Shortcuts to Flying Blue elite status | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep372 | 8-21-26

Frequent Miler on the Air - Frequent Miler

This episode of Frequent Miler on the Air explores various strategies to quickly achieve Flying Blue elite status, including leveraging credit card sign-up

Key takeaways

• Chase may close credit cards even if annual fees are paid, contradicting common belief about fee-paying card retention.

Main topics

• Shortcuts to Flying Blue elite status
• Citi Thank You MasterCard promotional offers

Notable quotes

"They're essentially saying that you are, for every mile that you're receiving, they're valuing that what you're getting at $0.03 per mile."

Conclusion

While several promotional opportunities exist for accelerating Flying Blue elite status and earning

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:01) This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. Speaker 1 (0:11) Today's main event, shortcuts to flying blue elite status. Frequent Speaker 3 (0:15) miler on the air starts now. Speaker 1 (0:19) On today's show, we're going to talk about many ways to shortcut your way to flying blue elite status and why you might want to. Hi, this is Greg. Speaker 3 (0:29) And this is Tim. I am filling in for Nick Reyes this week because Nick is in the Santa Claus Village in northern Finland on an all-night poker tournament. So I'm taking his place for this week only. Speaker 1 (0:43) And if Nick was here, he would tell you that if you want to jump ahead, you could look at the timestamps in our show notes and jump ahead and, you know, like and subscribe and do all those things that you've learned to do from Nick when he's not off in Finland or wherever he is today. Let's drag out this week's Giant Mailbag. Speaker 3 (1:04) Well, this week for the giant mailbag, speaking of, we have a little, we have a note, a concern from a person named Nick. And Nick aired this in something called Frequent Milers Coffee Break. I believe it was episode 118. Something called Credit Cards We're Considering. Now, Nick said that he was hesitant to get the choice privileges card for its annual 30K points bonus because he'd have to remember to put spend on it regularly to prevent the card from shutting down or getting shut down or closed for lack of use. And at that point, there was someone named, I believe, Greg, if I'm reading this correctly. that said that cards that have annual fees don't get canceled for lack of use. No need to be concerned about that. So what do you think about that, Greg? Would you agree with that, Greg? Speaker 1 (2:02) All right. So Tim is obviously joking around about a conversation Nick and I had in that recent coffee break. And as luck would have it, apparently someone from Chase was listening to that coffee break because... Days after we had that conversation, I got a message from Chase saying they were shutting down my Marriott Premier business card, which is a $99 per year card due to insufficient usage. So, wow. So not only was I proven wrong about that little statement, but... I lost another collectible card. This is one of those cards that you can't get new anymore. And so it was a nice way for $99 a year to get a Marriott free night certificate. And now that card is gone. Sad. Oh, Speaker 3 (2:58) man. The sound you hear in the background is the horn playing taps in memory of the Bonvoy card. You know, but honestly, I would have thought the same thing. When I was listening to that, exchange when Nick was saying that I'm like, ah, they, you know, when, when there's a 95, as long as you pay the annual fee, they're not going to close the card. I've never had that happen. Speaker 2 (3:20) Yeah. Speaker 3 (3:21) Which goes to show you that everybody at JP Morgan chase is rabidly consuming the frequent miler on the air. Speaker 1 (3:28) Or, or at least everybody in the, uh, no longer available Marriott business card collection, uh, Speaker 3 (3:35) on that Speaker 1 (3:35) team, the Speaker 3 (3:36) people who manage plastic purgatory over there at chaser. They have their ears up. All Speaker 1 (3:42) right. Let's move on to what crazy thing did Citi do this week? Speaker 3 (3:48) Yeah, this is a fun one. And I've wanted to sort of, I don't, we haven't really known how to write about this or talk about this, but it's a fun way that Citi is like effectively putting money directly into my pocket. So there's a Citi thank you MasterCard. that exists. And it's a weird card. We'll link the card page from the Frequent Miler website here in the show notes. It awards thank you points. It is a Citi credit card, but it's managed by something called Citi Retail Services. And how this thing came into my possession was I used to have something called the Sears Shop Your Way