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Update: 10/12/18:
I picked up an American Express Gold, selected Alaska Airlines as my airline of choice and booked two tickets to Las Vegas for $48 a piece. Both qualified towards the $100 incidental fee credit and I was able to deposit them into my wallet.
Update May 2018: Alaska has changed their 60 day + free cancellation since writing this article. Only applies to Gold and G75 now.
A quick tip.
One of the benefits that’s great, but also frustrating, about the American Express Platinum ( any version ) is the annual $200 airline fee credit. The frustrating part is, unlike the Chase Reserve or Citi Prestige, the credit can’t be applied directly to purchased airfare, but rather to incidental fees like change and baggage fees. On top of that, you have to select a specific airline and up until this year I had selected American. That’s pretty limiting, but hadn’t really affected my ability to use up the credit because I purchased gift cards that triggered the fee credit.
This year, I’ve switched to Alaska, and as of last summer, Alaska Airlines gift card purchases don’t trigger the incidental fee credit. The solution? For the time being, it seems as though purchasing low fare tickets actually triggers the fee credit. I recently purchased a ~$40 ticket to Vegas, set a pending alert on my Amex, and waited to see if it was refunded. A day after it posted, wham, bam, it was refunded on my account.
I purchased a one way ticket on Feb 11th from AlaskaAir.com
It went pending on the 11th, and 72 hours later, on the 14th, it posted to my account. The 15th, the Airline Fee Reimbursement was triggered and reversed the charge. It doesn’t reflect the 15th below, but it turned negative a day after the initial posting.
Make sure you wait 24 hours for the ticket to actually process before canceling. After that point, simply cancel and deposit into your Alaska Wallet.
If you don’t carry MVP Gold or G75 then you’ll want to purchase tickets that are more than 62 days out so that you can deposit them without penalty. 62 because Alaska allows free cancellation if you do so 60 days out. This will give you a bit of buffer for the ticket to process with Amex and to cancel. The cost of the ticket is then deposited into your Wallet. You have a year from the date of purchase to then use those funds.
Hope this helps!
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.
The responses below are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.