more than then this is just a two-person experience for anybody curious. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Very good point. Yeah, when I asked back when in 2016, it would have cost something like $9,000 to add my son to the room. And there wasn't a points option. And I don't think there would be today either.

Yeah. So, yeah, be prepared to pony up a lot of cash. All right. So that was a match just running the numbers. Let's talk about awards we booked this week. So what do you have, Greg? Yeah. So I booked, I had an IHG free night that was expiring soon and I searched for particular hotel, actually. So IHG's website is kind of weird. If you start typing into the search box the name of a specific hotel, it replaces what you typed with the address of that hotel and then searches for hotels near there.

So I had a specific hotel in mind. I put it in. It put in the address. And it came up with a bunch of results where I could use the free night. And then, of course, some of the hotels listed said it's not available for a free night at this date. But the hotel I had put in wasn't there. And so I figured, oh, it's just not available at all at first. But I kept scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and

scrolling like a mile down the screen. There it was. And the free night was available. So I booked it. But so it's really just tricky. Yeah. Why do they sort it that way? When this was, it even said on the display, it said closest. so it was like the closest hotel to the address i'd put in obviously um why was it not at the top it's also like the best rated hotel in the area i don't i don't get it i have no idea what their short criteria is and it's not like a partner like i would get it get it if it was mr and mrs smith something like that. But it's not. It's a regular Hotel Indigo. So, yeah, just something to keep in mind when you're searching for an IHG hotel. Just keep scrolling.

Keep scrolling. Very good tip. Keep scrolling. Yeah, well, so I would love to be able to report an award I booked this week because I got really excited about the Aeroplan Emirates partnership because there's a day when I could use the Milan to New York flight. And Emirates.com is showing seven seats in business class at the 72,500 mile redemption level. It's kind of their saver level. So I was really excited thinking, oh, great, I'm going to be able to book this with Aeroplan points instead.

But sadly, it's not showing up as available, which is an issue we've been running into with a lot of dates. It seems to be hard to know when Aeroplan is going to be able to see that Emirates availability. And of course, if you have no idea what I'm talking about, you might have missed the news this week. We'll talk about it probably in a little bit that you can now book Emirates flights with Aeroplan miles. But we'll get into that when we get into the main event. And hey, look, look at what time it is. I guess it's time for this week's main event. It is time for the main event.

Airline loyalty shake up. There is big news from Aeroplan, British Airways, JetBlue and even Alaska. So let's jump into Aeroplan news since you've already started talking about what's, what's going on there. Cats out of the bag. Well, aeroplan has, you know, they, they developed this partnership with Emirates that kind of came out of nowhere where they announced that not too long ago. And then finally this week, they released the ability to both earn and redeem points

on, uh, Emirates flights. So if you fly Emirates paid flights, you can earn aeroplan miles. And of course, if you want to redeem your aeroplan miles, you can redeem those for Emirates flights or vice versa. I haven't really looked hard at the redemptions when using Emirates miles for aeroplan. So I'm not even going to speak to that. But for redeeming aeroplan points for Emirates, it's interesting because most Emirates partners no longer have access to premium cabin space with Emirates in most situations. However, Aeroplan was able to work this out. So you can book both business class with Aeroplan points and you will be able

to book Emirates first class awards with Aeroplan points, which is exciting for a lot of reasons, but not the least of which is because Aeroplan does not add surcharges on tickets. And Emirates has gotten to the point where they're adding upwards of $800 or $900 in surcharges on many routes. So it's a huge win in the sense that you'll be able to book without those. However, it does come with a bit of a catch because Aeroplan has introduced or is going to introduce an entirely new award chart that just applies to Emirates flights. So rather than Emirates flights following the same award chart they have for all of their other 40-something partners, they are going to have an Emirates-specific award chart.

And that chart is lukewarm at best and probably not wildly exciting at worst. So it's going to be based on distance, not geography like the rest of their award chart. If you're used to the really complex aeroplane award chart, this is going to be really simple in the sense that it'll just depend on how far you're going to fly, how many miles you're going to spend. However, each distance band comes with a range and we don't yet know where flights will land in that range. If they land at the bottom of the range, in some cases, it'll be an okay deal. If they land anywhere other than the bottom, it'll probably be not a very good deal to an awful deal. So it's a mixed bag. The nice thing is you will be able to combine with other airline partners. So you can combine Emirates and other

partners. And if you do that, the entire itinerary will be subject to the new Emirates chart. All of that said, now is the time to book Emirates because right now they haven't yet introduced that Emirates specific partner award chart, but they have introduced the ability to book Emirates flights. You'll only be able to book economy or business class right now, but right now you can book at the current regular aeroplan award chart rates. So that's going to be fewer aeroplan points to fly on Emirates now than it will be later in the vast majority of cases. And it also means that you should be able to, well,

you can combine them with other partners and I would assume be able to book a stopover at the current rates, which makes it much more appealing, particularly if you want to get to the Pacific region, anywhere in Asia, Australia, et cetera, and Emirates, this would be a great way to book it now with no surcharges. Yeah. Yeah. Now, Emirates business class isn't exactly lauded the way some others are, right? So it's- That's a good point. Their A380 business class looks decent. Their 777 business class is known to be very poor compared to most competitors. So if you're looking at Emirates flights, you probably want to focus on the A380 routes, which is what I was doing with