card, which then became the Shop Your Way card. that when you spent on it, you got points that you could use towards various retail items and gift cards and things like that. The actual points you earned weren't very good, but it was known for these incredible spending offers where like you would say you can earn 10 % back at electronic stores up to $750 a month. or 15 % back on dining and grocery for up to $1,200. And a lot of times these things would stack. So if you could figure out ways to combine them, like you could get up to 15, 20, even sometimes 25 % back on your spending. Speaker 3 (5:13) Well, like Sears and really a lot of retailers this way, the Shop Your Way card ended up transitioning outside of Citi. So Citi converted it into this Thank You MasterCard. And it actually was a great change because now instead of getting Shop Your Way points, it gives you 5x on gas, 3x on grocery and dining, 3x department stores, and 3x at drugstores. And that's coming back as Thank You points instead of Shop Your Way points. So it's really, I mean, on its own, it's a great card. Speaker 1 (5:44) Yeah, that's tremendous. Yeah, Speaker 3 (5:47) totally. Totally. I mean, you know, it's actually, it's in my wallet just in general because of the spending categories. But when it converted, all of those old Shop Your Way devotees, myself included, were sort of, we were kind of on pins and needles because we're saying, well, you know, there's no way they're going to continue these spending offers, are they? Well, boy, have they ever. Currently, right now on my account, I have get 12 % back everywhere up to $1,500 per month for the next three months, I think it is, or four months. Get $120 back after you spend $1,200 per month in the combination of dining, gas, and grocery, or $60 back on $600 per month. So it's 10 % back. It just depends on the threshold you hit. $75 back on up to $750 or if you, once you hit $750 in online purchases. And so effectively take away the online thing by spending $1,500 per month in dining gas and grocery, I'm getting $300 per month back plus somewhere between 4,500 to 7,500 city points, depending on like how that spending ends up. Wow. That Speaker 1 (6:59) is nuts. Okay. So. For those of us who never had a Shop Your Way card, tell us real quick, how can we get this card you're talking about now? Speaker 3 (7:09) Well, so I'm not sure. And that's why we haven't written about it a lot is there's no sure way. Like there's no real clear path to get one. However, now I was kind of digging around the other day and found out that Citi still... Sears Shop Your Way wasn't the only retailer card that Citi has. Citi has this thing called Citi Retailer Services, which is distinct from regular Citi that specifically offers retailer cards. And they actually have a website that you can look at all their store cards. They have Bloomingdale's, L.L. Bean, Dillard's. I had no idea that there were Dillard's anymore until I saw it listed here. And so what I'm curious about, normally we avoid retailer cards like the Plague. Because they take up 524 slots. They're not very rewarding, all those sorts of things. However, what I'm curious about is since when this card transitioned out, it automatically went to the Thank You MasterCard. I'm curious if someone were to sign up or has one of those Citi retailer cards from Goodyear or Wayfair or whatever, if they would be able to call up and actually manually... Do a product change. So if anybody listening to this has one of those cards, doesn't use it, it's somewhere in your sock drawer somewhere. I would love to get a data point from someone who actually tried to call up just to see if you actually could manually change it. Because if you could, this card is incredible. Speaker 1 (8:40) Yeah. Yeah. Isn't another option to get a DeLorean, drive it 88 miles per hour and go back in time, sign up for the shop your way card, et cetera. Speaker 3 (8:51) Yeah. And so that's really a more straightforward way, actually. You may want to consider that. Instead of calling up to product change your Goodyear card, you may want to see if there's a DeLorean somewhere that you could figure it out or you could figure out how to get a hold of. Speaker 1 (9:05) Seems reasonable to me. Oh, man, I'm so bummed that I don't have that card. Anyway, maybe I need to go shop those retailer cards and see what we can do. But looking forward to hearing what people write to us about it if they try it. Speaker 3 (9:19) Yeah, totally. All Speaker 1 (9:20) right. Moving on. Let's let's do mattress running the numbers. What's what's up today that we can mattress run or discuss? Speaker 3 (9:29) This is less a mattress run. It's more a donation run. So every year, American Airlines Advantage runs a promotion with Stand Up to