After years of eschewing airline elite status entirely, 2026 may finally be the year that teaches me to appreciate it. In years past, I haven’t really cared much about airline elite status because most of my travel is award travel, typically premium cabin international award travel. Flying in a premium cabin often makes elite status benefits redundant. As such, I’ve never particularly cared about airline elite status.
That said, I have chased some airline elite status in recent years because it’s become easier to earn without actually flying. Thanks to easier paths to airline elite status through credit card spend, portal offers, and award travel (in some cases), I have gathered elite status in several of the major U.S. programs:
- I earned Alaska Silver status last year thanks to enough award travel booked with Atmos rewards.
- I earned JetBlue Mosaic 1 status for 25 years thanks to last year’s JetBlue 25 for 25 promotion.
- I have American Airlines Platinum status, which seemed a little less sensical to chase, but I ended up putting enough in purchases on my Aviator Silver card last year and using enough shopping offers to earn the Loyalty Points for Platinum status.
Alaska Silver status was kind of a happy accident, but I don’t actually anticipate that one being useful any time soon.
By contrast, now that JetBlue/United reciprocal elite benefits are live, I’ve already enjoyed priority boarding and Economy Plus seating at check-in thanks to JetBlue Mosaic status (and I can see my United TravelBank becoming more valuable now that we have access to benefits when flying United).
I don’t fly American all that often, so that status seemed like it might have been the most questionable one to pursue. However, it may come in very handy after all. We have family summer travel plans where (atypically for us) a lot of the trip is nonrefundable (and not covered by a card with good trip cancellation coverage). Something came up, and we will likely need to adjust plans significantly. I wanted to book a backup plan for getting to Europe in case we have the chance to still make some of the trip work, particularly since we can’t cancel most of it. Of course, finding premium cabin availability to Europe isn’t always easy in the summertime.
Greg and Tim have both talked quite highly of daytime flights from the East Coast of the United States to London because you depart the United States in the morning and arrive in the evening, go to sleep soon after arrival, and quickly adjust to the time zone change. The problem is that I rarely ever find reasonable award pricing for business class or even premium economy on those few daytime flights to London.
However, I found a daytime flight from New York to London on American Airlines with economy class availability that felt like it could work as a Plan B to avoid losing some of our nonrefundable reservations. I don’t typically get excited about economy class award redemptions to Europe, but in this case, it seemed like a pretty solid value because my American Airlines Platinum status means that I can select Main Cabin Extra seating for all five of us at booking. American was otherwise charging $110 to $120 a seat for those Main Cabin Extra seats. If we do end up taking that flight, that’ll represent $500-$600 worth of savings over having purchased those Main Cabin Extra seats, and I’m sure we’ll all be thankful for a little extra leg room on what is scheduled to be a 7-hour daytime flight to London. It’ll be a far cry from business class, but I was glad to lock in a backup plan that has free cancellation and at least slightly more comfortable seating across the pond. Whether or not we use it, status provides some peace of mind there.
On the blog this week, read Tim’s Bottom Line Review of the Miraval Austin, learn about AARP benefits you didn’t know existed, pick up tips on avoiding the Phantom (Space) Menace, and more.
This week on the Frequent Miler blog…
My week in travel, made better by ultra-premium cards
Over the past week, I have traveled across the country a couple of times and made use of a number of benefits of ultra-premium credit cards. While I’ve certainly been one to discuss the ever-increasing annual fees and how they’ve been making me melt for quite some time, I have to also give credit where credit is due. Several times this last week, my ultra-premium credit cards made travel more comfortable or just downright more enjoyable. In this post, I share a number of the ways I used ultra-premium credit card benefits over the last week and a half.
First impressions of the new World of Hyatt order | Coffee Break Ep107 | 5-26-26
There’s a new World of Hyatt order. On this week’s Coffee Break, with Greg on vacation, Tim and I discuss our first impressions of the new World of Hyatt award chart. Some awards have increased in price substantially, while others have remained about the same, and a few have decreased. What do we make of the changes, and what do we think is coming next? On this week’s Coffee Break, we discuss.
