Credit Cards

There are no credit cards that earn KrisFlyer miles directly, so your only options are ones that earn transferable points. Luckily, there are a lot of them. Of the cards below, I prefer to use the American Express Membership Rewards cards to transfer miles to Singapore Airlines, but I have also transferred from Chase Ultimate Rewards and Citi ThankYou in the past. You can view the current best offers for all of these cards at Credit Cards.

American Express Membership Rewards, Chase Ultimate Rewards, Citi ThankYou Points, and Starwood Preferred Guest Starpoints can all be transferred to Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer at a 1:1 ratio; however, Starpoints also provide a 25% bonus if you transfer in 20,000 point increments (meaning every 20,000 points becomes 25,000 KrisFlyer miles).

Credit CArd Churning

The Citi cards can be churned. The two Chase cards (Sapphire and Ink) can be churned as well, but this may be difficult to do in practice. For more information, see How To Earn A Signup Bonus Multiple Times.

Bonus Category Spending

American Express Premier Rewards Gold: 3x points on airfare purchased directly from airlines; 2x points U.S. gas stations, U.S. supermarkets, and U.S. restaurants
American Express Business Gold Rewards: 2-3x points on airfare purchased directly from airlines, U.S. advertising, U.S. gas stations, U.S. shipping, U.S. computer hardware/software/cloud
Chase Sapphire Preferred: 2x points on Travel and Dining
Chase Ink Plus: 5x points on Office Supplies, Phone, and Cable; 2x points on Gas and Hotels
Citi Thankyou Premier: 3x points on Travel and Gas; 2x points on Dining and Entertainment
Citi Thankyou Prestige: 3x points on Airfare and Hotels; 2x points on Dining and Entertainment

Manufactured Spend

The Chase Ink Plus can be very useful for manufactured spending. For more information, see How To Manufacture Spend.

Shopping Portal

KrisFlyer Spree.
Shop Through Chase (Ultimate Rewards).

Miles Expiration

Unlike other airline mileage programs, KrisFlyer miles expire 36 months after they are earned, and activity in your account does NOT extend your expiration. The only way to extend your expiration is to pay a fee, which gives you six more months to use up your miles.

The post Earning Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer Miles appeared first on Miles Briefs.

Effective November 1, 2017, many United MileagePlus Saver awards will be going up in price (listed below, prices all one-way). Recall that there is separate pricing for United-only vs. partner awards.

Business Class – United Flights

• U.S. (premium only): 25k to 35k
• Hawaii (premium only): 40k to 50k
• Southern South America: 55k to 60k
• Europe: 57.5k to 60k
• Middle East and Central Asia: 70k to 75k
• South Asia: 70k to 75k
• Japan and Oceania: 65k to 70k
• Australia/New Zealand: 70k to 80k

Business Class – Partner Flights

• Southern South America: 55k to 60k
• Middle East and Central Asia: 80k to 85k
• South Asia: 80k to 90k
• Japan and Oceania: 75k to 80k
• Australia/New Zealand: 80k to 90k

First Class – United Flights

• Southern South America: 70k to 80k
• Central/Southern Africa: 85k to 90k
• South Asia: 80k to 95k
• North Asia: 80k to 90k
• Japan and Oceania: 80k to 90k
• Australia/New Zealand: 80k to 100k

First Class – Partner Flights

• Southern South America: 70k to 80k
• South Asia: 130k to 140k

Many Saver prices for flights that do not originate in the United States are increasing as well, but there are too many to list. The new award chart can be viewed here.

Short-Haul Economy Saver Awards

Nonstop partner flights of 800 miles or less will cost 8,000 miles in Economy class in all regions outside of the U.S.

Intra-island flights within Hawaii will be increasing from 6,000 miles to 7,000 miles one-way.

No-Show Fee

$125. Don’t no-show on awards.

Everyday Awards

Standard awards are becoming Everyday awards, with different pricing, but… who cares? Book Saver awards.