Cancer, which is a group that, like its name says, does cancer research, funds cancer research, that sort of thing. And it sounds like when you first read about it, it sounds like an incredible promotion. It is for every dollar you donate to Stand Up For Cancer, you get 25 Advantage Miles. For every dollar you donate, if you put it on your American Airlines Advantage credit card, you get 50 miles per dollar. So not only do you get the miles from your spend on the actual card, as well as loyalty points, you would also get 50 miles per dollar. And this is valid through the end of September. And they have this weird thing where they say it's valid until that date or until they receive a certain amount of donations. My guess being that AA just doesn't want to, like there's a maximum amount of miles that they want to give out around this thing. And so it's until September 30th or they hit $5 million in donations. Now, it's a 501c3 organization. Speaker 3 (11:00) donation that you normally give to Stand Up To Cancer would be tax deductible. However, there's one big, and it's a very big gotcha. AA has not been reading our reasonable redemption values, which pegs advantage miles at the average cost of 1.4 cents, I think is what we have it on. They value these at 3 cents per mile. Ouch. Yeah, Speaker 1 (11:27) I guess that's what they sell them at when they're not on sale, right? Speaker 3 (11:30) Right. So they're essentially saying that you are, for every mile that you're receiving, they're valuing that what you're getting at $0.03 per mile. So if you get 30,000 miles from this promotion, AA is going to say that you got $900 worth of goods valued from that promotion. So you're really not going to get a tax deduction for most people. So my question to you, Greg, you have an AA credit card still, I think. I do. Okay. You like Advantage Miles. I do. So would you donate? You can donate up to $10,000. That $10,000 would get you what? 500,000 AA miles if you put it on your AA MasterCard? Are you going to run? Are you going to jump in with both both feet? Speaker 1 (12:26) I'm not with both feet. I'm considering it. So here's the thing. You know, it's not it's not if you just consider it. Is it a good deal? I'd say no. But this is buying American Airlines miles for two cents each. Right. That's what you're. paying for these miles, basically, is how the math works out, which can be a good deal under certain circumstances. But if you don't have an immediate use for them, I would not recommend doing that. So that's the situation I'm in. I've got hundreds of thousands of American Airlines miles right now. I'm not going to go out and buy American Airlines miles for two cents each. That said, I'm assuming this is a good cause and I haven't done my research to see, you know, is this one of the organizations that handles their finances well? That's the kind of thing I'd want to research first to see. Is this doing good? You know, I would be I would consider, you know, sort of taking the hit of spending that much per American airline mile if I knew it was doing. good. And I just, as at this moment, as we're discussing this, I don't know that one way or another. Speaker 3 (13:47) Totally. Speaker 1 (13:48) How about you? Speaker 3 (13:49) Not a chance, not a chance. And, and, and, and that, that said, I do completely agree with everything you just said. I'm not necessarily looking, I, you know, my, my charitable giving is already taken, taken with other things. And so I'm not necessarily just looking for a place to, to, to give charitably. Speaker 1 (14:08) Yeah. Speaker 3 (14:08) And I also don't care about AA loyalty points. And I've got plenty of AA miles, so I wouldn't. It's not necessarily something I would think about doing. However, there were a couple of readers that responded. And I thought the points were legitimate. They said, hey, I don't have a way of getting a large amount of AA miles right now. And I want loyalty points. I'm low on AA miles. The credit card situation is not... Let's say if you shut down with Citi. you may not have a way to get more AA miles because they now all through the city, right? So they said, hey, this is, you know, based on what I'm going to use these for, this is good for me. Totally Speaker 1 (14:49) makes sense in those cases. Speaker 3 (14:50) And it's doing something good. So I wouldn't necessarily like discount it offhand and say, oh, this is a bad deal, just to say that within my personal situation, it's not necessarily something I'm looking to do. And so now we're on to this week's Bonvoy of the Week. And, Greg, it sounds like you may be feeling a little blue about Air France KLM Flying Blue. Speaker 1 (15:12) Yeah, I am. Flying Blue has announced a devaluation of sorts. What's going to happen is beginning