Frequent Miler on the Air - JetBlue's 25 year 350,000 point mileage run | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep312 | 6-27-25

Episode Date: June 27, 2025

JetBlue is offering 350,000 points plus 25 years of elite status if you fly JetBlue to 25 destinations before the end of the year. Today we'll look at that promotion a little more closely, but we'll also hear from a "nerdy dad", and will hear about some crazy credit card approvals. (01:04) - John the Nerdy Dad sends a shoutout to his teenage kids(03:36) - Chase Sapphire Preferred offer(04:59) - Chase Sapphire Reserve now available through referrals(07:32) - Chase approves despite user selection of "no" on the popup(12:21) - Citi ThankYou transfer bonuses through July 19Hilton: 21 more SLH properties are now bookable via Hilton Honors, with 4 properties removed(13:19) - Read about even more SLH properties bookable via Hilton points here.(13:55) - Capital One Shopping: check your redemption optionsMain Event: JetBlue's 25 year 350,000 point mileage run(14:55) - JetBlue is running a 25 For 25 promotion quick thoughts and terms(19:22) - How does this compare to the SAS Eurobonus Millionaire promo we saw last year?(22:13) - Some important things to know about JetBlue(24:19) - Quick review of terms(26:48) - Mosaic 1 Status(29:33) - What might make this hard with JetBlue(34:03) - How to get status in time for this promoRead more about the JetBlue status match here.(44:01) - JetBlue credit cards(47:42) - Are we considering this promo?(1:03:17) - What are the best practices for using elite status to actually maximize value?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 Voy Escape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. On today's show, we'll hear from the nerdy dad. No, that's not me. We'll talk about crazy credit card approvals and we've got to discuss JetBlue's epic mileage run opportunity. Frequent Mylar on the air starts now. Today's main event JetBlue's 25 year 350,000 point mileage run. JetBlue is offering 350,000 points plus 25 years, years of elite status.

If you fly JetBlue to 25 destinations before the end of the year. Wow. Pretty exciting. Pretty exciting. Wild promotion. So we're going to have to talk a lot more about that later on today. But first, I just want to remind you that you'll always find the timestamps in the show notes. So if you want to jump ahead to something or you want to return to something later on to revisit it,

you can always just expand the show description and get the timestamps to jump ahead or back. Wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to leave us a review, give us a like, thumbs up, like the video, if you're watching on YouTube or give us a review if you're listening in podcast form. Well, let's drag out this week's giant mailbag. Today's giant mail comes from John the Nerdy Dad.

John writes, I never miss FM on the air, coffee break, or ask us anything. And now I'm a full-time target of teenage mockery thanks to you two. I've got twin teenage daughters who have developed entire comedy routine at my expense. They are forced to listen to you since I'm their chauffeur. They've absolutely mastered impressions of both of you and they top it off with a spot-on imitation of me quoting you guys. I'm not sure whether to be proud or slightly concerned that they've made FrequentMiler their go-to roast material.

Yes. Please say hi to Sailor and Sydney Ray. Give them a hard time for their impression of you. They would freak out if you said hi on the podcast and I would have my revenge. Bwa ha ha. Well, in that case, hi, Sailor, hi, Sydney. I wanna know which one of you does the impression of me

and what is there to roast? What is there to roast? My reactions look like the opposite. I'm like, for some reason, so gleeful about the idea of being made fun of by teenagers. I just love that whole idea and I don't know why. I felt like I made it in the world. When I saw this, I was like, all right,

I made it in the world. Teenagers are making fun of me. That is a measure of success, isn't it? Yeah, it sure is. And now a few things here. John, I wanna tell you to stop torturing your teenagers. On the other hand, if it's resulted in this masterpiece of comedy,

then I guess it was good for them to hone their comedy skills, so that's good. And to Sailor and Sydney, I kinda desperately wanna hear your routine. So if you're willing, if you're willing to record it, and video would be great, but not necessary, we would play some or all of it on the show if you want. And if not, I mean, you can tell us,

keep it to you personally, I would just love to see it myself. So please send us a video or audio recording to mailbag at freakermiler.com. It could just be a link to YouTube or whatever as well. And let us see your routine, please. Can't wait to hear it. I hope we get a chance.

Thank you very much for that, John the Nerdy Dad and Sailor and Sydney, right? Yeah. Let's get into this week's Card News. All right. This week's Card News, it's all Chase this week. Surprise. Um, I'm saying surprise like that

because Chase has been dominating the headlines with the Sapphire Reserve relaunch and the business Sapphire Reserve launch. Um, but all right, the first item is that the Sapphire Preferred card, that's the $95 card, is out with a new enhanced offer of 75,000 points after 5k spend. Obviously not as good as the 100k offer that ended in May, but still significantly better than usual. Yeah and you know I think that if you're in a two player household and you don't want

a monkey around with all the coupons on the Sapphire reserve this is a pretty not bad offer. If you're able to refer player two if player one has a Sapphire card and is able to make the referral here I think that this could be a really interesting offer to consider because it is so much less both in terms of the cost of the annual fee than the Sapphire Reserve and the time cost and like energy cost of using all the coupons. So I don't know I thought that was actually a pretty interesting move obviously like Greg said not as

good as the 100k and not as good as when you could stack that with Rakuten because I think Rakuten pulled their payouts on the Sapphire Preferred card but not bad. The CSR, the Sapphire Reserve that is is now available through referrals so if you have a Sapphire Reserve in your household you can refer somebody else initially when the card launched that wasn't possible but about a day later it came out no referrals yet on the Sapphire Reserve business card though. Yeah. No referrals yet on the Sapphire Reserve Business Card though. Yeah.

And for those who had the Sapphire Preferred or the Inc. Business Preferred before June 23rd, but acquired it within the year leading up to June 23rd, you probably got an email that you might've ignored because it seemed to be about other stuff, but there was a ad in there saying that you got a $50 travel credit to use for over the next year. And so basically what it is is if you go into your Sapphire Preferred or Ink Business Preferred account

and you go to Chase Travel and try to book travel through there, while you're checking out, you should see a little indicator saying there's a promo available. And when you click on that, it's $50 off. So it's a discount off of whatever you're trying to book. It's not limited to hotels, so this is different. From Chase Sapphire Preferred, confusingly,

also offers a standard feature of $50 back a rebate on hotels booked through chase travel. So you could book a hundred dollar hotel and it would be discounted $50 and then you should get rebated that $50 if you haven't already used that rebate this year. So pretty good deal if you have one of those cards and you acquired it in the past year approximately. Yeah, including if you're one of those people that acquired it during that recent 100k offer on the Sapphire preferred the one that expired a little bit back. My mother-in-law got the card during that time and got the email and got this extra 50 bucks. So that's just more icing on a sweet cake there to begin with. So good stuff there one more thing about that is that in the most recent coffee break Nick and I debated the

