Welcome Back!

Hope everyone is doing well 😊 

We are heading into mid-March, which means that cherry blossom season is almost here! As the countdowns get to the final few weeks before they start to flourish, it could be worth making plans to go check it out! NYC, DC, and a bunch of other cities have trackers and events to mark the occasion 🌸

Coincidentally, I’ll be in Seoul as well to see the cherry blossoms come to life there, which is super exciting! Encouraging you all to be one with nature, and what better way to do that than to see the cherry blossoms in full bloom!

Unlike the cherry trees, though, Southwest Airlines is doing the opposite of blooming (withering?). More on that later…

In today’s edition:

• ✈️ Alaska's Global Getaways ❄️

• 🏦 Transfer Bonuses ✈️

• 🪦 RIP the OG Southwest 🪦

• 📰 Other Stories & Deals 💰️

• 💳️ Best Card Signup Bonuses 💳️ 

✈️ Alaska's Global Getaways ❄️

We talk about Flying Blue’s Promo Rewards and Singapore Spontaneous Escapes on a monthly basis, but Alaska has a recurring reward flight discount too!

Alaska runs a quarterly award sale (a quarterly version of Flying Blue Promo Rewards and Singapore Spontaneous Escapes). Their Global Getaways is now up and running until April 31st, for flights through July 2025!

For this time around, the selected destinations are:

Some of these deals are quite solid, and these are deals for anywhere in the US to these destinations. So New York to Sydney can cost 30k miles each way, which is quite reasonable. Same goes for LA to Tashkent, New York to Hanoi, and others! Long flights though 😪

The only thing about Global Getaways is that these deals are only for economy and premium economy. Maybe one day, they’ll add some business routes 🤞 

Do remember that if you have Amex MR points, you can transfer them to Hawaiian and then from Hawaiian to Alaska, all at 1:1, if you were to take advantage of these getaways. Note, though, that there is a tax of $6 per 10k points when transferring Amex points to US-based airlines. Bilt points also transfer to Alaska!

So quite the deal going on at Alaska! Exciting to see so many things pop up at once, and hope you can take advantage 👍️

🏦➡️✈️ Transfer Bonuses

¹ New transfer bonuses that were not present the week before are in bold.

² If you transfer less than 10k miles, you get a 20% bonus. If you transfer at least 10k miles but under 50k miles, you get a 30% bonus. Any transfer amount over 50k miles gets a 40% bonus.

🪦 RIP the OG Southwest 🪦

Wow, did Southwest just lose its identity 🤯

Southwest for a long time was known for allowing 2 checked bags, among a bunch of other things that made it stand out as an airline. In fact, the airline itself claimed that the airline would not reduce or remove this benefit. But oh well, empty words?

In a surprising turn of events, Southwest announced:

• The introduction of Basic Economy Fares, likely with no seat selection

  • Southwest currently has general seating (first come, first serve on seats), but assigned seating is coming soon…

• Removing the 2 free checked bags from most tickets (Elite members, business flyers and Southwest credit cardholders will still have at least 1 checked bag)

• Introducing variable redemption rates for its flights for higher and lower demand flights

  • This means that unlike the current system that ties the points value to the cash price, the new system can (and likely will?) charge more points for more in-demand flights

• Flight Credits that you receive when you cancel a Southwest flight now expire in 12 months, and 6 months if you booked basic economy

  • Previously, there was no expiration!

So, yeah, the old Southwest just straight up died 💀

Everything here is just bad - the vast majority of passengers lose checked bags, face the possibility of having their points be worth less for some redemptions, and now have expiring vs. permanent flight credits. The Basic Economy changes, I suppose, could be beneficial for the no-frills flyers, but time will tell.

They are becoming more like the Big 3, but do note: Southwest, unlike Delta, United and American, don’t actually have a Business or First Class product on its planes. So is Southwest just happy to be a worse variant of those?? 🤷

I don’t know, there’s a lot to complain about here, but its a shame especially given the indication was that changes like this would not happen, only for them to reverse course.

Some of you may like the introduction of basic economy, and others (especially long-time Southwest flyers and loyalists) will be upset with these changes. What’s next, negative changes to Companion Pass? Hopefully nothing more… 🤞 

📰 Other Stories & Deals 💰️

• 🚕 You can redeem Bilt points for Lyft! Although at a putrid 0.7 cents per point…

• 🌬️ Breeze is having another sale off base fares until tomorrow - 50% this time with promo code GROW

💳️ Best Card Signup Bonuses 💳️ 

Again, the usual solid cards:

• Chase Sapphire Preferred^®/Reserve^®

• Chase Freedom Unlimited^®/Flex^®

• Amex Gold & Plat

• Capital One Venture X

Do search for public links for the above cards to compare signup bonuses to make sure you get the highest one (incognito mode, Resy, etc.).

For cards with elevated signup bonuses (targeted bonuses are not included), I’ve got:

📤️ Spread the Word! 📤️

Thank you so much for subscribing! This newsletter is committed to providing you all with helpful info and tips to maximize your points and rewards, at no direct cost to you! (appreciate you using any of my referral links, though!)

If you do find this newsletter informative, helpful, or entertaining, I’d greatly appreciate you spreading the word about it! If not, please do give me feedback on how I can improve your Sense per Point experience.

Also, if my newsletter helps you to book travel using points, let me know! It’ll make me so happy 😄 

Hope that all makes sense! That’s all for this week’s edition of Sense per Point.

Wishing everyone a wonderful rest of your day and week 😊 

- Sean Kim

PS: If you want to make sure Sense per Point doesn’t get caught in your spam, you can move this email to your primary inbox, or Reply “Hello!” directly to this email by clicking the link and hitting send 📩