The post United MileagePlus Devaluation Coming November 1, 2017 appeared first on Miles Briefs.

5x Points: Office Supplies, Cell Phone, Cable, PayPal Digital Gifts via ebay
Limits: $50,000 per cardmember year

Cell Phone & Cable

This one is obvious, but autopay your phone and cable bills from your Ink card.

Office Supply Stores

This is less obvious, but office supply stores such as Staples and Office Depot sell gift cards to many other stores, both in-store and online. Staples, for example, sells gift cards to Amazon, Target, Home Depot, Shell, and Southwest Airlines, among many, many others. I can’t list them all here, so visit their stores and websites to see what is available.

Keep in mind that if you are buying gift cards, you might also consider purchasing them secondhand from a reseller. When I do this, I check Gift Card Wiki for the best prices. Depending on the retailer, you can often get a higher discount than 5%. You might prefer this to 5x points, though purchasing gift cards secondhand comes with some risks that buying them directly yourself does not.

Ebay (Gift cards)

For some reason, when you purchase gift cards from the seller PayPal Digital Gifts on ebay and pay with PayPal using your Ink card, you earn 5x points. This is the same play as buying gift cards from office supply stores, but this method provides many more options. Last I checked, PPDG sells over 500 types of gift cards.

Occasionally, PPDG will also sell select gift cards at significant discounts. When this happens, instead of buying gift cards to spend, you can buy them to turn around and sell to a gift card reseller. You might even walk away with a small profit on top the points you earn. When good deals for reselling present themselves, I’ll post them on the blog.

Verizon (Gift cards)

If you are a Verizon subscriber, the Verizon Message+ app has an option to purchase and send eGift cards. The trick is that you can charge them to your Verizon bill, allowing you to earn 5x UR per dollar spent. This is a small play, however, because you are limited to charging $100 per month to your bill.

Some merchants of note are Amazon, Best Buy, ebay, Home Depot, Sears, and Whole Foods. You can find the others listed in the app after you click Send an eGift Card Now!

The post How To Earn 5x Points (Almost) Everywhere appeared first on Miles Briefs.

Credit Cards

The best way to earn Avios is with the Chase British Airways Visa Signature card. There will occasionally be an offer to earn an additional 50,000 Avios (so 100,000 Avios total) for spending a total of $20,000 in the first year. If you can meet the spending requirement, this offer is worth waiting for. If more Avios are needed, opt for one of the other cards that earn transferable points below. You can view the current best offers for all of these cards at Credit Cards.

Chase Ultimate Rewards and American Express Membership Rewards points can be converted to Avios at a 1:1 ratio. However, American Express will occasionally have bonuses that increase their beyond this. I typically wait for one of their promotions if I don’t need Avios urgently. Starpoints transfer to Avios at a 1:1 ratio, but there is a 25% bonus if you transfer in increments of 20,000 points (i.e. you will receive 25,000 Avios for 20,000 Starpoints).

Credit CArd Churning

The Chase British Airways card can be churned. The other two Chase cards (Sapphire and Ink) can be churned as well, but this may be difficult to do in practice. For more information, see How To Earn A Signup Bonus Multiple Times.

Bonus Category Spending

Chase Sapphire Preferred: 2x points on Travel and Dining
Chase Ink Plus: 5x points on Office Supplies, Phone, and Cable; 2x points on Gas and Hotels
American Express Premier Rewards Gold: 3x points on airfare purchased directly from airlines; 2x points U.S. gas stations, U.S. supermarkets, and U.S. restaurants
American Express Business Gold Rewards: 2-3x points on airfare purchased directly from airlines, U.S. advertising, U.S. gas stations, U.S. shipping, U.S. computer hardware/software/cloud

Manufactured Spend

The Chase Ink Plus can be very useful for manufactured spending. For more information, see How To Manufacture Spend.

Shopping Portal

Gate 365 by British Airways.
Shop Through Chase (Ultimate Rewards).