Sapphire preferred and a separate reserve. Sorry welcome bonus and We didn't know at the time whether part of the welcome bonus currently is a five hundred dollar Part of the welcome bonus currently is a $500 travel discount or rebate or whatever. We didn't know which it was. This makes it sound like it's probably a discount, that you probably apply the discount at checkout just like the $50 one that some of us have in our accounts now. Yeah, that's a great guess. I imagine that's probably true. All right, speaking of Chase though, we gotta talk about what crazy thing

did chase do this week? Okay, so chase, along with the new Sapphire reserve cards, they launched a new pop-up prison type of thing like Amex where if they know before pulling your credit, if they know that you're not eligible for the welcome bonus, because for example, you already have the card or you have a card in the family that they don't want you to get the bonus because you have that, then it'll pop up something saying,

you're not eligible for this welcome offer. Do you want to proceed with the application anyway? Meaning if you proceed, you won't get a welcome bonus, but you can still get the card. And why don't you finish that story, Nick? What happened to people who said no to that? Now I want to be clear, this didn't happen to everybody, but some people who said they didn't want to continue, because you have the choice to continue or not continue,

and some people who chose not continue, then got the message okay you know not going to continue with the application like a confirmation page that said okay we confirmed that you don't want to continue but then like 10 minutes later got an email saying congratulations you've been approved and the sapphire reserve card was showing up in their chase login now that was super confusing for people because they had been given a pop-up saying you're not eligible for the welcome offer. So if they continued, they'd be opening it without the welcome offer and they chose not to continue but still got the card somehow.

So then of course that begs the question, well, is there going to be a welcome offer attached to it? Because it said they wouldn't give you one, right? And so I think this only affected a small number of people, but the people who it did affect were obviously concerned about that. But good news, Chase saw our post about that and, uh, and it turns out that they have identified whatever this glitch was and the people affected by it and are reaching out to them and are going to honor the bonus for the people that had that situation. Now it's really specific. It's going to have to have been that you again again we're told you wouldn't qualify for the bonus and you chose not to continue with

the application and somehow got approved anyway it was a glitch in the system and so they're gonna fix that for the people that were affected by that I don't know how many people it was but we had heard from a few readers about it so at least happened to some of you out there so that's good news that it's getting fixed right I mean I like and that pretty quick response to get that fixed. So that was great. I don't know, credit where credit is due on that.

If computer glitch happens and at least you take responsibility and fix it, then awesome. And, you know, it turns out to be a really nice situation for those who got, who are in the situation because they get to get the welcome offer, which is what they're hoping for despite not meeting whatever rules. And I'm saying whatever rules because Chase is no longer as explicit about what the rules are that are going to cause the pop up as they used to be. So they're, they're, they're less explicit about the rules, but the pop up makes it more

explicit whether or not you'll get the bonus. Yeah. And there's one thing I wanted to backtrack on that you said, because what you said was accurate, but it maybe leaves out some of the story for some of the people. So you mentioned that if you have a Sapphire reserve already or you have a Sapphire preferred and they decide that you're not going to qualify for the bonus, then you'll get this pop-up and it says, we haven't pulled your credit yet. Do you want to continue even though you're not going to qualify for the bonus, then you'll get this pop up and it says we haven't pulled your credit yet. Do you want to continue even though you're not eligible for the bonus? So that situation again is you have a Sapphire reserve, you have a Sapphire preferred and

they decided somehow. Now conversely, if they just determine you've had too many new accounts, so you're over 524, there are some people that have been approved over 524. I should mention that, but some people who weren't and so if you are over 524 and they deny you for having too many new accounts they do pull your credit before they give you the pop-up and then they give you the pop-up and say you're not eligible for the bonus do you want to continue or not and in that case your credit will have been pulled already and they'll see that oh sorry

too many new accounts no bonus for you do you want to go or not so and in that case i haven't heard about anybody who got the pop-up for that reason and said no and still got the card open so i that's a different situation but i wanted to mention it because i knew there'd be some people out there that'd be like i got the pop-up but i got a hard pull too and and that's why it's that's that's a really good point and so if if getting hard pulls is a concern for you, that's something to keep in mind. I still think this is better than how it used to be because, well, as long as it's working correctly,

because sometimes you do want a card even without the welcome offer. And so this gives you a chance to get that. It used to be, you would just be denied the card altogether. Yep, absolutely. I agree. I think that's an improvement overall and I'm not terribly concerned about number of hard pulls, so I wouldn't be too worried personally about that

anyway. So alright, let's talk next about awards points and more. We got a couple of quick hits here. First up city is out with a couple of transfer bonuses through July 19th. so you can get a 20% transfer bonus transferring your city. Thank you rewards to Air France KLM flying blue or a 50% transfer bonus transferring your city thank-you rewards from city to a core live limitless and so with that bump then you're getting I think about what 1.76 cents per point in value is that right yeah based on current exchange exchange rates.

Yep. Because of course, the core points are are like a sort of cash based currency. Yeah, and they're based on the euro. So each core point is worth two euro cents, but you only get half a core point per city point without the bonus. And so anyway, it works out to 1.76. It works out 1.76. I trust your math on that one, Greg. Good. And then also we have Hilton. We've talked many times about their partnership with Small Luxury Hotels of the World.

And we have an update that there are 21 more participating SLH properties in that relationship, which is great with four having gone away. So pretty big net gain there. Yeah, some of those look pretty cool. So it's worth checking out the post. You'll find of course a link to the post in the show notes. So you should take a look at it. The caves one in Italy. I feel like I've seen pictures of that before I think and that looks pretty cool and the one in Massachusetts I'm kind of curious about. So check out the post. Also in awards points and more I wanted to

note that Capital One Shopping we've talked about how they removed most of the good gift card redemption options and I think the last time this came up I still had a few good ones when we were recording and a couple of hours later a couple of those good ones that I noted were gone. I was super super frustrated with it. However, a couple of days ago, a lot of people reported the return of hotels.com and REI and a lot of people are seeing some other things like Lowe's and Ace Hardware that could be useful depending on your situation. So if you've been sitting on a whole bunch of Capital One

shopping rewards and I was, I had a bunch from my recent trip to Europe and you were waiting for something to come back, check, log into your account and check there's no guarantee you're going to have those because it seems to vary by person as to which redemption options you have so I redeemed most of my rewards for hotels.com because I know I'll use that and I don't want to wait around for it to get pulled again and not have it when I need it so so take a look at that if you're sitting on capital one shopping rewards. All right. That brings us to this week's main event. Main event time. Jet blues 25 year, 350,000 point mileage run. So jet blue is celebrating their 25th birthday. So, well, I guess it's been 25 years since they started Jeff. That That's longer than I would have guessed.

