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American Express offers Airline Fee credits on several of their cards. Personally, I hold 3 of them ( Amex Platinum, Amex Business Platinum, and Amex Gold) that total a whopping $500 in annual credits I’m entitled to receive. These credits are based on the calendar year and they just refreshed for 2019.
The tricky thing regarding Amex Airline Fee credits is determining what counts and what doesn’t. This varies from airline to airline, is dictated by Amex, and I wrote an entire post that details the various airlines and how Amex interprets the charges. I’d recommend reading that if your airline isn’t Alaska.
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Good news for those of us who have selected Alaska as our airline of choice…
Small tickets are still being credit back by American Express.
This is great news especially if you have Gold/75k status with Alaska and can cancel those flights and deposit them into your Alaska account to collectively use towards a more expensive flight in the next 12 months.
Keep in mind – if you book a “Saver” ticket you won’t be allowed to deposit into your wallet. You want to focus on “Main.”
Other items that the airline fee credit typically includes across most airlines:
- Bag fees
- Change Fees
- Taxes and fees on award tickets
- Cancellation fees
- Upgrade fees
Would love to hear your data points for Alaska or any other airline!
Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card
Welcome Offer
Earn 60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening.
Annual Fee
$95
Points Earned
Transferrable Chase Ultimate Rewards
- 5x on all travel purchased through Chase Travel℠
- 3x on dining, including eligible delivery services for takeout & dining out
- 3x on select streaming services
- 3x on online grocery purchases
- (excluding Target, Walmart and wholesale clubs)
- $50 Annual Chase Travel Hotel Credit via Chase Travel℠
- The begins immediately for new cardmembers and after your account anniversary for existing cardmembers
- 2x on all other travel
- 10% Anniversary Bonus
- Every year you keep the card, your total spend will yield a 10% points bonus. If you spend $10k in a year, you’ll get 1k bonus points
- Chase Sapphire Preferred continues to redeem at 1.25c in the Chase Travel℠ and the slew of other benefits remain in tact including Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver ( primary ), purchase protections, etc.
- Points are transferrable to 14 Ultimate Rewards partners
- Redeem in Chase Travel℠ for 1.25 cents per point
- No foreign transaction fees
- Suite of Travel and Purchase Coverage
- Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver is my favorite
- Get complimentary access to DashPass which unlocks $0 delivery fees and lower service fees for a minimum of one year when you activate by December 31, 2027.
- $95 Annual Fee
We keep an up to date spreadsheet that lists the best ever offers: You can find that spreadsheet here.
Historically 80k is a very, very good offer and hit in both 2022 and 2023. In 2021, we saw the offer hit an all time high of 100k. Who knows if that will ever come back.
Main Cast:
Cards that earn flexible points and should be used on the bulk of your purchases.
Supporting Cast:
Cards that earn fixed points in the currency of the airline/hotel and can not be transferred at attractive rates. These cards yield benefits that make it worth keeping, but not necessarily worth putting a lot of your everyday spend on.
The Chase Sapphire Preferred® is exceptional starter card and offers transferrable Ultimate Rewards, and pairs well with other Chase cards.
If you carry this card alongside Chase’s cashback cards like the Chase Freedom Flex® and Chase Freedom Unlimited® or the business versions: Ink Business Cash® , Ink Business Unlimited® you can combine the points into Preferred account and transfer into hotel and airline partners
Annual fee is quite low at $95 a year + you get a 10% anniversary bonus on points + $50 hotel credit in Chase travel.
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