Frequent Miler on the Air - JetBlue's Excellent Status Match | Coffee Break Ep24 | 9-3-24

Episode Date: September 3, 2024

JetBlue is out with an opportunity to earn status for 3 months by matching from Delta, United, American Airlines, or Alaska elite status. Don't worry if you don't have status in any of those yet - in this episode we'll also talk about how to get some of these statuses quickly and easily to do this match.   (00:00) - Read more about JetBlue's status match here. (01:23) - Match to Mosaic 1 or 2 for 3 months. What is Mosaic 1 or 2? (03:57) - Details about the challenge (04:23) - "Tiles" may be earned for this promotion in only three ways... (09:10) - What if you don't have one of these statuses yet? (10:28) - How to get status quickly with Delta (2024) (11:30) - How to get status quickly with American Airlines (12:18) - How to get status quickly with Alaska (2024) (13:09) - Listen to podcast episode 225 "Delta's big flip-flop" here. (13:20) - Listen to podcast episode 242 "Which Delta card is best?" here. (14:42) - A somewhat risky idea for possibly getting almost two years status Visit 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 – Beach Walk by Unicorn Heads

Here we go. This is not your typical Frequent Miler on the Air episode. This is a standalone segment we're calling Coffee Break. Each Coffee Break segment will cover a single topic related to miles and points. And each Coffee Break is limited to 20 minutes or your money back. Enjoy. Today's coffee break, JetBlue's excellent status match. JetBlue is out with a opportunity to earn status for three months by matching from Delta, United, American Airlines, or Alaska Elite status. And don't worry if you don't have status in any of those.

We're going to talk near the end of this segment about how you could get status quickly and easily in some of those programs in order to do this match if you're interested in doing it. And this match will let you match from even bottom-level status in one of those programs to Mosaic 1 or 2 in JetBlue for three months. And then we'll talk about how you can extend that for even longer in a moment. And don't forget, if you want more information about this, we'll have a link to our post about this in the show notes. So don't forget

to look to the show notes to get a link so you can read more about what we're talking about if you want to see it visually too. So let's talk about Mosaic 1 and Mosaic 2 and what that'll get you. So if you match to Mosaic 1 and there's a number of different sort of low tier statuses that match there like American Airlines Advantage Gold or United Silver, etc. that match to Mosaic 1. So Mosaic 1 will get you the first two check bags for free on JetBlue. So that's kind of a nice benefit. Even more space at check-in for no extra charge. And I assume that that probably works for everybody in your party. So it'll get you the extra legroom seats if they're available when you check in. Free same-day switches if you want to change to a different flight time. Free beer, wine, and liquor on board. And mint sweet priority as your selected Mosaic One perk

you pick because you get some perks you pick with the different various levels of mosaic but you don't get to pick it's the perk picked for you it's mint sweet priority quick quick quiz for you nick do you know what mint sweet priority is well that's exactly what i was about to ask you cut me off as i was about to say and greg can tell us more about what mint sweet priority means means. All right, just real quick. So I know that's so confusing. I thought it meant you get like upgraded to Mint, which is JetBlue's business class. But no, that's not what that means. What it means is if you've booked Mint, some of their planes have Mint seats and Mint suites.

The suites are the versions with doors. And so this gives you priority to get into one of those suites as opposed to a regular seat. Yeah. Wow. Okay. That's interesting. So I guess that's nice-ish. Yeah.

I mean, I wouldn't bank on it being valuable, but it works out. Right, right, right, right. Alright, so that's Mosaic 1. Mosaic 2, which some of the higher tier statuses from various programs match to Mosaic 2, that'll get you even more space at booking. The extra legroom seats at booking, which are near the front, extra

few inches. And also the pet fee waiver as your pre-selected Mosaic 2 perk you pick. So again, the perk you don't pick is a pet fee waiver. So if you travel with your pets, that could probably add up. I don't travel with pets, so it's not one that I would make much use of. But if you do, that certainly could come in handy. So those are the two levels you can match to.

And again, the lower sort of tier statuses from all the major U.S. airlines here or the major players, Alaska, American, United and Delta matched Mosaic one and then sort of their mid tier on up matches to Mosaic two. And you can see a full chart of that in our post about it. So the challenge here is that once you have matched to one of these, then you'll get the free status for three months. And then you have to meet a certain challenge depending on which level of Mosaic you've matched to. And if you complete the challenge, you get the status for the rest of this year and all of next year. So if you were able to complete the challenge, say October 1st of this year, you'll have status for the rest of 2024 and all of 2025. So Mosaic 1, in order to meet that challenge, you'll need to earn and

receive 10 tiles. So tiles are earned in a variety of different ways. But for example, $1,000 in spend on JetBlue flights or $10,000 in spend on a JetBlue credit card would get you the 10 tiles you need in order to keep Mosaic 1 all the way through the end of next year. Mosaic 2 is earn and receive 25 tiles. So just up those numbers, $2,500 in JetBlue purchases, or rather JetBlue spend, or 25K in spend on the credit card. Mosaic 3, same kind of thing, 40 in the case of Mosaic 3. Let me stop you for a second. Go ahead.