But anyway, Nick is kind of singing a birthday song to JetBlue in the background here. So happy birthday to JetBlue. Here I'm getting roasted for my singing skills by not a teenager, but Greg the Frequent. Oh, I'm sure the teenagers will roast you too. skills by not a teenager, but Greg the frequent. Oh, I'm sure the teenagers will roast you too.

Um, JetBlue. So JetBlue is running what they're calling a 25 for 25 promotion where you're going to earn the following rewards. If you fly to 15 destinations before, by the end of this year, you'll earn 150,000 bonus JetBlue True Blue Points. If you fly five more, so a total of 20 destinations, you'll earn a total of 350,000 bonus points. So that's 200,000 more than flying 15 destinations. And then if you fly to 25 destinations in total, you'll also earn mosaic status for 25 years. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Say that again, for how long? For 25 years. So mosaic is their elite status, which we'll talk later about what it gives you, but it gives you perks when you fly JetBlue and also United. So 25 years of status. 25 years of it.

So yeah, I mean, they've only been around 25 years. And you're going to get another 25 years worth of status if you were able to complete this. Now, I want to mention one thing that you left out, and that is that this is running from June 25 to December 31. So if you flew to destinations earlier this year, those don't count.

So this is only flights between June 25 and December 31st. So if you flew to destinations earlier this year, those don't count. So this is only flights between June 25th and December 31st. And of key importance, your JetBlue, TrueBlue number has to be attached to the flight needs to be operated by JetBlue and your your frequent flyer number has to be attached to it for it to count. And we'll talk more about that stuff. But I wanted to be really clear about that. So you you're aware out there. Yep. Very good. Good points. All right, some quick thoughts about this before we get into like the explicit turns and everything. First up, I just think it's amazing that JetBlue has come out with

a deal that's so big that it's broken through the Sapphire Reserve headlines and we're dedicating a whole show to this. So good job JetBlue for making our jobs more interesting. Whether or not we do with whether or not we do the challenge it's certainly interesting you have to admit that. I have to also give them credit for how smart it was how they arranged these tiers of awards because if you get to 15 destinations, you're getting, what is it, 150,000 points. So that sounds pretty compelling by itself. But once you get there, it's kind of like, well, you'd be crazy not to do five more destinations

because that'll give you 200,000 more points for just five destinations. So the calculation then is just like, should I do five more for 200,000? Well, of course I should. That's such a huge win. Of course. And then now you're at 20, and now you're like,

should I do five more to get 25 years of elite status? Well, yeah, of course. I mean, just five destinations for 25 years. So I just think that's so clever how they arranged it that way, because it kind of pulls you in and then keeps you going all the way to the end I think oh for sure for I mean they definitely with those two tiers They milked to 10 extra flights out of anybody who would have considered the 15 like because I think if you're gonna consider the 15 There's no way I mean it'd be really hard to look at that and not do 10 more and so that's that yeah

that is masterful whoever on the marketing team came up with that deserves a big raise because that's gonna drive just so much incremental business. Because if you were at 12, you gotta hit 15, I mean, you need those additional three, right? And then like you said, once you hit 15, it's like, well, you gotta hit 20 and 25. There are very few promotions

or very few elite status benefits, I think, that push incremental spend quite that well. That was elite status benefits, I think, that push incremental spend quite that well. That was really well done. I agree. Yeah. So hats off to you, Jeff Blute, for that. What do you think of this compared to the SaaS promo? You know, it's really interesting. It's different. And of course, if you're just looking at it through the lens of, oh, well, SaaS was giving a million miles and this is only 350,000, then it might seem like this is smaller because you get fewer miles.

But you're also getting potentially 25 years of elite status. So that's a big game changer for people who fly JetBlue a lot and or fly United a lot if they continue the tie-in with United. It's also far easier to complete. You don't have to fly all over the world. You can fly all over the United States and get it done. In fact, I think you could probably stay entirely

domestically and get this done, right? Sure, yeah, you definitely could. And another thing to note is that while JetBlue miles aren't super valuable for flying JetBlue, I mean, they're worth about 1.3 cents each. It varies based on the route, but around there, they have increasing number of partners. They keep adding more partners.

And with their partner award bookings, those tend to be fixed rates. And so that means when the prices are very high on those partners, you can get far outside value using your JetBlue miles. And importantly, also, JetBlue doesn't charge you to cancel award flights. So it becomes a pretty good, not a great, but a good currency for booking flights on Japan Airlines, Qatar, T Tap Air Portugal, and more.

Etihad is another one. Well, and we should also mention that I think from a cost to benefit perspective, I think this one's easier to justify. I think that it's possible to get this challenge done for less than it would have cost you to do the SAS challenge, certainly in less time probably, even though it's more destinations, a lot of those flights can be shorter distance. And so I think that the cost is going to be relatively low. And while SAS miles can be valuable in the right situation, only if you're in the right

situation and a lot of times they charge a lot of miles, even for their own flights. So it's not as easy, whereas you know you're going to get at least like $4,800 or so in value out of these JetBlue miles. So I think it's an easier to justify sort of an investment for a lot of people, especially if you can find cheap enough flights, between $100 and $200. You're talking about completing this. Maybe $100 and $200, you don't necessarily need 25 destination. Well, you need

the 25 flights, but connecting airports count. So you can pick up two in one and sort of pay less, I think, than $100 a destination overall. So it could work out really well. Yep. Yep. So it could work out really well. Yep. Yep. Um, but, uh, some other things to keep in mind is JetBlue is, uh, not doing well financially. Uh, they've been canceling routes. So if you're, if you're looking at their route map and saying, oh yeah, I could fly here, there, there, maybe some of those routes won't be available by the time you

go to book them, um, or, you know, if you're also, if you're thinking in the future, like, oh yeah, with these 350,000 miles, I'll be able to fly here and there. We don't know that you'll be able to fly here and there. Who knows if they'll even exist in the future, which is of course the biggest risk of all this. If they just completely collapse, then 25 years of status with a defunct airline isn't worth a whole lot.

Neither is 350,000 miles. However, they do at least currently have a partnership with United and there have been some rumors that United's end game is to buy JetBlue. And I think that could potentially work out well if you completed this challenge. Like, so those points would probably become 350,000 United miles.

And the status would probably become something with United. Some kind of status, whether it would be for the full term of the 25 years, that's maybe. But I think they would at least give you, give you something for some amount of time, uh, to, to make up for, for, uh, you know, what, what you'd be losing. So, um, so there's some hope there if jet blue, even if jet blue doesn't exist in the future.