Milan to New York. I think, I could be wrong, but I think the Athens to Newark route is a 777, or maybe they fly twice a day. I'm not really sure. But I know that the Milan route is an A380. So that's one that I was looking at personally, though it's not a huge savings booking that via Aeroplan right now anyway. I just would prefer to book via Aeroplan in case I cancel. So I end up with Aeroplan points. But if you're looking to book something to Asia, you want to focus on the A380 routes probably in order to have a good business class experience with a nice lie flat seat and the bar at the back. Because remember, the bar at the back of the A380 is open to both first and business class passengers. So it's kind of a cool opportunity to mingle. You're probably not going to meet Richard Branson there, but hey, you might for

many fewer points. Yeah. Although I bet he probably flies Virgin Atlantic more than he flies. But they don't serve nearly as many routes as Emirates does. No, that's true. Not even close. So yeah, when Aeroplan first announced this partnership, but without details, I was very excited about the possibility of, you know, mixing in Emirates flights with all of the other partners when using Aeroplane Miles to book awards. It didn't occur to me, well, I don't know, there was something in the announcement that suggested that the way it worked might be different than the rest of their partners. And it really is different in a way beyond what I'm excited about. So as Nick said, not only are the prices higher than their normal award charts, but

they have these ranges. And so you just don't know what you're going to get. I'm not really sure that it's really much of an award chart at all. It seems more like a price-based, it might be price-based. We really don't know how they're going to decide what the award prices are in these very wide ranges. So that's disappointing. There's a couple of things that are exciting, as Nick said. One is that just the ability to book first class at all with partner miles is interesting because Emirates had eliminated that completely. Alaska used to be a great way to book Emirates, and that went away. And so, you know, does this maybe just open the door for maybe even other partners and maybe someone will come up with something good? The other thing, you know,

again, we'll have to wait and see what pricing is really like, but the fact that the new award chart doesn't seem to have any rules about like routing rules or anything there might be ways to game it with um you know paying five thousand dollars for five thousand points sorry for a stopover and uh sort of engineering a uh flight that actually is very good value by by um taking advantage of of the lack of routing rules. So we'll see. That definitely hit me, taking advantage of the routing rules, because I thought about some itineraries already where I was like, oh, well, that might be interesting,

because I'm booking a stopover, and it doesn't seem like there's any routing rule on that chart. It's just distance-based, because they've specifically said geography, like it basically disconnected it from geography, which I think was mostly intended to say it's not going to be related to the current award chart. But the way it was worded to me sounded like there's not going to be any backtracking rule or anything.

It's just going to be distance. We'll see. That's what we'll have to find out. But I think that you missed one other thing that makes this exciting. And that is if you're based in, say, Cleveland or, you know, I think maybe Chicago. I don't know. I can't I don't know the distance off the top of my head. But if you're based somewhere where you're not in an Emirates gateway and you've got to Europe, for instance, if you want to fly to Milan or to Athens is going to be under 5,000 miles.

And so I'm figuring that the flight to Europe is going to be about 4,000. So you're going to want to be within about 1,000 miles of New York, for instance, if you're flying to New York to your uproot. And that's going to vary based on where you are. But I think that that's a big value add. Because for a lot of people, if you didn't live in an Emirates city, then you're also got to add the cost of that

on to flying on one of those flights. And now you can potentially bundle that together. Or if you didn't want to go to Milan, but you want to go somewhere else in Europe, well, you can, again, probably get there with one of the Star Alliance partners without exceeding that distance span, or you may be able to.

It's, again, going to vary by situation. But I think that's potentially another win-ish. But like Greg said, if things are priced to the top of those bans, all that goes out of the window. It won't matter. There'll be bad value. Yeah. Yeah.

And even though that is sort of like a potential win in there. I feel like Aeroplan has so many other partners that you're more likely to find a good deal to wherever you want to go. Just booking without Emirates to some other partners. So, you know, it sounds exciting, but, you know, big picture. Meh.

Yeah, fair. Fair assessment. Fair assessment. Fair assessment. All right. Let's move on from AeroPlant. British Airways had big news this week. What's going on with them? They did.

