Welcome Back!

Hope everyone is having a great week 😊

I sent out my first newsletter on April 2nd, earlier this year, so today’s newsletter marks 6 months since I started Sense per Point! Regardless of whether you’ve been here since the beginning or come in for the ride later on, I’m so happy to have you as a reader, and hope you stay a while!

The goal of the newsletter has been and always will be to help make your points work harder and better for you, so hopefully something I’ve written about in the past 6 months has been insightful in that regard 👍️ 

In today’s edition:

• 🇫🇷 October’s Flying Blue Promo Rewards 🇳🇱

• 🏦 Transfer Bonuses ✈️

• 🇬🇧 Virgin Atlantic Starts to Die 😵 

• 📰 Other Stories & Deals 💰️

• 💳️ Best Card Signup Bonuses 💳️ 

🇫🇷 October’s Flying Blue Promo Rewards 🇳🇱

Its a new month, and some of you will know that Flying Blue’s monthly Promo Rewards are back at it again!

As usual, on the first of the month, Flying Blue (mileage program of Air France and KLM) releases Flying Blue Promo Rewards, which are monthly promotions where routes between Europe and select destinations globally are offered for 25% off the original mileage price. Every month!!

For this month, there are 10(!) North American cities selected for this discount, which are Atlanta, Austin, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Havana, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, and Toronto! ✈️ 

Without these promo rewards, economy flights from North America to Europe start at 20k miles each way + taxes & fees. With the 25% off from these deals, that now goes down to 15k miles each way (same taxes & fees). I’ve used these deals to travel to Europe and back before too!

Remember, just because these deals come from Air France and KLM does not mean you have to go to France or the Netherlands! Their intra-European network is far and wide, and as long as your origin or destination is a city selected for this month’s discounts, you’ll get 25% off, no matter the European airport involved. Do note that there will be a connection in Paris or Amsterdam. Some good time for shopping, I suppose! 🛍️ 

Do take advantage if you are looking to get to Europe! 🧳 

🏦➡️✈️ Transfer Bonuses

¹ Details for how bonus percentage is determined is shown through the hyperlink over the airline mileage program name.

² New transfer bonuses that were not present the week before are in bold.

³ Programs that utilize Avios are Aer Lingus, Iberia, British Airways, Qatar Airways, and Finnair - all of these programs can transfer to and from each other at 1:1 at no charge. So these transfer bonuses always indirectly include Finnair and Qatar as well.

🇬🇧 Virgin Atlantic Starts to Die 😵 

Did you know that Delta has a 49% stake in Virgin Atlantic? That might explain Virgin’s latest move to devalue its points. We will see after these changes are live, but it seems that Delta screwed Virgin here…

Btw, I’m referring to Virgin Atlantic’s decision to implement dynamic pricing on its award flights.

If you are into points & miles, dynamic pricing is probably your worst enemy. Simply put, it ties the award price of a flight to the cash price of that same flight, basically locking in a set value of points (higher the cash price = higher the award price). 👎️ 

The bigger issue for me, personally, is that it allows airlines to get rid of their award charts, meaning they can theoretically devalue their program at any time without notice. Bad stuff for redeeming points. Delta is notorious for moving in this direction, and I guess their sway unfortunately reached Virgin 😢 

There could be a silver lining here though - according to Virgin, these changes will go live on Oct. 30th and will include:

• Introduce “Saver” awards that will be even cheaper than the current awards

• Opening up every seat on a flight to be bookable with points with pricing based on supply and demand (previously 12 seats were available per flight)

So I feel that I’ve covered the clearly bad part of this already, so I’ll go into those 2 points a bit more, as those changes are a bit more of a mixed bag: As for the “Saver” awards, getting from JFK to London (LHR) right now is 10k Virgin miles + ~$150 in taxes & fees. Once these changes go live, the new “Saver” awards will actually start at 6k Virgin miles (same taxes & fees). That sounds good! I’m just concerned at the moment that there won’t be many of these “Saver” awards per flight, but time will tell ⌛️ 

Opening up all seats to be bookable with points is interesting as well, as it does theoretically introduce more opportunities to redeem points. However, more opportunities does not mean more value - having all seats open to award bookings could just mean that redemptions are more costly and so less valuable. Especially for Virgin Upper class (their business class)…

At least they let us know a month in advance for this, I guess? Unlike last time 🤷 

📰 Other Stories & Deals 💰️ 

• 🧼 Amex refreshes seem to be around the corner, with the Amex Everyday and Everyday Preferred no longer being open to new applicants, and the $100 LoungeBuddy credit being removed from the Green Card for new applicants as well…

• 5️⃣ Don’t forget to activate your 5x categories if you have the Chase Freedom or Freedom Flex!

• 🧳 If you are under 18 and your parent/guardian already has Global Entry or is applying, Global Entry is now free for you!

💳️ Best Card Signup Bonuses 💳️ 

Again, the usual solid cards:

• Chase Sapphire Preferred^®/Reserve^®

• Chase Freedom Unlimited^®/Flex^®

• Amex Gold & Plat

• Capital One Venture X

• Capital One SavorOne

• Citi Strata Preferred^℠

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

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