Welcome Back!

Hope everyone is having a great week 😊

So something crazy happened to me recently: I got rejected for a credit card, due to apparently having too many active credit card accounts on my report… The Capital One Savor, to be clear, is a great card, but I guess it just isn’t for me 🤷

The craziest thing is that I checked the Capital One pre-approval tool the day before and was pre-approved for the card. I applied the next day, and I guess I wasn’t pre-approved anymore?? Life be like that sometimes 😑 

In other news, I did book some travel using points and miles! I’ll talk more about it and hopefully will come back from the trip with reviews of flights, hotels, and more for you all!

In today’s edition:

• ✈️ Virgin’s Dynamic Pricing is… Good? 🇬🇧 

• 🏦 Transfer Bonuses ✈️

• 🧳 Trip Booked: El Salvador!! 🎉 

• 📰 Other Stories & Deals 💰️

• 💳️ Best Card Signup Bonuses 💳️ 

✈️ Virgin’s Dynamic Pricing is… Good? 🇬🇧 

So about a month ago, I wrote about Virgin’s impending changes regarding dynamic pricing (and was quite pessimistic at the time). As a reminder, dynamic pricing is generally bad in the points & miles game! It tends to get rid of award charts, and airlines can use that to basically raise redemptions and devalue as they see fit without notice.

So when Virgin announced they’d implement dynamic pricing, I was definitely concerned 😬 

It went into effect yesterday, and so far, it seems pretty good! I’m pleasantly surprised, from looking at some rates for the JFK-LHR route:

• 💺 There is plenty of economy award availability at 6k Virgin miles, as opposed to the 10k prior to this change

• 💵 Taxes and fees have gone down on some flights from the previous $152 to $73 on some economy tickets with the new changes

• 💼 There is business class award availability as well, also at a lower redemption rate and lower taxes and fees too!

I’ve written about Virgin devaluations time and time again, but this looks great so far. I mean, business class to London on some dates for 29k Virgin miles is awesome, especially as there are numerous transfer bonuses to Virgin Atlantic every year, including two right now from Citi Chase! With the current 30% bonus from Citi, you’d only need to transfer 23k Citi points to Virgin for business class flights at 29k. With the 40% bonus from Chase, that number goes down to 21k Chase points 💸 

I do want to note that once those “Saver” fare seats run out, then the rates become much less desirable, with business class fares going up as high as 350k points one way. But this change does make it so that every seat on a plane is bookable via points on Virgin flights, although at high costs.

One negative change to note is that cancellation/change fees have gone up from 30GBP to 70GBP - I guess it couldn’t be all good…

Another note is that partner awards through Virgin Atlantic remain unchanged. So dynamic pricing applies only when you redeem Virgin miles for Virgin. When you redeem Virgin for a partner airline (ANA, LATAM, etc.), there will still be an award chart. So overall, the changes look like Virgin made their own rates somewhat better, and they didn’t make their partner rates worse. A win, for now! ✌️

But as is always the case with dynamic pricing, we will have to continue to monitor this - but do take advantage of the great deals available while they are around!

🏦➡️✈️ Transfer Bonuses

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

² 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.

🧳 Trip Booked: El Salvador!! 🎉 

Woohoo! Travel is always great, especially when on points and miles! This time, my points are taking me to El Salvador ✈️ 

You may remember I wrote about the Avianca deals last week, where all Avianca routes were 30% off for a limited time. While writing it up, I thought maybe I should just take advantage of the deals myself, and so I did! 🎉 

So the roundtrip from JFK-SAL cost me exactly 12,480 Avianca Lifemiles (transferred over from Amex) + $108.54 in fees. All nonstop flights!

As for hotels, I’ll be staying at the Intercontinental San Salvador as well as the Hyatt Centric San Salvador! IHG very briefly ran a promotion where room rates when using points were 15% off. I took advantage of that to book the Intercontinental San Salvador!

As for the Hyatt Centric, the room was 5k points per night (transferred from Chase). I’m also a World of Hyatt Globalist, so hoping for a suite upgrade and some nice breakfast 🥣

See, the thought was to get a new card and use that card to book some excursions and tours for this trip to help hit the signup bonus, but then Capital One denied me… All good though - I’m going to have a blast anyway!

But yeah, from the trip, I’m hoping to visit and review:

• Intercontinental San Salvador

• Hyatt Centric San Salvador

• Maybe a lounge (or multiple?) at the airport

That being said, super excited to go and devour some pupusas! If any of you have been to El Salvador before, please do send me any recommendations!

Hope you all are also cooking up some travel plans with your points and miles too! 🧳 

📰 Other Stories & Deals 💰️ 

• ✈️ Fiji Airways is adopting AAdvantage miles! But this means Fiji Airways award flights are now subject to the same dynamic pricing that American flights are…

• 🍎 Chase points are worth more when redeeming for Apple purchases for a limited time! Not my preferred use of Chase points, but it could make sense for some 👍️

• United is updating their status thresholds for 2025 - it may be a bit harder to gain United status next year…

💳️ Best Card Signup Bonuses 💳️ 

Again, the usual solid cards:

• Chase Sapphire Preferred^®/Reserve^®

• Chase Freedom Unlimited^®/Flex^®

• Amex Gold & Plat

• Capital One Venture X

• 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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