So they instituted a new way to pay for awards. If you're booking a business class award or economy or premium economy, you can now have the option, if you're booking through British Airways Executive Club, you now have the option to use more Avios and less in surcharge money, less in money, essentially. So you could still pay the old rates, which, you know, for most people unfamiliar, you know, you're talking about off peak 50,000 points one way to Europe, plus like $900 in taxes on a New York to London, for instance. And now you can use

instead 80,000 avios and only $350 in taxes and fees. So that's $600 less in fees for about 30,000 more points is the trade-off that you'd be making in that example. And so they've instituted this on a wide range of routes. And so it should be available, I think, in economy, premium economy and business everywhere. It does not apply to first class awards. So I mean, more Avios, less money. You can kind of change things around there. And that's kind of nice in the sense that surcharges are so ridiculous on British Airways that most of us have never considered using Avios for one of those. I say most. I'm sure there are some people out there listening. We're like, oh, yeah, I done it. And if you have, and you'd like to use less money in the future, well, this is going to be a pretty appealing option, I think.

Yeah. Yeah. And the thing is some people are, a lot of people I'd say are lukewarm about this, but I find this exciting for a reason that I haven't seen people talk about, which is that British Airways tends to have way better award availability than most other airlines. I'm going to tell you why you haven't heard excitement about that, because they tended to have way better award availability before they introduced this. Well, no. I mean, now that they introduced i well i wouldn't assume that the reason they had availability was because there was 950 dollars in an award ticket when you take that away i don't know are they still going to have as much availability who knows i well they they they have a like a set number of seats that they say that they make available for award bookings every

on every flight and so good point if they continue that practice, then yeah, I think that'll continue. And I think that for people who have less flexibility for when they're going to fly or for people who have less desire to look at multiple stops and things like that, the option now to book what you want, when you want, and just pay some more miles for it, I think is great. And I think that you can reduce the pain of the more miles in a number of ways. Like one is by taking advantage of transfer bonuses, which there are transfer bonuses like all the time to British Airways or one of its other Avios partners. And then you can move your points to British Airways. And we've seen some very high transfer bonuses from different programs. So, you know, it's not

out of the, it's not unusual to sometimes see like 40%, for example. And so you can do pretty well there. The other thing is the British Airways credit card. So I've never been all that interested in it, but it has a couple features that are suddenly more interesting to me than before. One is the rebate on surcharges. So it gives you a certain rebate each year on surcharges you pay. And it wasn't big enough to make up for paying $1,000 one way to London.

But now, if you're paying 375 and you get, I can't remember what it is, $250 back or something like that. Suddenly, that's totally cool. The other thing is if you spend, I think, $30,000 on the card in a year, you get a Travel Together award ticket where, again, I didn't used to value that at all because what it lets you do is book a sing pay for a single award with points and add a companion for free in quotes but you still have to pay the taxes and fees on that companion so if you book it this way at least the tax and fees are much much smaller for that companion so i i think it's uh overall overall i think it's it's overall, I think it's, it's pretty darn good. Yeah.

I mean, I think, yeah, I definitely don't think you can look at this as bad news by any stretch because it's just an additional option. It's not replacing it. If you prefer the old thing. And so,

you know, it gives you another way to, to play the game, so to speak. And certainly at times when availability is tight or when flying direct matters, I mean, like Greg,

Greg hammered out a lot of those. I think there are a lot of situations where this will make sense. But I think that we would be remiss not to mention that 80,000 avios and 350 bucks one way from New York to London is high compared to other competitors still. So that's not going to be your best value option by any stretch. It just might be the best flight for you, the flight that you want. But if you're looking to get the best deal, that ain't it. I wrote in the post this week that I use New York to London as an example. And so if you're New York based

and you can find availability on United, you can pay 45,000 Turkish miles and $5.60 one way. That's fairly easily bookable online on the website uh when it's available and actually united business class space to and from europe has been more available i've found over these last few months than previously so that's not so far-fetched to find obviously not as easy as british airways these days so uh so you know we'll see but but my point anyway is that there are definitely ways to pay many fewer miles and a lot less in money still. But this adds another good option. Always better to have more options. And I would like to have more options to spend less money.

So I find this overall a good opportunity, if not an exciting change. All right. So that's British Airways. And we both agree, net good news. What's next? So Alaska Airlines has made available the ability to use their miles to book LL. And I don't know if you've looked into it much, Nick, but the basics seem to be that the award prices are actually not that great. No. No, they're not. I didn't look hard at this because the award prices aren't that great.