Yeah. I mean, I think that's a really important point. When I look at this, I say, well, I don't know if jet blue is going to exist five years from now for you at about 25 years from now. So not really counting on 25 years worth of jet blue status, but I am thinking that it's more likely that they get bought by another airline and you get something out of it for a while anyway, uh, than it is that they just collapse entirely and close up shop. So, uh, so, you know, as long as that happens, as long as they get bought by another airline, rather than just closing the doors, then hopefully we'll all make out

pretty well one way or another. Right. Let's talk about the quick terms here that I mentioned a couple of things, but there's some more important things here too. So quick terms, you have to complete your flights by December 31st of 2025. So between June 25th and December 31st, JetBlue operated flights only so if you're booking some sort of a partner type of a flight, those don't count only the ones that are operated by JetBlue. Blue Basic Fairs are not eligible and that's maybe one of the most important things you need to

know about this. You cannot be booking the Blue Basic Fairs. Those will not count. You need blue which means that it's going to be more expensive whether you're booking with cash or with miles. Speaking of booking with cash or miles, award flights count. So you can use your JetBlue TrueBlue points to book awards and those will count for this promotion. But surprisingly, we've been told that even flights booked with partner miles will count as long as you get your JetBlue TrueBlue number attached to the booking. So that means you could use potentially Qatar miles or Etihad miles or something else to book JetBlue flights and then get your JetBlue number on that and that should count.

We've been told from JetBlue that it will so hopefully it does. So you can use award flights, cash, cash in points, even JetBlue vacations bookings bookings All of those will count each airport you go to is a separate destination So if you're in New York, you could fly back to New York into JFK LaGuardia and Newark on separate trips and those would count as three different destinations even though you're going to the same General vicinity each airport counts separately So really the the goal here is to get to 25 airports and those can be your final destination or a connecting airport the place where you depart doesn't count so if you depart from say syracuse new york and you fly to jfk you're only getting credit for jfk

on that one you have to fly back to syracuse to pick up syracuse so that's just a one example but if you fly from syracuse to JFK to San Juan, Puerto Rico, then you all get JFK and San Juan. You don't only get the final destination. You pick up the connections along the way, too. And when you get Mosaic status, that will include Mosaic 1 status. So again, after you've completed 25 destinations, 25 airports,

you'll get Mosaic 1 status for 25 years, and that comes with a perks you pick selection. So since a big component of this at the 25 destination level anyway, is Mosaic 1 status and that perks you pick selection, we should probably talk about what the benefits are of Mosaic 1 status. So what do you get with Mosaic 1 status? All right. So just to pull out some of the main things is you get two checked bags free

and one with United because of the partnership. You get preferred seating, including on United. You get even more extra legroom seat at check-in. And that includes on United, Getting United Economy Plus upgrade at check-in. You know, obviously these are if those seats are available when you check in. You get same-day switches. So free same-day confirmed changes with both JetBlue and United.

Now, the perks you pick pick every year you get to pick one of these from a list of perks you pick. So that means you'll be able to do this for 25 years, pick one of these if JetBlue is around that long. Will they be doing a 50-year birthday celebration in 25 years from now? I don't know, but if they are you better do one of these every year. I just pulled out two, because I think these two are potentially very valuable. One is a pet fee waiver. So you can, you know, if you like to travel with your pet,

waiving the fees for traveling with your pet can be huge cost savings. And the second one I wanna call out is 15,000 points. You could simply get 15,000 points every year for 25 years. So that's potentially a big collection of points over time. You know what, there's one more that I want to ask about. I should have asked you about this before we even started the show,

but I got looking at it and I had this in mind to ask about because I think, correct me if I'm wrong, hopefully you're looking at a list of the perks. I think one of the other perks you pick, I think, can it be a gift of 20 tiles to somebody else? Yeah. Yeah, that's right. And, and I'm, I'm going to bring that up because later on I'll talk about the potential of doing this with my family because I've thought about if I did this each of my family members could choose to give me the 20 tiles each year and get me potentially pretty close to Mosaic 2. So that's that's another one that may not be as appealing to

everybody but if you're doing this as a family and you want to get somebody to a higher level of status that could be one that might be appealing. Although the 15,000 True Blue points, I mean, if you're able to do that for 25 years, that's well over 300,000 more, right? So that's, if they kept it around for 25 years, if the airline was still there and they continue the 15,000 miles, that would probably be pretty valuable over time

for a lot of people anyway. Yeah. All right. Some things to know about JetBlue before you decide to do this. Some of this, it's not as easy as it sounds at first, or at least sounded at first to me until I thought more about JetBlue's routes. So their primary hubs are JFK in New York City and Boston.

Like those are the primary hubs. The vast majority of flights go from or to those two hubs. And so, you know, when you look at that, the fact that they have flights to LA, Vancouver, Seattle, like a bunch of airports on the West Coast, well, they all go to Boston or JFK, almost all of them, to Boston or JFK. And so when you're thinking about getting a lot of destinations in and trying to think about, oh, could we build in a multi-stop route? Usually the answer is no. And once you've checked off JFK and Boston from your list of 25 destinations, all these

other flights that go out somewhere and come back to JFK or Boston are not adding, like the return to JFK and Boston wouldn't be adding any more to your list. They also have lesser hubs in Florida, Fort Lauderdale and Orlando are a couple that have a number of flights out. And then there's even smaller sort of like focused city airports, I guess, with more than, you know, more than a couple of flights out from them, but not that many. They also have, they have seven European destinations,

which is great. Those are all from JFK and Boston. You might have thought, if you're anything like me, like when you first saw this promo, great, I'll fly, I'll fly to London and then fly home from there on their Dublin route in order to get to European cities in, but that won't work because you have the, the, uh, Dublin would count as the, uh, origin or originating airport and that's not counted. It's only where you land, which would be Boston or JFK again,

that would count on that flight. And there's no flights within Europe on JetBlue. So you can't fly from one city in Europe to the other. So yeah, so even though they have the seven European destinations, it would be really tough to get all of them. That would require seven different flights to Europe. They do have a good number of Caribbean destinations.

So there is a possibility of flying around between Florida and the Caribbean quite a bit to knock off a lot of destinations that way. And they do serve some of those Caribbean destinations, not just from Florida, JFK and Boston. There are some, not very many, but there's a handful of routes like from DCA to San Juan, I think is one of them. And so there's a few like that where you could potentially like fly to San Juan from someplace and then fly out of there to pick up a different airport on the way

back. And so there are some opportunities for East Coast residents is a little bit easier, still not easy, but a little bit easier to kind of piece together hopping around instead of so much backtracking. Yeah, anybody based on the West Coast, forget it, you're gonna have to move to the East Coast for a while to get to seem like it. Yeah. There are some Central America and Northern South America destinations too. And, uh, but, uh, you know, as I mentioned already, there's no West Coast

to West Coast routes. They, if you're on the West coast, you got to fly all the way back to the East coast. Uh, if you want to stay on JetBlue. Yeah. So that definitely makes it a little bit harder for anybody that's West Coast based. That's doesn't have like a super flexible online type of a job. I think it'd be pretty hard for somebody based in the West Coast to really consider this unless you just happen to be traveling to at least a number of destinations already

and then you can kind of build on to those trips perhaps, but it'd be a lot harder. And it makes it kind of frustrating too, even if you're based on the East Coast. If you want to pick up a West Coast destination, it's like you got to basically fly round trip to pick up one place. There's a little bit of flexibility, like you can fly from, for instance, Boston to Los Angeles, and then fly from Los Angeles to New York, I guess, to pick up two different places. But there's not a lot of Differentiation on the way back once you picked up the New York and Boston airports then all your West Coast flights are gonna go to one Of those so yeah. Yeah. So anyway, that's that's that let's talk about getting status and time for the promo Well, why would you want status Greg? You're gonna get it for 25 years. Yeah. Well, you know if you're doing the promo You're gonna be flying JetBlue an

awful lot. So having status while you're doing this will obviously help you have a better chance of being in extra legroom seating, even if you paid the lowest qualified amount, meaning not Blue Basic. And so, yeah, so obviously that it would be a good thing to have. And I guess you'll also earn more rewards on paid fares and things as well. Why don't you start there? We've got three ways of earning status in time for the promo, or at least for part of the time of the promo.

