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💳 Another 25% Off to Europe, Some Current Sweet Spots pt.2 & More News and Deals from Sense per Point ✈️

Making Sense of Points & Miles :)

Ending Soon: The Chase Sapphire Preferred’s 60k + $300 travel credit signup bonus is ending next week, on November 14th. Get it before it goes away, and go to a Chase branch for an extra 10k points on top! 💰️ 

Welcome Back!

Hope everyone is doing well 😊 

So one thing that has accompanied my interest in travel and the points and miles world is an interest in geography - some of my friends have seen me name every country in the world!

But I recently met someone that was able to name every country as well as its capital! It was very impressive, and so now I just had to get to work on being able to do it myself! Hopefully I’ll visit all of them too in the future - I’ve been to 22 world capitals so far, with more to come!

And what better way to see more world capitals than with points and miles! Let’s dive right into it!

In today’s edition:

✈️ 25% Off to Europe, November Edition 📆

Photo by Adam Khan on Unsplash

Its the first newsletter of the 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 6 North American cities selected for this discount, which are Boston, Denver, New York, Ottawa, Seattle, and Vancouver! ✈️ 

November’s Promo Rewards Destinations!

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.

The sweetener here is that Amex has a 20% transfer bonus to Flying Blue until the 10th (3 more days). So a flight costing 15k miles would cost just 13k Amex points while the transfer bonus is live! 🍭

Business class from North America to Europe through Flying Blue starts at a very reasonable 50k each way as well plus taxes and fees - with the 20% bonus in mind, you’d only need to transfer 42k points!

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

🏦➡️✈️ Transfer Bonuses

Bank

Transfer Partner

Bonus

This bonus ends:

Amex

Flying Blue (Air France & KLM)

20% (1:1.20)

November 10th, 2024

Chase

Marriott Bonvoy

50% (1:1.50)

November 15th, 2024

Citi

Wyndham Rewards

20% (1:1.20)

November 16th, 2024

Citi

Virgin Atlantic

30% (1:1.30)

November 16th, 2024

Chase

Virgin Atlantic

40% (1:1.40)

November 30th, 2024

Amex2

Avianca Lifemiles

15% (1:1.15)

November 30th, 2024

Capital One2

British Airways1

20% (1:1.20)

December 1st, 2024

Amex2

Marriott Bonvoy

35% (1:1.35)

December 31st, 2024

Amex2

Cathay Pacific Asia Miles

15% (1:1.15)

TBD (This is targeted, and I wasn’t targeted 🥹)

1 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 transfer bonuses to one Avios-using partner always indirectly include them all.

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

✈️ Some Current Sweet Spots, pt.2 🍦

You’ll notice that the chart for transfer bonuses is pretty big right now! That’s always exciting to see, as that means there are definitely some deals to be had. So I thought I’d go through some current deals, as I had done before 💰️ 

I do want to note: the award seats may be limited for these uses, as I did not search award availability myself for these redemptions. But feel free to do the search, or have sites like PointsYeah and Seats.aero help you with that! Also all redemptions discussed here are one-way! 🗒️ 

Virgin Atlantic Upper Class Hasn’t Been Cheaper

I discussed this just last week, but this deal is just too good not to discuss again. Virgin’s latest dynamic pricing updates have some business class awards pricing at 29k miles each way! Some programs charge 30k miles for economy, so this is just an amazing deal!

Transatlantic business class for 29k miles!!

Add in the 30% transfer bonus from Citi and the 40% transfer bonus from Chase, and that value gets even better! Again, for dates that have business class available for 29k, that would require just 23k Citi points or 21k Chase points! 21k Chase points for business class. Just an incredible deal! 🤯 

The 6k tickets for economy are also insane - that means just 5k points from either Citi or Chase can get you from New York to London. 5k points for a transoceanic flight! In other words, the current 60k signup bonus on the Chase Sapphire Preferred can get you 12 tickets to London right now, and 10 tickets to London once the transfer bonus expires. Again, just incredible!

The only caveat with booking Virgin flights is that flights originating in the UK have higher taxes and fees. So booking with UK as the destination rather than origin will have more reasonable fees!

Iberia Business Class

Next, I’ll talk about flying Iberia business class - off-peak dates on their calendar have redemption rates set at 34k miles one-way for business class for cities on the east coast and Chicago. I know Virgin just had theirs priced at 29, but 34k is not bad either!

But again, Capital One has a 20% transfer bonus to British Airways Avios! With that, these 34k rates go down to 29k Capital One miles. You can redeem for this through either Iberia or British Airways, as both airline searches will show the 34k pricing if available. A solid deal!

United Polaris Business Class

Did you know you can use Avianca Lifemiles to book United Polaris Business Class? While United likely charges over 100k points one way for such flights, Lifemiles charges 45k points one way, less than half of United’s own cost!

Amex is also running a 15% transfer bonus to Lifemiles for the month - these 45k miles business class tickets would require 40k Amex points. I know it’s not as crazy as the Virgin or the Iberia deals, but this is still a nice deal, and United Polaris is a solid product!

💳️ Best Card Signup Bonuses 💳️ 

Again, the usual solid cards:

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:

Card

Bonus

Annual Fee

Why Consider?

Capital One Savor

$250 or 25,000 points after $500 in spend in 3 months

$0

New elevated signup bonus that works for cash back as well as miles that can be combined with a Venture or Venture X!

Barclays Aviator Red

70,000 American Airlines miles after your first purchase and paying the annual fee

$99

This elevated signup bonus is back, and ridiculously easy to hit 🎯 

The Hilton Cards

100,000 to 175,000 points after $2k-$8k spend in 6 months

$0-$550

Lots of new and improved Hilton bonuses!

📤️ 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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