Miles Expiration

Avios expire after 36 months of inactivity. Any mileage activity at all (e.g. earning and/or redeeming) will extend your expiration for another 36 months.

If your miles do expire, it may be possible to have them reinstated for 3 months by calling the UK customer service line at +44 191 4907901 (choose option 1 then option 3 followed by option 1). If your miles are reinstated, you can then incur some mileage activity to reset your 36-month clock.

The post Earning British Airways Avios appeared first on Miles Briefs.

Apparently, devaluing stopovers wasn’t enough, and United has now decided that if you wish to actually pay the prices they publish on their award chart, you can only select from the flight options they display for you — no longer are you able to piece together your own itinerary using multi-city search without paying extra. This occurs because each segment in a multi-city search will now price as an individual award, which can increase the price of your ticket dramatically.

Why does this matter? Well, United’s search engine isn’t all that fantastic, and it will often leave out many valid routings, even if they still have seats available. I am also unsure how this will work for awards with their partners Shenzen and Singapore Airlines, since their flights don’t show up in United’s search results at all. All in all, this is terrible news, and unannounced changes always leave a bitter taste in my mouth.

Typically, this next part would be deserving of its own post, but given the devaluation above, I don’t really care now… United is now offering a 25% bonus when you transfer hotel points to United MileagePlus, with a limit of 20,000 bonus miles. The promotion ends on November 30, 2016, and here is the link you need to go to if you wish to register and to take advantage. The most interesting way to do this (if you have either 270,000 Marriott Rewards points or 90,000 SPG Starpoints) is to redeem for a Hotel + Air package with Marriott. Via the Hotel + Air package, your 270,000 Marriott Rewards points would become 120,000 miles * 10% (bonus for Marriott -> United transfers) + 20,000 miles (limit of this promotion) = 152,000 MileagePlus miles. On the other hand, you could also redeem your Marriott Rewards points for 120,000 Southwest Rapid Rewards points and the Companion Pass, as detailed here. Personally, I’d go with Southwest.

The post Major United Devaluation + 25% Transfer Bonus appeared first on Miles Briefs.

Direct Link

Quick Summary

• Current stopover policy is being removed and replaced with the “Excursionist Perk”
• Change/Cancellation fee structure is changing, mostly for the worse
• Round the World awards are being discontinued

My Take

Here are the official rules for applying the Excursionist Perk:

• The Excursionist Perk cannot be in the MileagePlus defined region where your travel originates.
• Travel must end in the same MileagePlus defined region where travel originates.
• The origin and destination of the Excursionist Perk is within a single MileagePlus defined region.
• The cabin of service and award type of the free one-way award is the same or lower than the one-way award preceding it.
• If two or more one-way awards qualify for this benefit, only the first occurrence will be free.

Essentially, this means that your stopover/open-jaw must occur entirely in the same region as your destination. This removes a couple popular methods of leveraging the current stopover and open-jaw rules:

1. Stopovers/open-jaws in a separate region on your way to/from your destination. Many awards will route you through a different region on your way to or from your destination. A couple years ago, for example, I routed through Bangkok on my way home from Auckland and had a stopover in Bangkok. Under these new rules, this will not be allowed because Bangkok and Auckland are in separate regions.
2. “Free one-way” awards. Imagine a straightforward routing where I just want to fly from San Francisco to London and back. I could potentially add a stopover/open-jaw by tacking on another flight at the end from San Francisco to Honolulu sometime in the future. This is my “free one-way” award. Because of the first rule, these awards will no longer be bookable.

For changes and cancellations, some fees are going up, and others are going down, so it’s easier to just look at the new chart:

Other key takeaways are that the penalty ($50) for close-in changes/cancellations will now kick in within 60 days of departure, as opposed to within 20 days, which is the current policy. Also, you cannot makes changes fewer than 24 hours before departure for flights on partner airlines. Overall, the new rules make award travel more restrictive and penalize the customer more if plans have to change for any reason.