Right, Right. Tell us about how Duncan, Duncan, Donuts, how do they come into play here? Greg, I know you don't understand this, but America runs on Duncan. So, so does Jeff blue on, on every Monday of the summer, except for a couple. Gosh, I helped the pilots have enough of it up there. So, uh, so anyway, any Monday or nearly any Monday through September 1st, I'm not even sure what that means. There's a couple Mondays where they're not doing this for some reason. Okay, so most Mondays between June 30th is the first Monday after you hear this and September 1st,

you can fly on a jet blue Duncan plane. So they've got like these planes that are painted with a Duncan livery. And I'm trying to, if you heard a pause there, it's because I'm so used to saying Duncan donuts, but they just call it Duncan these days. So anyway, you fly on the Duncan plane and make sure that you've opted in to JetBlue marketing emails to make sure you're eligible for this. Then you can get three months of Mosaic One status just by flying on the duncan plane so that's kind of crazy so if you are listening to this as soon as we publish it this monday june

30th the duncan planes are going to be departing orlando to laguardia at 7 19 a.m that's flight 598 laguardia to orlando departing at 10 50 orlando to dca at 235, and DCA to Palm Beach at 6 p.m. So it just occurred to me as you're reading this that you could get what four destination, if you flew all four of those routes in the same day, you just stay on the airplane while they're cleaning and getting everything in between. They probably wouldn't let you do that. I'm sure they'll let you do that. Right, but you could potentially fly those, right? Yeah, you could. So you could get four destinations in one day. So that would be kind of fun. And so maybe we'll see everybody there.

And then you would get mosaic status for three months mosaic one status so you'd have status for at least a big chunk of time. Now which Monday you want to do this might vary depending on when you think you're going to be able to fit in most of the flights you may not want to do this coming Monday which I assume flights this coming Monday are probably not super cheap anyway at this late stage. Then you wanna keep an eye on this. How do people know which flights are gonna be the best? You've gotta check their website for this promo

the Tuesday before the Monday you wanna fly. So they don't give you a lot of lead time on this. Yeah, and I'm just looking it up and it looks like LaGuardia to Orlando, that flight at the time we're recording this is like $270. So you know, you got to decide by the time you listen to this, it's probably gonna be even more and who knows maybe one of those other routes are a little bit cheaper. So you can take a look anyway.

All right. So that's one way to get it. What else can you do? JetBlue Vacations has a promo that on the surface doesn't sound very good. You get Mosaic 1 status if you book a $4,500 or more vacation package to Europe for travel through the end of October. And then that status will last through December 31st, 2026. And if you already have mosaic status, you'll be bumped to the next mosaic level

just through the end of this year though. So if you already have mosaic status, this could be, I guess, a way to bump up and then or to get it from scratch if you don't already have it. But here's the reason it's not that good. Besides requiring Europe, Here's the reason it's not that good. Besides requiring Europe, $4,500 is $500 away from how much you'd have to spend on JetBlue

stuff to get Mosaic One status anyway. If you book $5,000 worth of travel through JetBlue, that gives you the 50 tiles you need for Mosaic One status. So this is at best saving you about $500. Except here's the thing, if you're booking for a family, if you're booking for a family, what normally happens is the tiles are divided by how many people are flying.

So if there's three people flying, then a $4,500 vacation package would give each person 15 tiles, if I did my math right. Yeah, yep. But this would still give you, the person booking it, mosaic one status. So that's where it could be an advantage.

So if you're booking with a family, then the primary person booking has that advantage. All right, had to get that one out of the way because there's a much more interesting option if you already have status in one of several airlines. So Nick, why don't you tell us first about sort of the generic version of the status match? And then I'm going to talk about a special version that's just available for American Airlines and Delta. Okay, so if you've got status with American, Alaska, Delta, United, Southwest, Spirit or Frontier, you can match to JetBlue and get three months of trial status. And so you get to have the perks for three months, which is probably what matters to somebody trying to complete this challenge. And then you can keep the status through 2026 if you earn 10 tiles by the end of the by the end

of that three months, I assume. So you'd have to spend $1,000 on JetBlue flights to earn 10 tiles. Or if you got the JetBlue credit card, JetBlue Plus credit card, JetBlue Business credit card, then spending $10,000 on your card would earn you the 10 tiles you need in order to keep Mosaic one through 2026. Yeah, and you could get to higher levels by earning more tiles, but I wanna point out that, so keeping it to the end of the year

until your 25 years of Mosaic status starts would be kind of a no-er if you're doing this. Because to earn the 10 tiles during the challenge period, you're probably not flying JetBlue enough if you don't earn them just from the flying. So. Well, yeah, sort of, except that if you're booking award flights, you don't earn tiles for those, I don't think, right? Just if you're booking paid flights.

So if you're looking to do the challenge entirely on award flights, you don't earn tiles for those, I don't think, right? Just if you're booking paid flights. So if you're looking to do the challenge entirely on award flights, then you wouldn't probably earn the tiles from those, but $10,000 spent. Yeah, I'm not actually sure whether or not you earn tiles from flying awards, but I think you're probably right that you don't. So to be determined.

