Welcome Back!

Hope everyone is doing well 😊 

I’m actually going to the Joe Hisaishi concert at Radio City Music Hall tonight, which I’m incredibly excited for. Hopefully some Ghibli music will bless my ears 🎵

The tickets were bought using the Stubhub credit that comes with the Chase Sapphire Reserve. I would’ve gone even if I didn’t have the credit, so its cool that the credit came to use! And then there will probably be a way to use the $50 Biannual Resy credit that comes with the Amex Gold as well. It’s great when the credit card benefits just make a fun day for you 🎉

I’ve been enjoying the non-travel benefits on these cards recently, and hopefully you have been too. I can’t travel the whole year, anyway, so its nice to enjoy concerts, restaurants, etc.!

With that, let’s get into the stories:

• 🇺🇸 US Bank gets Transfer Partners 🏦

• 🏦 Transfer Bonuses ✈️

• 📆 A new Avios Calendar Feature 📆

• 📰 Other Stories & Deals 💰️

• 💳️ Best Card Signup Bonuses 💳️ 

🇺🇸 US Bank gets Transfer Partners 🏦

Last year, US Bank made changes to its Altitude Reserve card, and teased at transfer partners in a letter to cardholders: ⏰ 

So after a long wait, they have finally announced them! The first US Bank transfer partners are Flying Blue, Qantas, Accor and Ethiopian. The 3 airlines have a 1:1 ratio, while Accor has a 2:1 ratio.

US Bank is also the only bank to have Ethiopian as a transfer partner, to my knowledge, which is pretty cool! I don’t know of any big sweet spots on that program, although they do have some interesting fifth-freedom routes (Seoul to Tokyo, Oslo to Stockholm, Washington to Lomé, etc.).

But then there’s a twist! It appears that due to some IT issues, there were issues transferring to Flying Blue and Qantas. So US Bank pulled them within 24 hours of the announcement 🤣 

So as of right now, its just Ethiopian and Accor…

Regardless, US Bank getting transfer partners is pretty cool! I assume Flying Blue and Qantas will be back eventually, and they are good partners to transfer to.

I don’t personally think these additions will turn me into a new US Bank customer, but for any existing ones, getting these options to redeem your points is certainly a plus! 👍️

🏦➡️✈️ Transfer Bonuses

A chart of transfer partners by bank, along with other information, can be found here! New transfer bonuses not present the week before are in bold. Two notes: 1) that any transfers to Avios essentially include British Airways, Iberia, Aer Lingus, Finnair, and Qatar, and 2) that if you have the Chase Aeroplan credit card, any Aeroplan transfer bonuses are 10% extra!

📆 A new Avios Calendar Feature 📆

If you’ve searched for award flights on British Airways or other Avios airlines, you would have noticed that you can only see a week’s worth of award availability at a time, along with other potential issues along the way. Not great 👎️ 

But they’ve now made that part a bit easier, by introducing a calendar search function!

Overall an improvement, but I’ll list out what works and what could work better with this new feature:

• What works 👍️

  • Well, this new feature exists at all, which is obviously positive

  • Can see months of availability at a time!

  • Can filter by cabin

• What could work better 👎️ 

  • It’s on the Avios website and not directly on the airlines’ websites

  • It doesn’t show you what the taxes & fees will be - BA has some notoriously high fees…

  • Can’t filter by airline

I don’t want to make good the enemy of perfect here, so I can say that this new feature is definitely positive. Yes, there are ways to improve it, but as this is an early rollout, hopefully those improvements are made. Maybe it’ll even show more availability, like Finnair, Qatar, etc. One day, maybe even non-Avios partner flights, who knows?

As more and more people get into this hobby, I imagine tools like this are in demand - surely the airlines prefer people search directly on their site rather than go around to a 3rd party aggregator like PointsYeah and Points.me if they can drive the traffic to their site? 🤷 

But next time you need to look for award inventory on these Avios airlines, it will be easier!!

📰 Other Stories & Deals 💰️

• 🏨 Amex has added 350+ properties to Fine Hotels + Resorts® (FHR) and The Hotel Collection (THC)!

• 🚁 Bilt and BLADE have announced new features as part of their partnership, making BLADE flights bookable with Bilt Cash!

💳️ 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! 📤️

Thanks for subscribing! This newsletter is committed to helping you 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

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