Lastly, nobody really cares about Round the World awards, so no big loss here. Overall, these are a ton of negative changes though, and we should all be fairly disappointed.

The post United MileagePlus Changing Stopovers and Fees on October 6, 2016 appeared first on Miles Briefs.

For the WSJ, you can earn 1,300 American AAdvantage miles, 1,200 United MileagePlus miles (if you are a cardholder, 800 miles otherwise), or 1,100 Southwest Rapid Rewards points. 1,600 Plenti points (worth $16) is also an option. See Cashback Monitor for more details.

For Barron’s, we have the same offers for American and United. Again, see Cashback Monitor for more details.

Personally, I thought the AAdvantage miles were the best option, so that’s the one I’m going with. I’m also interested in finance, so the cheap subscriptions will be nice for a few months.

Also, I added a new logo to the website today. Hooray!

The post [Miles Briefs] 2,600 American AAdvantage Miles for $2 appeared first on Miles Briefs.

Credit Cards

All of the cards below are excellent for earning miles with MileagePlus. I prefer the two MileagePlus Explorer cards due to churnability and the lower spending requirement. You can view the current best offers for all of these cards at Credit Cards.

Chase Ultimate Rewards can be transferred to United Airlines MileagePlus at a 1:1 ratio.

Credit CArd Churning

The Chase United MileagePlus Explorer cards can be churned. The other two Chase cards (Sapphire and Ink) can be churned as well, but this may be difficult to do in practice. For more information, see How To Earn A Signup Bonus Multiple Times.

Bonus Category Spending

Chase United MileagePlus Explorer Business: 2x points on Restaurants, Gas, and Office Supplies
Chase Sapphire Preferred: 2x points on Travel and Dining
Chase Ink Plus: 5x points on Office Supplies, Phone, and Cable; 2x points on Gas and Hotels

Manufactured Spend

The Chase Ink Plus can be very useful for manufactured spending. For more information, see How To Manufacture Spend.

Dining Rewards

United MileagePlus Dining.

Shopping Portal

United MileagePlus X.
United MileagePlus Shopping.
Shop Through Chase (Ultimate Rewards).

Miles Expiration

MileagePlus miles expire after 18 months of inactivity. Any mileage activity at all (e.g. earning and/or redeeming) will extend your expiration for another 18 months.

The post Earning United Airlines MileagePlus Miles appeared first on Miles Briefs.

Companion Pass

Before getting into how to earn Rapid Rewards points, we should discuss Southwest Airlines’ best benefit, the companion pass.

The Southwest Airlines Companion Pass allows you to designate one person to fly with you an unlimited number of times for free for up to two years (when you earn the pass, it is valid until December 31^st of the following year). A companion pass earned in January 2016, for example, remains valid until December 31, 2017. You do still have to pay taxes and fees for the companion ticket, but they are only $5.60 each way for domestic flights. For international flights, a range of $20 to $70 each way is common. The companion ticket is available any time the companion pass holder is flying Southwest, even if someone else pays for the ticket (with money or points).

To receive a companion pass, you need to earn 125,000 qualifying Rapid Rewards points in a calendar year. The companion pass does not need to be “paid for” with the points – thus after earning the pass, you will still have 125,000 RR points to spend in your account. Most points you earn with Southwest are qualifying points, but with one huge exception: points transfers to Southwest from other programs such as Chase Ultimate Rewards, hotels, and other partners do NOT count. A second exception is transfers of RR points from one person to another, but there’s very little reason to do this anyway.

Credit Cards

The three Southwest cards below are the best for earning points with Rapid Rewards. Earning two signup bonuses ($2,000 in spend x 2) and completing another $6,000 in spend (i.e. $10,000 in total spend across two cards) will earn you a Southwest Airlines Companion Pass. You can view the current best offers for all of these cards at Credit Cards.