All right, where this gets more exciting is for American Airlines, elites that have platinum pro or higher status or delta platinum elites or higher. And it's a similar idea about the matching. You get matched to Mosaic 2, but only if you sign up for the match by June 30th. So hurry up if you're listening to this on June 30th, you know, press pause and go apply for the status match. And the reason it's interesting is because

you have a chance of getting upgraded to Mosaic 4 for the rest of this year and all of next for the rest of this year and all of next, if you earn 50 tiles by the end of this year. And so the reason that's exciting is Mosaic 4 gives you six move to Mint certificates. So those certificates can be used for upgrading to Mint business class, which is available like on flights to and from Europe or long haul flights across the US like on flights to and from Europe or long-haul

flights across the US and some flights to the Caribbean. And so that's pretty darn good. You can gift Mosaic 1 status to a friend or family member and you get four perks you pick selections as well. So a lot of good stuff comes with Mosaic 4. I don't think they have the Blade helicopter flights as a perk anymore, unfortunately. I think that went away, but I could be wrong, so double check that. You do need to get 50 tiles by the end of the year, which some of your flying for this challenge will probably help with that, may or may not. And 50 tiles is $5,000 in flights, or you could spend $50,000 on a JetBlue card in order to get the 50 tiles. Yeah, so if you've got American Airlines,

Platinum Pro or Delta Platinum or higher, then I think that that's pretty intriguing, because you could get yourself pretty close to the 50,000. And keep in mind, when Greg says you can earn that with $5,000 in flights or $50,000 in JetBlue credit card spend, you can mix and match. So if you end up spending like, you know, $4,000 on your challenge flights and you get 40 tiles from that, then you're only going to need 10 more tiles from credit card spend. So $10,000 spent on the card would get you there. So you can mix and match and you probably will want to do that especially if you're Considering mostly booking paid flights for the challenge. Yeah, I think now we need to talk about jet blue credit cards

because even if you're not thinking about doing the status match thing, we just talked about if you're thinking about doing the 25 destination Bet which is the big bit, then having a credit card might be really, really helpful for a few reasons. One reason is maybe it might not really matter that much whether you get Mosaic 1 status in time for the challenge, because these give you some perks right away, like free check bag and better boarding groups and stuff like that. And you also if you're doing it with miles these cards give you a 10% rebate on the awards you book with miles. So okay so the two cards are the JetBlue Plus and the JetBlue Business Card. They're both $99 annual fee. And the plus card, which is the consumer card, gives

you 60,000 bonus miles after a thousand dollars spend in 90 days. The business card only gives you 50,000 bonus points as we're recording this anyway, after a 2k spend in 90 days. They both give you one free check bag. They give you 5,000 bonus points every anniversary. one free check bag that give you 5,000 bonus points every anniversary. So that alone goes a decent way towards making up for the $99 annual fee. I already mentioned the 10% rebate on awards. You also get a $100 statement credit with purchase of travel package. So if you fulfill any of your destinations by booking a travel package through JetBlue, that could be a nice discount on that travel package. And also you get a 50% savings on in-flight purchases. Only the business card gives you a group A boarding. So only that one gives you priority boarding. Yeah, that's interesting. Only the business

version gives you that. And it's got the smaller welcome bonus. JetBlue, if you're listening, you have picked up so much press this week because of the challenge and it makes so much sense for anybody considering using miles to get one of these for the 10% rebate. And I think for the 50% savings on in-flight purchases, because if you're going to fly enough to complete this, then you're probably going to buy something on the plane now and then and getting half off of it makes sense. Like this makes the credit cards an easy sell for quite a few people.

So if you just made a splash with a better offer on these I think probably the uptake would be pretty good I mean I I have never considered a jet blue card before it just wouldn't have been a fit for my situation but I'm pretty seriously considering doing this and if I do I feel like well I got to get the card because I'll need the checked bag and I intend to do it if I'm going to do it with mostly miles. And so the 10% rebate is going to add up for me. So, yeah, I mean, I definitely I look at this and say,

is a great time to get a jet blue card. I just like a slightly better bonus jet blue. So JetBlue and Barclays gives a better bonus on those, please. Yeah, yeah. And better bonuses are not unusual. These are not high water marks for the bonus, right? As they are right now. please. Yeah, yeah and better bonuses are not unusual. These are not high water marks for the bonuses as they are right now. No, yeah we have. We've seen much better offers and like now's the time to market it. Take advantage of it JetBlue. Yeah, yeah. Take advantage of the wave.

I mean I hope JetBlue makes this whole segment about the credit cards seem ridiculous because hopefully they'll come out with the new offers before this even publishes. And so then we'll look. It would make sense. And the marketing team clearly was paying attention to what SAS did, right? To the SAS Eurobonus. They had to be paying attention to the SAS Eurobonus challenge.

That has to have been where this idea came from. They saw how many people went out there and flew around the world like crazy. And they were like, you know what? We only need people to fly around the United States and we could probably build some buzz too. So I think it was brilliant of them to have done that. So this is the piece that's missing.

Credit cards need a better bonus. JetBlue. All right. So we talked about the cards. We talked about the challenge. We talked about how it was challenged. The 25 for 25 promotion, we should call it a promotion. Talked about the promotion. And we've talked about how you could get JetBlue Elite status in a hurry. So now we gotta talk about, are we gonna do it?

So I'm gonna jump ahead and ask you, Greg, you gonna do this thing or what? I'm currently right on the fence on this. I almost minute to minute go back and forth about it. I wrote a post about my initial thoughts and how like, I started off like, I'm definitely gonna go for this. And I'm gonna design a whole bunch of weekend trips

for my wife and I to take, so we'll both earn this. But then when I tried to actually work through the details, and I don't even mean the exact flights, but just like how many trips would we have to take in order to complete this? And looking at like my wife's schedule, for example, she works full time. So we'd be looking at mostly weekends and how many weekends then would we be gone from home between now and the end of the year, and it's looking like most. We'd be gone most weekends, and that's not great. We're okay doing that for a month or two, being away every weekend, but doing it for months on end,

that gets very tiresome. Tiresome, and presumably if you like where you live, you probably don't want to spend half the year away on the weekends, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a good point as well. So I kind of am going back to the drawing board and I'm seeing more opportunities.

So the hard part is finding opportunities to bake more than a couple destinations into a weekend. And I'm starting to see some ways of doing that, like the Duncan flight. Like, you know, what if I just sat on a plane all day, go back and forth, if they're gonna go to different routes, then I can knock off some destinations that way. Now, if I end up doing something like that,

I wouldn't drag my wife along. It would be like something, she goes to work and I go, my work then would be like sitting on jet to work and I go my work then would be like sitting on JetBlue planes all day, which sounds torturous. It's labor of love. It's the labor of love, folks. It sounds torturous, but hey, maybe I could announce some of my flights ahead of time and maybe some other people doing this would join me and we would be a big party in the sky. So it could be a lot of fun.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Certainly could be. And I read your post with interest to see what you were doing, because a number of people asked, are we going to make this a frequent miler challenge? Because obviously we did with the SAS EuroBonus challenge. And as people asked that question, I thought to myself, this just doesn't make.