But they have access to more availability. That's the tradeoff, right? That's the thing. If you read Dan's deals post about this, he found far more award availability by booking through Alaska than, for example, partner Qantas, I think it was, was the other one. And so Qantas is cheaper to book them, but it's cheaper in miles, but Alaska has a lot more availability. So I thought this was worth calling out because we've reported in the past that Alaska also has better award availability for booking Singapore business class. So it's just an interesting thing that Alaska somehow has found a way with some partners to get access to more space than most other partners have, which is a weird thing. And it was unprecedented, I think, until Aeroplan

found a way to have awards based on Emirates that no one else has. So it's an interesting situation, which I think is maybe bodes good news for the future in general, but, um, uh, you know, so far, none of the examples give you like great award prices. So, so we'll see how it plays out. Yeah. You know, I think this, uh, is most useful for people looking to fly a family that wants to fly nonstop on LL, uh, because you obviously have access to more space. I think, you know, I wonder maybe this is the optimist in me, but I wonder if Alaska isn't introducing these individual award charts with high prices, with an eye towards introducing a unified partner award chart at some point and being able to say,

look, you know, award prices have reduced across the board or, you know, on the most routes with this, if they're not intentionally pricing these a little high because they do seem kind of out of line on a lot of their award prices with new partners. Now, on the flip side, of course, it could just be that awards will be ridiculously expensive via Alaska for a long time, which is too bad

because we've all been used to really good deals via Alaska or were used to really good deals via Alaska for a long time. Like Greg said at the beginning, everything has changed these last few years, though you still get a much better value for your Alaska miles flying to and from Asia. That's really the sweet spot still at this point, or Cathay Pacific as far as Africa even potentially.

But I mean, nice to see more availability. Qantas miles are easier to come by though because you can transfer to Qantas from, let's see, Greg, which programs can you transfer to Qantas from PopQuiz? I don't know off the top of my head. City, I think. Yes, City. And Capital One? I think Capital One, but to be honest, that's one I couldn't remember. Amex. Amex also

transfers to Qantas. Oh, I believe. You know what? Now I'm second guessing that. You're going to check our transfer partner posts, which are going to be linked in the show notes because I'll have links to our transfer partner posts. Or Google for a transfer partner master list. We have a, we have a post that just lists all of the transfer partners from each program so that you can look up things there. And that shows how often Greg and I have transferred to Qantas before.

So, yeah, so that's a, that that's an OK, lukewarm one. But now I think probably the biggest news of the week is the one we got to talk about next. Right. JetBlue is launching an entirely new loyalty program next year. And and that news came out this week. So we got to discuss that and whether that's net positive or negative or what right right so up until now Jet Blue had exactly one level in their Elite program which was mosaic status so you either were like a nothing nobody or you had mosaic status and that was the two things um now they're introducing four

different levels of Elite status and all kinds of new benefits that they didn't have before that you could get each level and even on the way. Can you describe any more what's going on? So JetBlue created this concept called tiles, which annoyed the crap out of me when I read it. I was like, what are tiles? What does that even mean? And I got to wrap my mind around it. But actually, in hindsight, it makes a lot of sense because I find that people who are new to loyalty programs often find it confusing the difference between redeemable miles and elite qualifying miles or points and that kind of thing. JetBlue threw that out the window by calling these two different things. You're in JetBlue, Truloo points to redeem for flights, and you are in tiles towards elite

status. And so the way tiles- And let me just interrupt this. I had the exact same thought processes. Yeah. Exactly the same. At first I was like, what the heck are tiles? Why are they introducing a new term? And then it hit me that like, oh, this is actually smart because let's not confuse people between points that are redeemable and now tiles that are your way to get to elite status. That makes sense. I think it does. Especially as somebody who has interacted with plenty of people that don't know the difference between the two, I clearly understand how confusing that concept is between redeemable and elite qualifying. So I think this was a smart move, even though it's

unintuitive for those of us familiar with elite programs. So okay, so that out of the way, let's talk about it. So tiles, you're going to earn one tile for every hundred dollars and spend on jet blue american airlines and jet blue vacations and that's going to include jet blue ancillary fees like baggage and stuff like that so one tile for every hundred bucks spent on flights and and jet blue vacations and then or and or one tile for every $1,000 and spend on a JetBlue credit card. So you can mix and match the two. And so again, every $100 spend on JetBlue, every $1,000 spent on a credit card gets you a tile. Once you get to 10 tiles, you're going to start getting benefits. Every 10 tiles gets you some benefits. So 10 tiles is going to be $1,000 in spend on Jet

Blue or $10,000 on a credit card or some combination of the two, which I think is a big benefit because before you could earn either through credit card spend or by flying on Jet Blue, but there was no way to combine the two, which in hindsight is ridiculous. You would want to encourage both. And this new program is going to encourage both because you can earn tiles both ways. So at 10, 20, 30, and 40 tiles, you're going to get to choose from a selection of benefits. And the choices in that selection of benefits

are 5,000 bonus miles, a free alcoholic drink each time you fly, first free alcoholic drink each time you fly, priority boarding, priority security or a extra points on a jet blue vacations booking maybe I missed one and if I did it was one that wasn't very interesting so so there are five different choices you can make and you can only make each choice one time so if you're going to continue earning status you're eventually going to earn all five of these all All right. So that I didn't realize I was thinking when I saw that list, I was thinking, wow, why wouldn't anyone, everyone just pick the 5,000 miles each time? Yeah. Because that's obviously way more valuable than any one

drink, for example. Right. Yeah. Nope. You know, one time, right? One time. So yeah. Yeah. And so in my post, I've written that I think that this system is interesting in that incentivizes people who otherwise wouldn't make it to elite status. But I think it's only really interesting for people who would reach 10 or 20 tiles because most of those benefits aren't super valuable, like priority security. I mean, if you have clear TSA pre-check or whatever, you already got that. So that's not really worth much. Priority boarding might be nice. The free drink, again, might be nice.

