Good afternoon everyone. Yesterday, Frequent Miler reported Southwest compensating passengers with 25K points each as a goodwill gesture (check your email!). Since I read that post, I eagerly awaited my email since Laura and I were both affected by Southwest Airlines when we tried to fly home on December 26. This morning, at 10am PT, I received the Southwest Airlines email that contained 2 sets of award codes for 25,000 Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards Points each. This is a very nice goodwill gesture by Southwest Airlines and I really appreciate it. In this post, I will show you how to redeem the award codes to get the points deposited into your account. Lastly, if you would rather redeem your points for gift cards, I will show you how to do that too.
Tag Archives: Frequent Flyer Miles
My Wild & Crazy 2023 Airline, Hotel & Credit Card Predictions
Good morning everyone, I hope you had a great New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day! One of my yearly traditions is to write my predictions for the coming year and you can check out how I did in 2022 here: Let’s Review my 2022 Airline, Hotel & Credit Card Predictions. I plan on doing a mid-year review in July to see if I am on track, but without further ado, here are my predictions for 2023…
My 2023 Airline Predictions
- American Airlines or Alaska Airlines will be added as a transfer partner from a transferable points currency.
- British Airways will change their award chart to calculate the number of Avios needed on a combined distance flown, not on a segment by segment basis.
- Delta Airlines or United Airlines will introduce a “Miles and Cash” payment option for award tickets (pay 10,000 miles or pay 8,000 miles + $40).
- Southwest Airlines will work very hard to make up for their December 2022 travel nightmare by offering a transfer bonus from Chase and spending offers on their credit cards in January 2023.
Let’s Review my 2022 Airline, Hotel & Credit Card Predictions
Good afternoon everyone, happy New Year’s Eve! Since today is the last day of the year, I wanted to review My Wild and Crazy 2022 Airline, Hotel & Credit Card Predictions. 6 months ago, I wrote My 2022 Midyear Review of Airline, Hotel & Credit Card Predictions where I shared my 4 out of 26 correct predictions. Hopefully I was able to pick up a few more correct predictions in the second half of the year. Without further ado, here are my predictions and the results…
My 2022 Airline Predictions (2 / 7)
- Alaska Airlines or Southwest Airlines will bring back their “convert travel funds to airline miles” feature. – I still cannot believe this feature exists but Alaska and Southwest are not using it. Maybe we will see this feature again in 2023.
- American Airlines will return as a Citi ThankYou Points airline transfer partner. – I still cannot believe that Citi can’t get American Airlines to come back to the ThankYou Points portal, not even for a short trial period. I’m hopeful this will happen in 2023.
- Avianca will give Turkish Airlines a run for their money for domestic Star Alliance awards. – No, I don’t think this happened in 2022.
- British Airways will let you use Avios to pay the taxes, fees, and fuel surcharge portion of award tickets. – Yes, you can pay a large portion of taxes / fees / fuel surcharges with British Airways Avios (link).
- Delta Airlines, Southwest Airlines, or United Airlines will introduce a “Miles and Cash” payment option for award tickets (pay 10,000 miles or pay 8,000 miles + $40). – No, I don’t think these airlines introduced this feature in 2022.
- JetBlue will partner with another US airline for award bookings. – Yes, you can book JetBlue flights using American Airlines miles (link).
- United Airlines will be a transfer partner with Brex, Citi, or American Express. – Wrong! I should have guessed united Airlines would partner with Bilt Rewards.
I Paid $4,043 in Credit Card Annual Fees in 2022 – Was it Worth it?
Good evening everyone, I hope your week is going well. With the end of the year right around the corner, I decided to publish my 2022 version of credit card annual fees I paid this year. For comparison, here are my previous credit card annual fee posts:
- I Paid $4,588 in Credit Card Annual Fees in 2019 – Was it Worth it?
- I Paid $3,820 in Credit Card Annual Fees in 2020 – Was it Worth it?
- I Paid $3,009 in Credit Card Annual Fees in 2021 – Was it Worth it?
For this year’s post, I decided to break up the list of credit cards into 5 sections:
- Annual fees paid on new credit cards with sign up bonuses
- Annual fees paid on credit cards that received retention offers
- Annual fees on credit cards that have been upgraded / downgraded / product changed
- Annual fees on credit cards that I closed
- All other credit cards
8 Buy Miles / Points Promos Ending Soon: Choice Hotels (25%), British Airways (50%), Marriott (25%), Air France / KLM (120%), United (80%), Southwest (50%), Etihad (45%) & Alaska (50%)
Good afternoon everyone, happy Friday! I was working on my Buy Miles & Points Page and found 8 offers that end in the next week. Always check the math to make sure that buying miles & points makes sense for you. Do not buy miles & points speculatively unless you have a use in mind. With that said, here are 8 offers that end soon.
Up first, Choice Hotels is offering up to a 25% discount, depending on the number of Choice Hotels Privileges Points you purchase. This offer expires tomorrow – December 17.