Frequent Miler's latest team challenge, Million Mile Madness, is almost done! The last two weeks Greg, Nick, and Stephen competed to earn 1 Million SAS miles by flying 15 airlines. But who completed the challenge with the most Speed, Affordability, and Style?
UPDATE: The card described in this article is no longer available.
Original content follows…
Doctor of Credit recently broke the news that Barclays appears to be on the verge of releasing a new credit card. A source has confirmed to me that this is true and has given me a bit more to go on. First, though, here’s what Doctor of Credit reported:
- Card Name: Barclays Arrival Premier World Elite Mastercard
- Annual Fee: $150 [Update 7/6/18: Now waived the first year.]
- Global Entry credit
- Annual Big Spend Bonuses: 15K Arrival miles after $15K spend, and another 10K Arrival miles after another $10K spend
- No news yet about the signup bonus
Doctor of Credit also speculated that Arrival miles may be transferable to airline partners.
Now, here’s the scoop from my source:
- Card Name: Barclays Arrival Premier World Elite Mastercard [No “e” at the end]
- There will be at least a half-dozen airline transfer partners
- The rest of the Doctor of Credit info was correct. I take that to mean that the following details are true:
- Annual Fee: $150
- Global Entry credit
- Annual Big Spend Bonuses: 15K Arrival miles after $15K spend, and another 10K Arrival miles after another $10K spend
I love transferable points programs. At different times and for different routes, you never know in advance which airlines will have the award space you need. Plus, each program tends to have its own award sweet-spots. With transferable points programs, you can generally wait until you find award space on your desired flights before transferring points to the program that is best for booking those awards.
Of course, whether or not this will be valuable with the new Barclays card will depend on which award partners they end up with. If they stick with airlines with which they already have partnerships, then they may support any or all of the following airlines:
- American Airlines
- Frontier Airlines
- Hawaiian Airlines
- JetBlue
- Lufthansa
But they may go beyond current partners. In my post “Promiscuous transfer partners” I pointed out that three airlines were transfer partners with all four of the most popular transferable points programs. These promiscuous airline programs are: Air France / KLM Flying Blue, Virgin Atlantic Flying Club, and Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer. Nearly as promiscuous are Cathay Pacific, Etihad, and British Airways. It seems likely to me that Barclays will include some of these as transfer partners with the Arrival Premier card.
My source didn’t mention the ability to transfer to hotels, but Wyndham transfers would be a very nice option too!
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Any rumor about if this card will come out in time to pay taxes?
I haven’t heard, but I did get emails on my other Barclays cards this week (Wyndham, Aviator) saying that a change was coming to the website April 1st, so I would think we’ll see something over the next couple of days. If it happens in the next couple of days, I imagine it should come in time without being expedited. We’ll see.
Worst case, it’ll come in time to make estimated payments for next year 😀
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This seems legit! If you take a look at https://cards.barclaycardus.com/cards.html#travel/
You’ll notice that the Arrival is no longer there! Hmmmmmm!
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This is awesome news. Thanks for sharing, Greg. Seems like it’s only going to benefit us and maybe push other banks to up their game! (Zac Hood, TravelFreely.net)
If this card transfers to AA and Lufthansa and earns 2x everywhere, or even has decent bonus categories, I am in.
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I love my arrival. We’ve had 4 of them. The arrival points post when the purchase posts. Transferable points that post right away are wonderful. Here’s hoping for. A decent sign up bonus and transfer partners.
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