But like Greg said, that's worth like, what, five bucks each time. Depends on how many times you fly as to whether that's worth very much. And double points on a JetBlue vacations booking. You know, again, that's pretty small, small potatoes. So I don't find any of those particularly interesting. The 5,000 miles is best. And so if you were going to do, for example, $10,000 in spend on a JetBlue credit card, you'd know that you'll be able to choose 5,000 bonus points when you reach that level. And so it's essentially one and a half points per dollar spent. So I think that that first benefit

is particularly valuable and a couple of the others might be somewhat valuable, not wildly crazy and exciting, but those aren't elite status levels. Those are choice benefits you get before you are in elite status. And before we move on, let me just ask you a quick question. So if you pick something like a free drink, is that for every flight from the rest of the year or is that just one drink? No, my understanding is it's on every flight. Okay, so I misunderstood that. Okay, okay well that's better than i thought yeah yeah i i mean if it was let's say five dollar value i have no idea how much jet blue charges for beer or wine or whatever but let's say it's five dollar value if you're gonna fly you know 10 times it's 50 bucks i mean it might might add up to something but probably uh not a ton for most people uh however the benefits become more interesting when you hit the actual elite status tiers.

Those are just choice benefits that you get on the way to the first tier of actual elite status. And I guess kind of nice to get free alcohol on all your flights for 10,000 spend. If you fly a lot and you like to have a drink each time, that's better than you're going to get on any other airline. So if you really want that glass of wine or beer or whatever, when you get on board, it's interesting that JetBlue has offered that capability. Anyway, so once you reach 50 tiles, which would be the equivalent of $5,000 spent on JetBlue or $50,000 spent on the credit card, or again, a mix of the two, that's going to be your mosaic tier

one. So that's like the beginning of actually sort of having elite status with JetBlue and the closest to equivalent to something that they already have. And obviously there's mosaic status now. And nowadays it does require the 50,000 spend on the card if you want to earn it just from spend. And at that level, you're going to get all those perks that we just talked about all of the choice perks from the first four levels there of uh you know tiles anyway you get mosaic boarding two free check bags even more space seats at check-in free same day changes priority check-in and support and that kind of thing and complimentary upgrades on the heathrow, which is the, I think the train right from, uh, from Heathrow. And that goes from Heathrow to Paddington station. There you go. So, so, I mean, there's some decent benefits there. You get the even better boarding and

mosaic boarding will be ahead of the priority boarding. You could have selected when you could have selected would have been group B and now you'll be in group a for boarding. And the two free check bags are obviously nice. And even more space seats at check-in, that's the key downgrade because someone who previously has spent $50,000 on the JetBlue credit card has had mosaic status and has been able to pick even more space seats at booking. And now you're only going to get them at check-in with this first level of elite status. So that's a little bit of a downgrade from where we were before. Yeah.

And does this give you any reciprocal benefits when flying a partner like American? I'm sure it probably will, but I don't know what those reciprocal benefits will be yet. But I'm glad you mentioned the reciprocal benefits because one of the things I wrote in the post about those choice benefits from 10 tiles, 20 tiles, 30 tiles, or 40 tiles was that anybody who's going to go beyond like 10 or 20 tiles should at least consider, should I be loyal to American Airlines instead? Because 30,000 loyalty points will get you American Airlines gold status. And those 30,000 loyalty points are relatively easy to come by since you can combine the shopping portal and simply miles and credit card spend.

I would say that earning 30,000 American Airlines loyalty points is pretty significantly easier than reaching 20 tiles with JetBlue. And at that point, when you have American Airlines gold status, you're going to get one free checked bag on JetBlue, which is already better than what you're going to get with any of the choice points if you're somebody who checks bags. And you're going to get even more space seats at check-in, which is a benefit you wouldn't even get until you hit 50 tiles with JetBlue. So there are some, I think, some reasons. And of course, priority boarding and priority check-in, which you don't get as a choice benefit at any point. You just get priority boarding as a choice

benefit. So I think American Airlines gold status is potentially more appealing for anybody who would earn more than like 10 tiles until you reach this 50 tile point where you're like, okay, well, you get two free check bags. So you get one more bag, which might be useful for you if you check bags frequently. And I do. So I see that. And and then, you know, the fact that you'll get, you know, the maybe the free same day changes is, you know, good for you. There's certainly situations where that'll work. But this first tier, again, is not wildly better than having American Airlines status. And in fact, American Airlines platinum status will get you all of the benefits except for the free drinks, I think. So if the free drinks don't matter much to you, then I think tier one mosaic status is