Tips for finding impossible awards | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep360 | 5-29-26
Some awards are notoriously difficult to snag. On this week’s Frequent Miler on the Air, Greg and I discuss a number of ideas you can put into play in order to try to make those impossible award dream trips a reality. Difficult awards will likely still be challenging to find, but there are a number of things you can do to make the process easier for you. Personally, I am a big fan of award alerts because award availability can change at any time and alerts automate of a lot of the heavy lifting, removing the mental burden in terms of having to frequently search. Listen to this week’s podcast for more ideas.
Miraval Austin: Bottom Line Review
Personally, I’ve had no interest at all in Miraval properties. I did get my wife a day pass to the spa in Miraval Berkshires once, and she enjoyed it well enough, but even she said she didn’t think she could imagine paying the cost in points or cash to stay there.
I read Tim’s review with interest because I know he’s never been particularly interested in the Miraval properties, either. Surprisingly, despite what he describes as an uncomfortable bed and accommodations that don’t look particularly luxurious, especially considering the award price, Tim walked away not only enjoying the experience but enjoying it enough to book two more Miraval properties.
I’m still unconvinced that it would be a fit for me because while the food looks appealing, I’m not particularly interested in the wellness classes. If we wanted a spa trip, as Tim notes, there are other places to do that. However, I can certainly see the appeal, particularly for city dwellers, to get away and try some of the wellness-type activities Miraval has to offer. I remain unconvinced that I would enjoy a Miraval property enough to justify the price tag, though Tim was wise to get in before the award charts changed.
10 AARP member benefits you might not know about
Anyone can join AARP, so I’ve been a member for years, thanks to Black Friday deals stacked with card-linked offers. Truthfully, I haven’t made much use of the membership myself, with most of my savings coming in the form of discounted cruise gift cards, back when they used to sell Carnival Cruise Lines cards at 10% off (I loaded them to my onboard account). That more than paid for years’ worth of my membership.
In this post, Stephen outlines many other ways that you might pay for years’ worth of membership by using a few of the regular discounts that you might not realize exist. In some cases, the savings are really small, but those savings can add up over time to more than pay for the membership.
Phantom space, mixed cabin awards, and delayed transfers: Award travel frustrations
We’ve heard from a number of readers lately about phantom Japan Airlines Award space showing up via Qantas Frequent Flyer. Unfortunately, phantom award space is one of the pain points of award travel that can be really frustrating. In this post, I cover some ways to try to avoid falling into phantom space, as well as the frustrations of mixed-cabin awards and inexplicably delayed transfers. For the most part, these things are bad luck situations you probably won’t run into, but you need to be aware of them for those rare instances where they do affect you.
American Airlines is blocking close-in domestic award availability to partners
Sharing this bad news because short non-stop American Airlines flights have been a terrific value when booked via Alaska Atmos rewards for the last couple of years. Unfortunately, Dan’s Deals has uncovered the fact that American Airlines is blocking partners from accessing award space within five days of departure (144 hours in advance, to be precise). Connecting itineraries don’t appear to be affected, but those short non-stops that have been available for 4,500 Alaska miles in economy class or 9,000 miles in business class are now being blocked within five days of departure. More specifically, American Airlines is removing award availability on all of those non-stop flights within a few days of departure. That really stinks. On the one hand, it makes sense that they want to encourage or incentivize people to use their AA miles, but you would think that if they just offered a competitive price, people would be incentivized enough not to look at the other programs in the first place.
World of Hyatt Complete Guide (2026)
World of Hyatt has made significant program changes in 2026. Most notable change has been the launch of a set of brand new award charts that, in total, include more than 100 different price points for award bookings. As a result, we’ve fully updated our World of Hyatt Complete Guide with all the latest information about booking awards as well as other program changes that have been made in 2026.
That’s it for this week at Frequent Miler. Keep an eye on Last Chance Deals to make sure you grab those ending this weekend.
Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
