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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!
The Chase Sapphire Preferred is a great starter card that earns Premium Ultimate Rewards that can be transferred into over a dozen partners many of which are US based.
Welcome Offer
60k Points after $4k spend in 3 months
Annual Fee
$95
Points Earned
Transferrable Chase Ultimate Rewards
Super solid welcome offer.
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.
- 3x on dining
- including eligible delivery services for takeout
- 3x on select streaming services
- 3x on online grocery purchases
- (excluding Target, Walmart and wholesale clubs)
- 5x on all travel purchased through Chase Ultimate Rewards – Chase Travel Portal
- $50 Annual Credit on hotel stays purchased via Ultimate Rewards/Chase Travel
- The begins immediately for new cardmembers and after your account anniversary for existing cardmembers
- 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 Portal and the slew of other benefits remain in tact including primary rental car insurance, purchase protections, etc.
- Points are transferrable to 13 Ultimate Rewards partners
- Redeem in the Chase Travel center for 1.25 cents per point
- No foreign transaction fees
- Suite of Travel and Purchase Coverage
- Primary rental car coverage is my favorite
We keep an up to date spreadsheet that lists the best ever offers: You can find that spreadsheet here.
Historically 60k is a very, very good offer. 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.
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