like lukewarm. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. And so for those that are likely to hit that, you should look at, would you be able to hit American Airlines status levels easier? And if so, credit your flights and stuff to American instead and go that way. Yeah. I mean, I can see it going one way or the other. I think at this first tier, you have to question it. You have to look at it and do the math and run the numbers and say, okay, which am I better off with? Because it's close. And for people in that, like they would earn 30 or 40 tiles, i think you're probably almost better off with american but again it's going to vary based on what you value uh the most once you

get to tier two things start to get a little bit better because tier two mosaic requires now 100 tiles which is double the you know the tier one tier one was 50 tiles. Tier two is a hundred tiles. So now we're suddenly talking about like $10,000 worth of JetBlue spend or American Airlines and JetBlue vacations spend credited to JetBlue or like $100,000 in spend on the credit card or a mix. You'll get all of the perks that we've already talked about, plus extra legroom seats at booking. So now you get those extra legroom seats at booking back, which is going to feel like a huge downgrade to people who have been used to getting that with $50,000 spend in the past, though, I would bet that most normal people outside of our

listenership that spend 50,000 on the card each year may also spend close to $5,000 a year on JetBlue flights. And so then you you'll probably end up with this status if that's you. If you were just spending on the credit card and not spending on flights, it's kind of a bummer that you wouldn't get the extra Lightroom seats at booking until you reached tier two. Yeah, that seems like a really small, is that the only additional benefit you get at that level? Because it seems like a big big big hurdle and a small extra benefit i mean not yeah not to you know uh put down i of course if i flew jet blue a lot i'd want to be able to pick the extra leg room seats don't get me wrong but um but there's still economy

classes that's it yeah you don't get the economy yeah you don't get the big perks until you hit tier three so tier three which is 150 tiles so you know again now you're talking about 15 000 jet blue spend or 150 000 credit card spend or a combination you get all those perks we talked about plus four jet blue mint upgrade certificates and so this is where it could get really interesting or be really disappointing. And jury's still out. We don't know. Because you'll get these four mint upgrade certificates that will supposedly be valid for any business class seat. No capacity controls.

But, and here's the key button, gotcha. The number of certificates you'll need to upgrade to mint class will vary by flight. And we don't know how many it's going to be yet. So we don't have any word as to how many you're going to need to use. You're going to get four of those at Tier 3, and if you make it all the way to Tier 4, which is another 100 tiles on top, it's 250 tiles. So 25K JetBlue spend, 250K credit card spend.

You're going to get two more of the Mint upgrade certificates at that level, and then also four complimentary blade, four seats that are complimentary using the blade helicopter transfers between Manhattan and Newark or JFK. So I think those are usually like 200 bucks a person or so. So like $800. That's an interesting benefit. I mean, that'd be fun to say, you know, Hey, I'm JetBlue elite and now I'm going to fly to the airport in a helicopter. It sure would be, but I, but I don't think you're going to do that for the fun of it. A $25K spent on JetBlue or $250K on a credit card,

you could earn 2% cash back and buy yourself those four seats. So it's one of those things that, yeah, so it'll be nice if you get there because you're naturally flying JetBlue enough. I feel like it's hard to imagine like intentionally going after that benefit. But the mint upgrade certificates, the reason I mentioned tier three and tier four kind of lump them together like that is because you get four of the certificates at tier three and two more at tier four. So, again, we don't know how many you're going to be you're going to need to use. It's possible you'll be able to use just one of these upgrade certificates to upgrade to Mint, or perhaps you'll need more. Now, on the one hand, this is super exciting because JetBlue had no mechanism for upgrading people to Mint class before. So, you know, which seemed nuts to me that you'd have what is arguably the best

business class experience in America, in the United States, and yet not have a way to reward your most loyal customers by giving them at least a chance or a reason to be loyal because they may be able to get that at some point. So thank you JetBlue for finally instituting that. However, the not optimist, the pessimist in me, that's the word I was looking for, thinks that you'll probably need at least two of these certificates for a transcontinental flight, right? My thought is, my bet, which I'd love to be wrong, but my bet is it'll cost you one for flights to the Caribbean, two for transcons, and at least three for flights to Europe, if not four. That's my guess.

Yeah. Yeah. We'll see. So yeah, this is very interesting. I mean, obviously a huge, huge change to JetBlue's program. They did some very interesting things there. I guess it's kind of complicated, but not too bad. You know, it's at least an understandable program. I see some things that are similar to Air Canada's elite program, but Air Canada's is like bewildering. I can't even say that word, but crazy,

crazy. Thank you. Complicated and hard to understand what, you know, what choices you should pick and everything. So this seems a lot simpler. What, what seems strange to me is it seems like they built a program like a sort of a world-class level program.

And I don't mean in terms of the benefits. I mean, in terms of the requirements. Requirements. Yeah. They built a world-class requirements program. Without a world-class airline. Yeah. Well, without having the network to support it.

