1.4 million+ JetBlue points for 582K Membership Rewards points (How to rock JetBlue 25 for 25 with a family)

I’m probably not going to go after JetBlue’s incredible 25 for 25 promotion.

But as someone on the East Coast with the ability to travel as a family for the month of August, I am really, really, really tempted. I know that Greg took a crack at considering this promotion in his post yesterday, but, frankly, I found the lack of detail regarding numbers, times, and itineraries really unsatisfying. He was primarily trying to decide whether it could be done (given his existing travel plans and his circumstances). I am far more interested in what it would actually cost and look like to mileage run this thing and I couldn’t put it to rest until I ran the numbers.

Truth be told, I would mileage run after this promotion in a heartbeat. My wife, on the other hand, would be a tough sell.

As you’ll hear on this weekend’s podcast, Greg is lukewarm on this promotion. He is right to feel that way! Since he’s based in Detroit, completing the challenge would be a real pain. On the other hand, as a family traveler based in then northeast, I feel like this promotion is almost a must-do for anyone who has the flexibility and the stomach for a month of heavy travel.

That said, while I think the numbers support chasing this one, the reality is that it will be really tough for most folks and I don’t know if it’ll be realistic for my family — but the truth is that we could end up with more than 1.4 million JetBlue points for 582,000 Membership Rewards points.

Why this promotion feels so compelling to me

On this week’s soon-to-publish Frequent Miler on the Air podcast, Greg makes a sound argument as to why you shouldn’t look at this promotion from a return-on-investment angle. Yes, it is possible to earn points that are “worth” more than the cost to complete the necessary flights, but that value is locked up in maybe-someday-land and you’re tying up real-world-now-dollars (or points) to get it. Sure, TrueBlue points currently buy around 1.3c worth of airfare per point, and JetBlue has some foreign partners where you could get more value, but they could also change the value of those points at some time before you get a chance to use them. And while your couple thousand of today dollars could be invested/saved to grow in value, the points will more likely become worth less.

Furthermore, JetBlue isn’t in great financial shape. While I don’t think this will happen, it is possible that the airline could completely collapse before you’ve used the points, rendering those points worthless.

Why, then, do I find this so compelling? There are several reasons.

The power of scale

From the outset, I used some rough math to guestimate how much this might cost. I figured that I could probably come out around 150,000 points “ahead” after 20 flights to earn the 350,000-point bonus. That is potentially a nice little win, but Greg points out on the podcast that I could probably just open a new credit card and save myself the time, hassle, and hotel expense of flying to 25 different airports if all I wanted was to make myself 150,000 points richer. He’s totally right about that.

However, with a family of four, the power of scale becomes evident. If my wife, kids, and I were each able to come out that far ahead per person, we would end up 600,000 points richer than we begin. There would be plenty of other costs (hotel, food, entertainment, and time), but there is no denying that 600,000 points is a decent carrot. Of course not all miles and points are created equally, so using (for example) 800,000 transferable points to end up with 1,400,000 JetBlue TrueBlue points (350K x 4) isn’t exactly a 600,000-point “win”, but it neither is it insignificant.

And while those 600,000 “profit points” would buy around $7,800 worth of JetBlue flights, we are more likely to use the JetBlue points to significantly outsized value with their international partners.

There is certainly the risk that JetBlue could go out of business, but I’m less worried about that given the likelihood that they get bought by another airline rather than closing shop entirely.

The “worst case” scenario probably isn’t that bad

The absolute worst case scenario would be JetBlue running out of money and closing its operations, rendering points and status worthless. But I think that seems highly unlikely. Rumors have suggested that United is interested in purchasing JetBlue. I have no idea whether that is true, but it seems more likely to me than JetBlue going out of business.

If another airline (like United or perhaps another major airline) bought JetBlue, I imagine that existing TrueBlue points would end up getting converted into miles in the new airline. In other words, if United bought JetBlue, I would bet that JetBlue TrueBlue points would become United miles. I don’t know that is true, nor do I know that the points would convert 1:1.

But if I had to place a bet, I would bet on the miles and status being worth something with whichever airline buys JetBlue.

Speaking of status, I think the status portion is both the most intriguing and most likely not to pan out as advertised.

I find it intriguing because the prospect of having airline elite status for the next 25 years is pretty wild. My kids are 7 and nearly 5 years old. If we all traveled to 25 airports this year, they would have status until they are 32 and 30 years old. By that time, they might have families of their own. The thought of my little guys having little ones of their own and still being on the beneficial end of this promotion just feels really cool.

However, I think it is pretty unlikely that things will pan out exactly like that. I don’t know that JetBlue will be around for another 5 years no less 25 years and they will surely rename and retool their program numerous times over the years even if they stick around. More likely than not, they will eventually be bought by another airline. If and when that happens, I imagine that those of us with Mosaic 1 from this promotion will get some level of elite status. But will it last for 25 years? We can dream.