Like it makes, it feels like a frequent milery thing, right? Because like I, I couldn't get it off my mind yesterday. I spent all day like looking at flights and routes and how we can make it work and dates and times and blah, blah, blah. So I actually did spend quite a bit of time trying to design an itinerary to get this done and figure out what it would cost and blah, blah, blah. Because that's just like, that's the way we're built. We're built to think about those things. But that said, I thought to myself, well, Stephen lives in the UK now. So, you know, flying around on JetBlue is certainly not easy for him. And Tim being based in Seattle, forget about it. I mean, again, like I said, you have to

kind of move to the East Coast for a while to get this done. So it's not very realistic for him either. Right. And you know then you're in the same situation, right? Or you'd have to keep flying east. Yeah. You know, it's, it's not nearly as out of the question for me as it is for those guys. Cause yeah, but yeah, I would have to fly literally from Detroit, which is my local airport, I would have to fly to New York or Boston every time to start flying. Because that's the only, those are the only jet blue flights from Detroit.

But I'm close enough, like I could do things like fly to Orlando and start my flying there pretty easily by just flying a different airline, you know, to get there. And, you know, that would just be much harder for Tim, because that's like a five hour flight or more for him to get there. And obviously much harder for Stephen to fly from London.

And from London, and he's not even where he's living is not even in London. So he'd have to get to London each time. That would be ridiculous. Right, right. And so I'm the only person that it would really make sense to do this. And, and it would make sense in a lot of ways, because so I live about three hours from New York City, about two hours and 45 minutes from Newark Airport, and then JFK and LaGuardia, it just

depends on the traffic situation, but within three and a half hours on a good day, four and a half on a bad day, I could be at those airports, they fly to and from Hartford, which is about two and a half hours away from me, 245 maybe. Syracuse, about two and a half hours away. They fly to and from White Plains, which is a little closer than any of those. This weekend, we're going to be in Western New York, so I could presumably fly early next week out

of Rochester or Buffalo. So there's quite a few options that are within a not totally unreasonable distance from me not not close Obviously all those places are far and then Albany of course my home airports about an hour away And that's another JetBlue airport, and then if I go a little further afield even here within the Northeast you got what Providence and Worcester Mass and so there's a lot of different airports that they serve Manchester still I think although I don't know I think that's one of the routes they're cutting. But at any rate, there are a lot of places

that I could fly from, but of course, flying from them is not particularly useful. I gotta fly to them in order to pick up those destinations. So that makes it a little more complicated. I looked at this and I got really excited. And I said to myself, well, if we did this as a family of four, we're already talking about doing some travel in August and we hadn't really firmed up what the plans were going

to be for August yet. And I said, well, we could take the whole month of August. And obviously my job is remote and mobile and my wife has a lot of flexibility too. So we could potentially do this as a family of four. And I did some math and figured we could probably do it for less than 200,000 miles of passenger And so if we were able to do that do it for less than 200,000 miles of passenger We'd each end up with 350,000 miles. So it cost us about 800,000 miles I figured and we would end up with about 1.4 million JetBlue miles

So we come out about 600,000 miles ahead over the family of four and all of us would have elite status Presumably for 25 years. Now, obviously I don't know that JetBlue is gonna last that long, but if it did, or if the deal continued, if United bought them and it continued, then we'd have elite status until maybe we have grandkids, because my kids are seven and five,

so I mean they are four, almost five anyway. So I mean they're gonna be 30, 32, by the time that status would run out. And so there's part of me that's like, that's such a cool opportunity. And we wouldn't use JetBlue status all the time, but even if we used it five or 10 times in 25 years, it would be, you know, worth something to us. And I'm sure we would use it more than that. And with United, I would certainly use it as well.

So I was pretty excited about all this. I laid out a plan for my wife last night. I showed her and she's like, yeah, I don't know if I want to do that. So I kind of took the wind out of myself, but, uh, so I don't know whether we'll do it or not. But, but I find it pretty compelling, especially as a family of four, because JetBlue, I don't think has a way to pull the miles at this point, but you can use your miles. They have family pooling. People. Oh, do they have family pooling? Look at that. So I was even wrong.

So we can pull them all together. One big pile. I mean, it would be a useful number of miles and whether we use those to fly JetBlue or we use them to fly like Qatar business class or something like that, I imagine we would find some good uses for the 1.4 million miles.

Part of the hangup for me though, that is, I don't know, has got me really right now kind of biting my nails to try to figure out what to do is that I would rather do it with miles than with money because I figure if it would cost us let's say I don't know $2,500 a piece that'd be like $10,000 it'd be a lot of money to put into this but if I could do it with 200,000 miles that seems more appealing per passenger. However, doing that would really reduce the number of points that I have to transfer to Alaska slash

Hawaiian before June 30th. And what I mean by that is this, so transfers from the transferable currencies to JetBlue are not all created equally. They transfer one-to-one from Chase Ultimate Rewards and Citi Thank You points. So if you have those, those are probably your best bet to transfer to JetBlue. However, I value my Chase Points for Hyatt too much to consider transferring any of those to JetBlue and I don't have very many City Thank You Points. So I would not be able to take care of many of these flights with City Thank You Points. So then that brings us to the other two options, main options, capital one miles, which have a horrible transfer ratio to JetBlue of 1000 to 600. In fact, when I got looking at it, I realized that I would use fewer miles booking the flights as paid flights

and using my capital one miles to erase the purchase at one cent per mile than if I had to transfer to JetBlue in all the cases that I had looked at. So and I would earn miles on those flights. So I'd be better off using the purchase eraser, but still I don't have 800,000 capital miles at this point or 10 or a million that I would need potentially if it was say 2,500 ish a person. So then that leaves me with Amix membership rewards points, which transfer 250 to 200 to JetBlue, which is not ideal because it's not quite one to one. And you pay the excise tax for transferring to a domestic airline program that caps at 99 bucks.

So that would be my other way. And we do have, I don't know, somewhere in the neighborhood of a million-ish membership rewards points. However, I had intended to transfer about a half a million of those to Hawaiian in order to get those to Hawaiian and long-term to Alaska before that partnership ends because June 30th is the last day to transfer MX membership rewards points to Hawaiian Airlines. And so I kind of had that earmarked and I don't like the idea of using up all of my membership rewards points on like something that is sort of frivolous.

So you seem like really, uh, stuck on booking with JetBlue points. So why not book cash fares? And if you're, if you really want to use points, why not use, you know, pick Jip Lewis, your preferred airline with MX and use your business platinum to get a 1.54 cents value on those. That might, that might be a good plan to, because then I would get a decent value. Actually, I could do math on that because at 1.54 cents, it probably costs fewer miles than an award ticket.

You'd earn miles on it. That's actually a really good idea. That's a pretty good plan. It does, again, tie up the membership rewards points. Either way, my concern is tying up too many membership rewards points, but you're right, that would be the better play than transferring.

You can also pay real cash as another option. I don't know if you knew about that one. I could, I could. That's just like, for a family of four, like if I'm looking at like 10 grand on this, that seems like a big investment in cash. It's a big investment in cash. And I know the points could be cashed out. So some people out there are going to say, well, if you would have considered transferring say 800,000 points, you could cash those out for 8,000 or $9,000 or whatever, depending

on your situation. So you're not wrong, but it feels different. Gotcha. So yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So last word on all of this, I'm excited to see what Nick puts together by the way. So I'm hoping my wife said I need to work harder at selling her on this. Go ahead.