Chase Ultimate Rewards can be transferred to Southwest Rapid Rewards at a 1:1 ratio, but I don’t recommend doing this unless you need to top off your account for a specific redemption. As mentioned above, UR transfers to Southwest do not count toward earning a companion pass.

Credit CArd Churning

The Chase Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards cards can be churned. The other two Chase cards (Sapphire and Ink) can be churned as well, but this may be difficult to do in practice. For more information, see How To Earn A Signup Bonus Multiple Times.

Bonus Category Spending

Chase Sapphire Preferred: 2x points on Travel and Dining
Chase Ink Plus: 5x points on Office Supplies, Cell Phone, and Cable; 2x points on Gas and Hotels

Manufactured Spend

The Chase Ink Plus can be very useful for manufactured spending. For more information, see How To Manufacture Spend.

Dining Rewards

Southwest Rapid Rewards Dining.

Shopping Portal

Southwest Rapid Rewards Shopping.
Shop Through Chase (Ultimate Rewards).

Miles Expiration

Rapid Rewards points expire after 24 months without any earning activity. Note that unlike many other airline mileage programs, redeeming miles will not extend your mileage expiration date.

The post Earning Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards Points + Companion Pass appeared first on Miles Briefs.

” Credit Card Minimum Signup Bonus / Spend / Time
Chase British Airways Visa Signature Card 50,000 Avios / $2,000 / 3 months
Chase Sapphire Preferred Card 40,000 UR / $4,000 / 3 months
Chase Ink Plus Business Card 50,000 UR / $5,000 / 3 months
American Express Premier Rewards Gold Card 50,000 MR / $3,000 / 3 months
American Express Business Gold Rewards Card 75,000 MR / $5,000 / 3 months
American Express Platinum Card 100,000 MR / $5,000 / 3 months
American Express Business Platinum Card 100,000 MR / $5,000 / 3 months
American Express Starwood Preferred Guest Credit Card 25,000 SPG / $3,000 / 3 months
American Express Starwood Preferred Guest Business Credit Card 25,000 SPG / $5,000 / 3 months ”

“Chase Ultimate Rewards and American Express Membership Rewards points can be converted to Avios at a 1:1 ratio. However, American Express will occasionally have bonuses that increase their beyond this. I typically wait for one of their promotions if I don’t need Avios urgently. Starpoints transfer to Avios at a 1:1 ratio, but there is a 25% bonus if you transfer in increments of 20,000 points (i.e. you will receive 25,000 Avios for 20,000 Starpoints).”

Credit CArd Churning
“The Chase British Airways card can be churned. The other two Chase cards (Sapphire and Ink) can be churned as well, but this may be difficult to do in practice. For more information, see How To Earn A Signup Bonus Multiple Times.”

Bonus Category Spending
“Chase Sapphire Preferred: 2x points on Travel and Dining
Chase Ink Plus: 5x points on Office Supplies, Phone, and Cable; 2x points on Gas and Hotels
American Express Premier Rewards Gold: 3x points on airfare purchased directly from airlines; 2x points U.S. gas stations, U.S. supermarkets, and U.S. restaurants
American Express Business Gold Rewards: 2-3x points on airfare purchased directly from airlines, U.S. advertising, U.S. gas stations, U.S. shipping, U.S. computer hardware/software/cloud”

Manufactured Spend
“The Chase Ink Plus can be very useful for manufactured spending. For more information, see How To Manufacture Spend.”

Shopping Portal
Gate 365 by British Airways.
Shop Through Chase (Ultimate Rewards).

Miles Expiration
“Avios expire after 36 months of inactivity. Any mileage activity at all (e.g. earning and/or redeeming) will extend your expiration for another 36 months.”

“If your miles do expire, it may be possible to have them reinstated for 3 months by calling the UK customer service line at +44 191 4907901 (choose option 1 then option 3 followed by option 1). If your miles are reinstated, you can then incur some mileage activity to reset your 36-month clock.”

The post British Airways Earning appeared first on Miles Briefs.