JetBlue status benefits both on JetBlue and United are worth something in the near term

In the meantime, JetBlue Mosaic 1 status comes with some tangible benefits, including 2 free checked bags, priority check-in and boarding, and extra legroom seating at check-in. Thanks to the partnership with United Airlines, Mosaic 1 members also get some of those benefits (including 1 free checked bag, preferred seats at time of booking, and Economy Plus seats at check-in) when traveling on United. Furthermore, Mosaic 1 members get an annual “Perks You Pick” choice, which could be a Pet Fee Waiver, 15K bonus TrueBlue points, or a number of other perks.

At a base level, I’m sure we’d benefit from checked bags on JetBlue and/or United a couple of times over the next few years and if we each selected the 15K points perk for this year and next year, that would be an additional 120,000 TrueBlue points for the four of us. If JetBlue continues on in future years, we’d collect 60,000 points per year with that perk between the four of us.

It is notable that JetBlue offers Points Pooling. My family of four could pool together both the 350,000 points from the promotion and those Perks You Pick points.

How we could earn 1.4 million JetBlue TrueBlue points for 582,000 Amex Membership Rewards points

As you hopefully recall, this JetBlue 25 for 25 promotion is set up in tiers:

• Fly to 15 destinations, earn 150,000 TrueBlue points
• Fly to 20 destinations, earn 200,000 additional TrueBlue points (a total of 350K points)
• Fly to 25 destinations, get Mosaic 1 status for 25 years

In other words, one has to fly to 20 airports in order to earn 350,000 TrueBlue points and then five more to get the status benefit.

It therefore made sense to me to first prioritize planning a trip to 20 destinations. As it so happens, pre-existing travel plans have us flying to or through five airports served by JetBlue later this year. I’ll come back to the final five later, but it seemed most relevant to me to plan a trip to 20 airports to trigger the 350,000 point bonus. In my case, I was intentionally leaving out those airports that I know I need to fly to or through later this year, so that was part of my planning process.

As fate would have it, my family has the month of August free. The kids are done with summer camp and out of school until the Thursday after Labor Day. I have to work for Frequent Miler, but obviously this job gives me the flexibility to work from anywhere — even JetBlue in-flight WiFi. My wife similarly works online, so we are in a unique position where we actually could spend the entire month of August flying around for the purposes of this promotion. That’s an awfully fortunate set of circumstances, so I set out to plan how we could knock out 20 airports while we’re free.

However, my aim wasn’t just to plot out something that could be done but rather that we actually might consider doing. Consider a few key notes before scrolling on to the table below:

• My wife far prefers a 6am flight to a 6pm flight, so I generally prioritized flying early in the day whenever possible. I did not always pick the least expensive flight.
• The trip below isn’t meant for speed. Quite the opposite: I know that my wife does not want to fly on too many consecutive days in a row. This itinerary pushes it a bit with one stretch of 3 consecutive days with flights, but I otherwise tried to plan a day or two to visit a place where possible. This also meant that there were times when I picked a flight that cost a bit more in order to give us an extra day between flights.
• Some of the gaps between legs are due to plans to visit family. I included one $50 positioning flight that would not be on JetBlue. As such, I didn’t account for that in the Membership Rewards section but it is accounted for in the cash cost.
• You’ll notice that the table shows August first and then reverts to July. That was intentional. After planning August, I only had 17 airports and I didn’t want to compress anything further. Since I still had a whole bunch of unused Northeast airports, I threw in an example where we could spend a single weekend in July (Saturday to Monday morning) picking up 3 more airports. I like that this one ends on Monday because the Boston to Philly route could be a Dunkin route that provides 3 months of Mosaic 1 status, which would come in really handy in August.
• There are a couple of open-jaws. We have family and friends who would likely be able to pick us up and drop us off in a couple of those. And I checked ferry schedules from Martha’s Vineyard to make sure that we could catch a ferry back to the mainland and get back to Boston Logan Airport to complete the July 3-airport run.
• There would obviously be far more cost involved in completing the challenge in terms of hotels, rental cars, one-way transportation in some cases (including ferries and trains), etc.
• Note that my itinerary is entirely domestic. Since it is designed in August, I wanted to avoid the Caribbean as much as possible. I couldn’t possibly also avoid Florida, but I didn’t want to count on flights to Caribbean islands during hurricane season. Furthermore, I didn’t want to make things harder on the kids with time spent in immigration lines. I wanted to keep this one within the US.