That's what I mean by saying not a world-class airline. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. So I find that very strange. I mean, like, you know, you look at like Alaska Airlines program, they have much more modest requirements because they understand their network is only so deep. And so, you know, it's unreasonable to expect people, I think, to, you know, spend $250,000

on a credit card to get to top tier status or whatever. But anyway, it's interesting. I should also mention that when you reach each of those four tiers that I just mentioned, the 50 tiles, 100 tiles, 150 tiles, 250 tiles. So those levels, you'll also get an additional choice benefit. And the additional choice benefit, the only ones you'll probably really care about is 15,000 bonus points. So that's like about $200 worth of miles. That's nice. Or a 20 elite tile bonus to help you qualify for the next tier. So that could reduce the number of tiles you need to get.

So whereas I talked about the difference between tier one at 50 tiles and tier two at 100 tiles at tier one, when you hit your 50 tiles, you could take a 20 tile bonus and end up with 70 tiles. So you're only 30 tiles short of those complimentary, even more space seats at check-in. So you could reduce the path a little bit to the next tier in each case with that. And there's a couple, you could also get a $99 statement credit on your JetBlue credit card each time you reach one of those tiers. So there's some other things you could choose, but so you do get a benefit, an additional benefit at each level, an additional choice. But I think there's still overall pretty modest

as you go along. Like you said, you kind of, I mean, it's not like you've got a worldwide network to choose from. You kind of do, I guess, because you can book American Airlines flights through JetBlue or credit them to JetBlue. So I guess you kind of have the... Sort of. Yeah. So, okay, but

that thing about getting the 20 tiles at each level, that's interesting because if I did the math in my head right, if you're targeting the level three, which is the first place you get those upgrades to mint class, if you did entirely with credit card spend without those extra tiles, it'd be $150,000 spend. I think you're talking about $110,000 if I did the math in my head right. If you pick those 20 tiles at each, basically after $50,000 spend and after $100,000 spend. Now I should mention, I didn't see this specified, so I need to double check. And when you read the post, you'll know because I'll have made it clear. I think you can choose one of those again. I think you can choose the same one each time based on what I read, but I need to double check that. I'm pretty sure you can. So I'm pretty sure you can do exactly what Greg said, but it would change the math if you could only pick each one once. I'm pretty sure though, that you can pick those repeatedly.

You can pick the same one each time if you want. Right. So if that's true, then let me restate, because I said something a little bit wrong, but after, if you did entirely with credit card spend, after 50,000 spend, you take the 20 tiles, you would need 30,000 more spend to get to level two. And then you take the 20 tiles again, if that's possible, you would need 30,000 more spend to get to level three. Yeah. To get to level four, even if you take 20,000 more that's still that's that's uh 80,000 more spend above that right right that's a huge hurdle to get to level four it is it puts it on you know on par with what delta you know requires right for elite status and and i you know i don't know maybe it's worth it maybe it's not i i haven't flown

enough jet blue really in the last few years to definitively uh give you a yes you should do it or no you shouldn't but my impression is that jet blue doesn't fly all that many routes with mint service and so now then i'm kind of like so you're doing the spend for the extra legroom seats i mean they're nice i flew in them twice last week the extra legroom seats are nice but i don't know if they're nice enough to justify all that uh but anyway slices good to see him do something other than the mosaic or nothing you know i think yeah yeah that's probably a good thing and it's not out of the question that they might add the ability to use those mint upgrades also on American Airlines partner, for example, as a sort of a global upgrade certificate. So that would make it maybe more widely applicable to more people.

Unfortunately, Americans upgrade availability. It tends to be very poor. That's a questionable value, too. But at least it would, you know, open up more possibilities. Yeah. So, I mean, on the whole, I'm very lukewarm on this new elite program, but I'm lukewarm as somebody who doesn't live at a JetBlue hub and frequently fly JetBlue. I always liked JetBlue when I flew them more often.

So I could see some people being enthusiastic about this. If you were somebody who was already naturally spending, you know, 15 or 20 or $25,000 a year on JetBlue, then this is probably a really big win for you. All right, cool. So a bunch of big news this week, most of which we're kind of lukewarm on. But big news anyway. And I think it's exciting to see big changes, even when they're not changes that we love. I think that it's interesting to see everybody thinking outside the box and doing something different than what they always have, because then it'll encourage somebody else to come up with something different that we like eventually, hopefully. Yeah.