Yeah, let me just stop you for a second and point out something here that in a lot of airline elite challenges, you can only earn the status that you've matched to for the three months. And then you could keep it if you meet the challenge. In this case, the two pieces are separate. So like if you match to, let's say, Mosaic 2, you can just earn Mosaic 1 if you want to, you know, because that's very easy to do. And it gives you a lot of good benefits right there. And you could be done with just like $10,000 spent on the credit card. Or you can earn all the way up to Mosaic 3 by earning 40 tiles, even if you only match to Mosaic 1. So it's very flexible in that way, which I really like about this. And I put in the show notes just that one of the benefits to call out about Mosaic 3 that makes it interesting above

the other two is that you get four move to mint certificates. And those are upgrade certificates that let you buy economy in either with points or with cash, and then apply the certificates to move to Mint class. The flight, it varies how many you have to use to move to Mint. So it could be anywhere from one to four that you'll need for a one-way flight. Luckily, JetBlue now does show you when you're logged in how many you'll need. So it used to be you had to actually book it and then try to move to Mint and see, well, you didn't have enough. Cancel and book something else.

It was a mystery. Moving to Mint was a mystery, but now the mystery has been solved. So, that's cool. I think that's particularly interesting because somebody with low-tier status with American Airlines or Alaska or United could match to Mosaic 1 and then earn 40 tiles and end up with Mosaic 3. So it significantly reduces your path to getting to Mosaic 3. I can't recall off the top of my head how many tiles you would ordinarily need for Mosaic 3, but more than 40. A lot more. Yeah. I can't remember either, but it's a big, big number. Significantly more. Yeah. So the tiles for the promotion can be earned in one of three ways. You can earn through travel spend.

So I mentioned, for instance, at Mosaic One, those 10 tiles, you could earn by spending $1,000 in JetBlue flights, for instance. So you can earn from travel spend. You can earn from credit card spend. And so credit card spend, if I'm correct, is basically one tile for every $10 spent. So I'm sorry, one tile for every $1,000 spent. That's right. So apologies for the bad math there. And you can mix and match, I think, right?

Or then three, you can purchase bonus tiles and those cost $107 each. So presumably you could do the match and just spend $1,007 on buying tiles and skip flying or spending on the credit card if you wanted Mosaic One, right? Yeah, I mean, that'd be kind of weird. I'm not sure why anyone would do that because that's the same amount of spend that you would need on JetBlue flights. You could actually fly places and enjoy your status during that time. But I could see maybe if you didn't have the credit card, you don't have much spend and you're almost getting there with actual flights, maybe you want to buy a tile or two to get there. Yeah. Yeah. So that could be a good way to sort of bridge the gap

and end up there. And so again, you earn tiles based on travel spend credit card and purchasing bonus tiles. And you can mix and match. So you could earn a few tiles from travel and then earn a few tiles from credit card spend. And so that's why Greg said, yeah, it might make sense to purchase a couple. Like for instance, I recently flew JetBlue Mint to Europe and I had booked that through Qatar Airways Avios. And I was surprised that I received eight tiles for that. So that was a nice, happy accident surprise that I didn't expect and certainly wouldn't expect again. But if I had done that here, I could buy the other two tiles

that I would need for $107 each. Now, of course, I did that all before this match came out, so those tiles won't do me any good for this match. But maybe if I had one booked, then it would have worked out a little bit better if I had done this match first but again that's something you can count on they're just kind of a happy accident so um so all that said so you might say okay well I'd like to match here I'd like to do this and kind of go after it I have some JetBlue spend coming up I have the JetBlue credit card whatever the case

may be and I would like to get Mosaic 1, 2, or 3 for a year and change, but I don't currently have status with United or American or Delta. What could you do if you want to be able to take advantage of this match, but don't yet have status that would qualify for it? Yeah. So I'm going to call out something else that's different about this status challenge than most others. Most of them, they say, if you want to match from, let's say, American Airlines, you have to show us your flight activity in order to be eligible. You can't just use a status that you got through some other trick and then match to JetBlue. But in this case, it actually says it requires having qualified status via flight or card activity.

So earning status, let's say, you know, bottom level status in one of these other programs with credit cards should work by the rules of this. And there are easy ways, easy-ish ways to do that with Delta, American Airlines, or Alaska right now. So let me start with Delta because this is really the easiest. I think we did a whole show on this, how easy Delta status is to get in 2024. Basically, if you sign up and get approved for two Delta cards, they have to be Delta Platinum or delta reserve cards and you could so you could either get one delta platinum and one delta reserve or you could get a delta platinum personal card and a delta platinum business card for example or any any combination

of all those they each have they they each have this 2500 what are called mqds as a as a just something you get for having the card. And the combination of two of them will get you Delta Silver status, and you're done. And now you've got Delta Silver status for the rest of this year and all of next and into January, I think, of the year after that. Plus, you will be able to match to JetBlue for three months and then can do what we talked about before to keep that status longer.