All those caveats out of the way, the following chart shows actual dates, routes, times, and prices for how I could accomplish this challenge. A quick description of key columns:

• Qualifying Airports: This column lists the airport codes we would pick up on an itinerary that would add to our count. Remember that the origin airport does not count, only connecting airports and the final destination. Many of these trips connect at either JFK or BOS, but I only listed each of those airports one time in the Qualifying Airports column since they will not count again the next time we pass through.
• Cash price: This column shows the cash price for the example flight.
• JetBlue Award points/taxes: These columns show how much the awards would cost if I booked with JetBlue TrueBlue points or if I transferred points 1:1 from Chase Ultimate Rewards or Citi ThankYou points. Keep in mind that if I were going to use JetBlue TrueBlue points, it would make sense to get the JetBlue Plus or JetBlue Business credit card as those cards offer 10% back on award redemptions (and 50% back on in-flight purchases).
• Membership Rewards points: This column shows how much it would cost if I redeemed Amex Membership Rewards points through Amex Travel at a rate of 1c per point. The reason I show this column is because, since I have a Business Platinum card, I could make JetBlue my chosen airline in order to get 35% of the points back (up to 1 million points back per year) when booking flights through Amex Travel and paying with points. Note that Amex Travel sometimes shows the price for Blue Basic, but based on past experience with other airlines, I expect that you could call in and use points toward the Blue fares necessary for the promotion.
• Net Membership Rewards cost after rebate: This column shows my net cost in Membership Rewards points after getting the 35% Pay with Points rebate.
• Points earned: This column shows the number of JetBlue TrueBlue points I would earn on a paid ticket (paid either with cash or with Membership Rewards points). Note that these points would not be earned if using JetBlue TrueBlue points to book flights as awards. Note that base members earn 6 points per dollar spent on base fare. I did the math based on base fares without taxes for that column (whereas the cash prices shown include taxes).

Here is the trip and the total numbers:

As you can see, I could accomplish the 20 airports required in order to earn the lion’s share of the rewards in one of several ways:

• I could spend $2,288.25 per passenger and earn 10,568 TrueBlue points and the 350,000 point bonus. This might be reduced if you have a current Amex offer or Citi Merchant offer for JetBlue.
• I could use 146,800 JetBlue TrueBlue points plus $106 and earn the 350K bonus (if I had a JetBlue credit card, this would be 132,120 points)
• I could use a net 145,486 Amex Membership Rewards points and earn 10,568 TrueBlue points and the 350K bonus.

I think that the best way to complete this challenge would be with Membership Rewards points provided that you have a Business Platinum card and can select JetBlue as your airline (and that you have not yet maxed out the 1 million points you can get back per year).

If I did this as a family of four, my net cost in Membership Rewards points would be 581,944 Membership Rewards points to complete 20 airports. In return, my family would end up with 1,442,272 JetBlue TrueBlue points.

Since we also have existing plans to travel to 5 more JetBlue airports by the end of this year (Fort Lauderdale, Nassau, Los Angeles, Newark, and Tampa), my family of four would end up also earning 25 years of Mosaic status. Dates are fixed on those existing trips, so I can’t really optimize those for price in the same way. We would pay a little bit more to fly JetBlue in one or two of those instances, but not by enough to pass up 25 years of status.

Will I actually do this with my family?

Goodness knows that I would love to do this trip as designed. I think it would be so cool for all of the reasons mentioned within the post.

However, the realist in me knows that it would be really difficult. It would stress out my wife and some of the quick turnarounds wouldn’t be easy for the kids. Furthermore, if anyone got sick at all during the trip, recovering things and re-planning could get really messy. It probably isn’t realistic.

Furthermore, I’m in a difficult spot with Membership Rewards points. I would have enough to book this trip as outlined here, but I had planned to transfer many of those points to Hawaiian Airlines before June 30th so that they would become Alaska miles (as a reminder, transfers from Amex Membership Rewards to Hawaiian end on June 30th). I could reduce the number of points I earmark for Alaska and I could mix and match and use some points transferred to JetBlue from other currencies and/or open a JetBlue credit card or maybe even another card that earns Membership Rewards points if I could meet the spend quickly. But going after this would mean losing some amount of my ability to go all-in on Hawaiian/Alaska. On the one hand, I’d be doing it with intentions to get a ton of value out of the points with this promotion, so it may not be a terrible trade. On the other hand, I’ve been loving Alaska miles as of late. I don’t know the right answer here yet and I don’t have much time to think about it.

I think it is unlikely that we’ll do this, but I wish we could. Perhaps if my kids were a few years older, it would be more realistic. Unfortunately, you don’t get to pick when the iron is hot, you just have to strike while it is. I hope that some readers will find inspiration in this post and find that it is possible to do this and that the scale for family travelers could really add up. I don’t think it’ll make any sense for people based out west (notice that I didn’t bother at all with most of the airports from the middle of the country westward because they just added a lot of wasted flying time). But if you’re based in the northeast and you have a few passengers and a pile of points and the flexibility to make this work, it could turn into a really big win. I’ll be rooting for you to win big, whether I’m out there on your JetBlue flight or not.

Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.