Please tell her. Somebody needs to. We need this for frequent Mylar content. We need to see your family flying all over the place on JetBlue. But for everyone else, Sam, don't listen to this part. For everybody else, I do want to caution that I don't recommend this as a straight up return on investment play.

That if you're like, oh yeah, I could, you know, put out this many points or this much cash and earn 350,000 points back and look, I'll be able to use those points for this much value and all that. You can make the return on investment case by doing that. But I bet you that if you looked instead at, um, applying for a bunch of big credit card offers, even if it means, um, using services like plastic or, or Melio to pay for things in order to meet big spend requirements. Like, you know, there's things like the Sapphire Reserve for Business that is $30,000 spend requirement.

There's Business Platinum Card of $20,000 that have these huge offers attached to them. And you might have before said, well, I'm not going to do them because there's no way I could spend that much. Well, maybe you can if you use services that charge you 3% ish to do that. And I bet if you looked at your cost, if you took that 3% cost, even adding in the annual fees, first year's annual fees on these things, and then compared that to the cost of booking all these JetBlue flights and potentially hotels as well, depending on what you're doing. And your time, you know, all that stuff. I mean, I bet you it would be a much better investment to do what I'm saying and sign up for some cards. It wouldn't be hard to get 350,000

points. So, you know, anyway, that's my spiel think I think if you want to do this, it's mostly about the fun of it. And yes, there's big rewards. But if you're say if you're East Coast based though, then I don't know. I mean, if you're East Coast based and you have a family that is willing and excited about doing this, then I think it starts to become more compelling because with more people, the return on investment kind of grows and like I couldn't get those signup bonuses for my kids, for instance, those welcome bonuses. And so like I look at it and say, I could see the argument for doing it, but doing it in a return on investment basis is shaky though. Cause who knows if these miles are going to continue to be as valuable as they are right now in the future.

So there's, I think Greg's right for the most part, although I think if you're based in like Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, there's a lot of airports you can fly to and from and it might not be as intimidating or as time consuming, but you do have to consider the hotel costs and all those other things. So Greg's right. It's certainly not a small investment in terms of time or money. You've got to be in it because you enjoy it.

And if you like it and you like the fun of it, you got excited like I did and you're like, oh, wow, my kids might have status until they have kids. You know, if that's exciting to you, then I feel like it's more compelling, but who knows? So best of luck if you're gonna do it. Let us know, share your itineraries. People have been asking already about itineraries and sharing itinerary ideas and chat GPTing terrible

itineraries that don't actually exist. So anyway, get out the pencil and the spreadsheet and start to plan it out if you're interested. Alright, that brings us to this week's question of the week. Question of the week is, what are the best practices for using elite status to actually maximize value? Or is elite status way overrated? What do you think, Greg? I mean, how do you use, I think we should talk about both airline and hotel elite status here What's your best practices for using elite status to maximize value or do you think it's not even worth it for most people? You know, it's a great question

I if I remember right part of his email also said that he has he usually books business class flights Anyway, and if that's the case There's so little that elite status gives you that usually chasing it is doesn't make sense that like pursuing elite status can cost you a lot. It can make you do make suboptimal decisions about like, you know, oh, I'm going to fly Delta, even though it's three times as much as the next best alternative. And usually the return on that investment is pretty small. I mean, so that's why we usually focus on shortcuts to elite status, because it's still fun having elite status. You do

get things like, you know, free seat selection selection of better seats than other people can pick. You get, depending on your level of status, the chance of upgrades to first class, free upgrades to first class. Some airlines have upgrade certificates that let you upgrade international flights. If you get those, that requires very high level status. And hotels, the status often includes free breakfast, room upgrades, sometimes suite upgrade certificates. So there are really valuable things you can get, but I would say in general,

the cost of pursuing them, unless you're looking at the shortcuts that we talk about, is not usually worth it. Totally agree. I mean, as somebody who primarily is an award traveler and internationally is almost always, and I say almost always, anytime I'm traveling for fun, so to speak, and not for the SaaS EuroBonus Challenge

or something like that for work. When I'm traveling with my family internationally, we're flying in business class using miles. And so just like John, I'm getting most of the benefits of elite status, early boarding lounge access, you know, all of those things, the priority check in lane, all the stuff that you might think comes with elite status. So airline elite status has never really interested me until American Airlines started making lots

of other stuff count and then other airlines that kind of followed suit and made lots of other stuff count. And now I enjoy the gamification of it a little bit and finding those shortcuts that Greg mentioned, but there's not enough benefit to justify it for the most part. And I think if you're primarily an award traveler

and you're savvy about booking business class award tickets internationally and that sort of thing, then you probably don't need airline elite status. I think airline elite status matters most for business travelers who are frequently flying and flying an economy class. Because then, yeah, those upgrades will be more valuable to you to get more comfortable seating

and the ability to speak to an agent when something goes wrong and get to somebody faster because you've got a special phone number to call. Those things become more valuable for somebody who's traveling weekly for work. But if you're primarily a leisure traveler then yeah I don't think airline elite status is particularly important in the for the most part and and hotel elite status. I really enjoy the benefits but like Greg said these programs are designed to make you make irrational decisions and so if you're making those

irrational decisions probably most people are not traveling enough for those elite status benefits to be worth enough to overpay or overextend themselves in chasing elite status if you're traveling you're taking one or two weeks of vacation a year and that's the extent of your travel and when you're using the elite benefits.

In very rare instances, you're going to Bora Bora, breakfast would be really expensive, maybe that adds up for you. But for the most part, it's just not gonna be worth enough. You're better off probably just buying breakfast and paying for the upgrade or whatever It may be that you would have gotten otherwise rather than over extending yourself to earn status now that said we enjoy The gamification of this stuff

So we'll continue talking about the ways that you can get shortcuts and kind of bridge the gap if you're already Traveling X amount for work and you just need an extra 10 nights or 15 nights We'll talk about the promotions or it's worth mattress running in order to earn credit towards status. But I agree with you, Greg. I think for most people, it's not worth it. Yeah. All right. That brings us to the end of today's show. If you've enjoyed this and you'd like to get more in your email inbox each day or each week, you want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe join our email list follow us on all the various social media join our frequent Mylar insiders Facebook group to ask and answer questions like that all the time And if you have a piece of feedback that you'd like to be considered for a giant mailbag or a question That you'd like to be considered for the question of the week. You can send that to

Send it to mailbag at frequentmiler.com That includes John's John the nerdy dad's daughters send your video or audio recording to mailbag at frequentmiler.com looking forward to it. I've heard some crazy travel stories and I got a few of my own. Travel Tales with Mike Siegel, that's me, is full of funny, inspiring and wild adventures. Listen now at voyascape.com.