September 8th, they are going to increase their standard award prices for their... like saver level fares. They don't really call them saver level fares. They call those fares like something like lowest price fares or something like that. But anyway, they have the concept of lowest price fares, which between North America and Europe is usually 60,000 points. That's the lowest you can find business class between those two continents. Speaker 1 (15:56) The here's what the devaluation is. If you want the same type of ticket, a standard award that the price for that 60,000 point award, that's going to jump up to 75,000 points. But they are going to make you think the price hasn't changed by showing you a 60,000 point option, which is their new light fare, which is. Kind of think of it like basic economy, but it's not limited to economy. So you have a light economy, light premium economy, and light business class where you will not be able to make any changes or get any refund if you want to cancel. You have fewer checked bags. There's a lot of restrictions that make it. pretty darn unappealing. On the other end of things, if you want to pay even more than the new standard price, you can do that and you can book a flex fare and that's freely changeable and cancelable and even cost less as far as the cash copay often. So that sounds great, but the point price is something like 80 % more than the... Oh, wow. than the light fare. So that's what's happening. It's not all as bad as it sounds because there's some things that make this more palatable, I guess. For one, this only affects those saver or lowest price fares. So for example, if you've been looking at business class to Europe and you've seen some flights that are 90,000 points one way or 100,000 in that range, you might have been thinking, well, that's not terrible. It's not the best you can find, but not terrible if it goes on the day you want and everything. I've booked some like that in the past when it's exactly what I needed. Those are not those lowest price saver fares. So you won't have the choice with those. to book a light or flex award. So you'll just book in the saver. I mean, into the standard, which, which is the same as today, which is 70 euros to change or cancel and the normal amount of check bags and all that kind of stuff. The other kind of saving grace, I guess, if you book your Air France or KLM flight with other miles with like Delta miles or with Virgin Atlantic miles, for example, That has no impact. You can't accidentally book into one of these light buckets. So it'll just be booked as standard as ever. Same thing the other way. If you use your flying blue miles to book a Delta flight, for example, it's not going to force the Delta flight into some weird basic economy or anything like that. Yeah. So there are limits to how far this goes. And the other thing that limits the effect of this is having elite status. One of the nice things that they've done is they've said that elite status benefits work even if you book the light fare. And so why that's important is because some of the light fare restrictions are completely, partially or completely undone with elite status. So, you know, the... Not having a check bag for free. Okay, well, if you have elite status, now you do. Not being able to make a scene assignment in advance. You have elite status, now you do. And being able to change or cancel, though, you have to get all the way up to flying blue platinum status to get that benefit. And then you can make those changes for free, actually, if you have platinum. So we'll talk about that. more in today's main event. Speaker 3 (19:58) Yeah, I appreciate that. What's funny is that you wrote that whole post about Air France elite status or flying blue elite status before we even knew that there were changes coming. And like the timing is perfect. Speaker 1 (20:10) Timing really was perfect. Speaker 3 (20:12) Yeah. I mean, it's I mean, really, it ups the value of elite status. However, the flip side of that is for those who don't have elite status or don't want to go through all the chicanery that you're going to describe here in a little bit. It does give a hit to flying blue miles as a whole. From my point of view. But so like where does this affect how you think? Because you've been a big Flying Blue fan for a while, for a long time. You use Flying Blue. You've transferred and redeemed a lot of Flying Blue miles. Does this change how you think about the program in a significant way? Speaker 1 (20:43) I mean, I don't know if in a significant way. I see it as a straight up devaluation, 25 % to 30%. And but. If it if you get platinum status, you can erase that devaluation because suddenly those light fairs become palatable. Right. And so, you know, from that point of