Tag Archives: Frequent Flyer Miles

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How to Redeem Southwest Airlines Gesture of Goodwill 25,000 Point Award Codes to your SWA Account

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.

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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.

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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.

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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:

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

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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.

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