Good point. Good point. All right. So I think that brings us to this week's question of the week. And this week's question of the week has come in a few times lately, because now we're at the end of the year. And it's a question I was asking myself. We're at the end of the year, and we recently reported that Marriott will no longer do soft landings. And so I am one of those people in a situation where I have titanium status right now, but I had not yet qualified for platinum status for next year, figuring I'd probably get platinum from Marriott anyway. But now they've pretty clearly updated the terms to

make it certainly sound like they're not going to do that anymore. So suddenly I need platinum status. And I know there are other people in that situation that are close because a few times lately we've gotten the question, how long does it take for the elite Knights to post when you open a new Marriott credit card? Now, of course, you know that you can get 15 elite Knights each year from having a personal card and 15 from having a business card. So if you only have one of the two of those, you could open one of the other in order to get your 15 elite Knights. How long does it take to post, Greg? Well, you just found out. So why don't you tell

us? Well, for me, it took two days. So I applied for the business card, which I've had before in the past. So unfortunately, I was not eligible for the welcome bonus. I knew that going in and sure enough, I got the pop up. I don't have Greg's golden touch where I'm able to just continuously open stuff like that and not get the pop-up. It's been a long time since that worked for me, but go ahead. That's true. That's true. But yeah, so I did get the pop-up saying, hey, you've had it before. You can't have the bonus here. But I went ahead and applied anyway, because I was at 32 nights. And so this would put me at 47 with 15 nights from a business card. And then three nights to hit platinum status.

So I went ahead and did it. And again, my elite nights posted about two days later. I've seen reports of about a week. Tim, however, on our team opened up a brilliant card in November and still hasn't. And I say November and early November and still hasn't received his elite nights. He had some suspicion as to why, but I know he was concerned about it. And every now and then you hear it taken a little bit. Right.

And let me explain why Tim's situation is a little different than yours. So, you know, as Nick pointed out, you can add Elite Knights from having a personal card and business card, but you can't add Elite Knights by having two personal cards, for example. What Tim did, he already had a personal Marriott card. So we already had 15 elite knights. He opened the brilliant card, which actually gives you 25 elite knights. And so he's expecting to get an additional 10 knights because it should recognize that. But that's kind of a different situation that the system might not be automatically figuring that out and so yeah he's he's sort of in a world of

hurt in in terms of uh you know how is he going to get that resolved if it doesn't appear before the end of the year i you know yeah it's it's always tough when, when you contact the credit card company and they say, well, that's the, that's Marriott and Marriott says, well, that's the credit card company. And that's, what's going to go, that's what's going to happen if you need to try to get help. The world of her. Yeah. So the moral of the story is if you want elite nights, I would do that sooner rather than later. Now I would think that if you applied with at least a week to go before the end of the year, that even if the elite nights didn't show up right away, probably they would retroactively count to the previous year, probably, but only probably. And I wouldn't really

want to stake my elite status on probably. So I would recommend getting that as soon as possible if you need either a personal or a business card to get your 15 elite nights and in my case it was worth it both a because i've got now i have the ritz card and i have the 85k cert i want my free breakfast and late checkout when i use one of those i got one extended and i'll get a new one soon so i'll have two of those to use next year so i'm i definitely wanted to have platinum status for that and the other thing was i got looking at it and i said well well, you know what? I'm four years short of lifetime platinum now. So, and now I've had got enough stays where it's like, I'm, I'm 50,

200 nights and four years short. So I, you know, I'll pick up this year now and I'll be three years short and 400 or 200 nights short of lifetime platinum. And then I don't have to worry about it anymore. So it's worth it to me to have that card now pay for it for the next few years. And then once I hit lifetime status,

whatever that'll really mean with Marriott, whatever a lifetime is, I'll be happy with my free breakfast status from there on out. Yeah. And an important side thing, a lot of Amex cards now are getting targeted for getting 30,000 points when they refer like Amex membership rewards cards, 30,000 points when they refer, when you refer a friend. And so you can take your membership rewards card, like your Amex gold card, for example,

or your platinum card. Well, not yours. You can have another person in your family take their card and refer you for like that business card, for example, the Marriott business card to apply so that even if you don't get a bonus, they get a bonus or better yet, if you are qualified for the bonus, then you both get a bonus for that application. That's a great point. And what I should have mentioned, because yeah, my wife, she had a card that she doesn't have one of those 30,000 point bonuses, but she had a card that was offering 25,000 membership rewards points per referral. So she referred me for the business card. And now that you mentioned, I'm just logging into check and see if the points have even posted yet. They probably have. And if they haven't, they will soon, I'm sure. So at least we'll get

25,000 points for the home team. They're not my points necessarily, but I have been an authorized user on my wife's card for more than 90 days. So she could transfer those to one of my loyalty accounts if that's what we wanted. You're well on your way to Necker Island. Well on my way, well on my way. Yeah, those referral points haven't posted yet,

but I'm sure they will. So anyway, yes, that's a great way to capitalize on that situation when you're not eligible for the welcome bonus. All right, my friends, that brings us to the end of this week's episode. If you've enjoyed this week's episode and you'd like to get our posts in your email inbox, you can go to frequent miler.com slash subscribe again. That's frequent miler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. You can follow us on all the various social media platforms. You can join our frequent miler ins Insiders Facebook group where you can ask and answer questions like this.

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