So that's the easiest. American Airlines, that's also pretty easy. Now, there's a lot of ways to accomplish this with American Airlines because they have their loyalty points, which you can earn through portals and whatnot. And I know that's not technically card activity. I really doubt JetBlue, whoever is

assessing these is going to understand the difference. They're going to see activity on your account that earns you all the loyalty points you need for American Airlines status. But if you want to do it entirely from card activity, you could spend $40,000 on American Airlines card, and that will give you gold status with American. And then you're off to the races. Or if you have the Aviator Silver card, it would only cost you $35,000 because the Aviator card gives you a 5,000 loyalty point boost at $20,000 spend, I think it was. Finally, the Alaska option. For 2024 only, they're not promising this past 2024, you can earn elite qualifications through spend. And right now, if I did my math right, it would take $50,000 of spend to get bottom tier MVP status, which you can then match to JetBlue Mosaic One. So I think for most people, the Delta one is probably the easiest, although it's not cheap because those cards do have annual fees that you'd have to pay. Yeah, you do have to consider what

the cost of that would be. Now, by the way, I wanted to mention, Greg said that we've talked about Delta Elite status a little bit, getting it from credit cards before. And that's true. We have, although you may have a little bit of trouble, I think, finding the particular episode, I thought it'd be easier to find than it was when I looked through. I see that we discussed that idea on Delta's big flip-flop, which was episode 225. So you can go back to that one if you want to see a little bit more when they kind of walked back the changes that they had to elite status. We talked about how you could easily do that. And we also discussed which Delta credit card is best on episode 242. So you can get episode

242 to read more or listen to more about that. Rather, those are on frequent mile around the air podcasts, because we did talk about if you value elite status, how to get it from credit cards on those shows. So yeah, I mean, there's pretty easy paths to get mosaic one here. If you're to follow one of those, the Delta path, I think is without a doubt the easiest for the greatest number of people. Now, I want to clarify here because somebody is sure to ask, and if we don't address it directly, if you get American Airlines status because of a fast track from World of Hyatt, is that going to count? Would you be able to match that over here? If you've got Hyatt Globalist status and you've been offered an American Airlines fast track and you get an instant status with that, I believe, will that get you?

I mean, technically, no, but there have been lots of cases where airlines have asked for proof of how you earn your status and just sending in stuff has worked, like stuff you've done, like even if it wasn't enough to earn the status. So I would not hesitate to try to match if you're interested, if you got it that way. Why not? So that's a great question. All right. Now moving on, what if you're not satisfied with only getting the rest of this year and all of next year? Is there a way to turn this into two full years of JetBlue status? And the answer is a very definite maybe. So if you wait till January to sign up for this match, then that's risky because there's no word on how long this

challenge opportunity will last. So there's a big risk in doing that. But if you do, and you meet the terms of the challenge, you'll have your status for the rest of 2025 and all of 2026. Another option that occurred to me is maybe if you enroll in the challenge in, let's say, November and you complete the challenge in January, let's say January 2nd or later, would you then have status for the rest of this year and all of the next? All I could say is- The rest of next year and all of the next? All I could say is- The rest of next year and all of the next, I guess, right? Next year and all of the year after that, right? The rest of 2025 and all of 2026. And the answer to that is, again, a definite maybe. The terms are so unclear when they say

the rest of this year, what they're measuring from. You could read it as meaning from the time that you enrolled in the challenge, but it's so unclear, in which case that wouldn't work. But if what they really mean is from the time that you completed the challenge, which in some ways seems more likely, that's how these challenges usually work. But again, this is very different from how challenges usually work. So I don't know. It's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it may be worth a gamble for somebody that really doesn't need the status until next year anyway to take a gamble at trying to get it for all of next year and the year after that you know

if you don't need the benefits in the near term then maybe it's worth waiting it out until november and seeing what happens but we can't count on that i don't think we're probably going to get a clear answer to that until people complete the challenge in january and at that point it's going to be probably too late to take advantage so um So if you want to give that a shot sometime after the beginning of November and wait to finish meeting it. Then let us know what happens. What's that? Will you go after this challenge? You won't because you already have JetBlue status, right?

Oh, well, I personally, yeah, I can't because I currently have it from last year's match. What about you? Are you interested? I'm not immediately, although I don't know. I mean, JetBlue does have some flights from where I live and the two free checked bags would make me more likely to fly in JetBlue. I don't know. I could. I could match to it. Whether or not I want to go to the effort to complete the challenge, that I'm not so sure about at this point. So I think if it becomes clear to me that,

yeah, I definitely want the JetBlue credit card or yeah, I'm going to spend around a thousand dollars on JetBlue flights anyway, then I would match. Otherwise I'm probably going to hold off until there's a time when I actually need a match for a more pressing reason, because sometimes doing one of these matches will prevent you from doing a future match sort of like the situation greg's in and i don't need it right now so i think i'll probably hold off yeah that makes sense if yeah let us know what you think are you going to do this why or why not we always love to hear from you so you can leave a comment or some feedback and let us know what you think sounds good don't forget if you've enjoyed this and you'd like to get on our email list you want to go to frequent miler.com subscribe to join our email list follow us on all the various Sounds good.