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Chase is back with a unique offer for IHG credit cardholders: earn 10% cash back on a single airfare purchase of $499.99 or more made directly with the airline.
I find the amount hilarious on this one. It’s advertised as “10%” back, but the cash back maximum is $50. If you somehow managed to spend exactly $499.99, you’d officially get $49.999 back…which would undoubtedly be rounded up to $50. So, this is really a $50 cash back offer.
The Deal
- IHG cardholders can receive $50 cash back on an online airfare purchase of $499.99 or more made directly with an airline.
- The $499.99 threshold must be reached in one purchase
- $50 maximum cash back
- Valid one time only
- Expires 1/31/26
Terms and Conditions
- Offer expires 1/31/2026.
- Offer not valid on purchase made through Chase Travel.
- Offer valid online only.
- Offer not valid on gift card purchase.
- Purchase must be made directly with the merchant, not through a third party or delivery service.
- Offer valid one time only.
- It is possible that the merchant may split your purchase into multiple transactions. Offer redemption awarded as statement credit on the first qualifying transaction amount. Payment must be made in full at time of purchase.
- Payment must be made on or before 1/31/2026.
- Only purchases for airline tickets made directly with the airline will qualify. Other air travel-related purchases will not qualify; for example, in-flight purchases, the purchasing of airline miles or points, non-ticket purchases made within the airport, and airline tickets purchased through travel agencies, discount travel sites, vacation clubs, tour operators, or tickets booked as part of a travel package offered by non-airline merchants.
Quick Thoughts
This is a good offer if you have airfare to buy, although the closer you can stay to $500, the better. The terms specifically exclude gift card purchases, but I’ve seen reports that online AA gift card purchases will trigger the offer. That said, in most cases, it’s probably more reliable to buy an actual ticket, wait 24 hours, then cancel it and bank the credit towards a future flight.
Both the IHG Premier and Business Premier cards earn 5x points on airline purchases. However, we only value IHG points at ~0.6 cents each, and the travel protections on the IHG cards are a significant step down from better travel cards like the Chase Sapphire Preferred® or Sapphire Reserve®…two more reasons to keep your purchase amount as close to $500 as possible.
It’s also worth noting that, unlike Amex Offers, Chase Offers can be targeted to and used on multiple cards. If you are targeted on both an IHG personal and business card (or the old IHG Select), you can use the offer on each one.
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If I bought 2 tickets at $300 each (same itinerary), would Chase process it as two separate transactions, as it would disqualify because neither would meet the “single airfare purchase of $499.99 or more” condition? Or does it depend on the airline?
I booked plane tickets days ago after activating this deal and now the offer is gone from Chase and doesn’t even show up in my redeemed or expired Chase deals for either one of my IHG cards. Did anyone experience the same thing?
Does United Travelbank purchase trigger the credit?
I haven’t seen any positive DPs, but plenty of negative ones.
I made a $500 Travelbank purchase 10 days ago and have not gotten the credit.
On a 500 dollar airfare purchase via Amex Plat, I’m looking at 2500 points which if I can get 2cpp is $50. Using the IHG premier, I get 2500 points which let’s say we can redeem at 0.75cpp. That comes out to $18.75 + $50 cash back = $68.75. So I guess the real net benefit of the offer is <$20 and that # goes down if my airfare is higher than the exact $500. Not to mention Amex point are "harder" to acquire b/c amex never sells them whereas ihg points are frequently on sale. That + the worse travel protections on IHG card = probably passing for now (b/c too lazy haha).
Yeah, I thought for a moment about buying some AS wallet credit via this offer, but the upside is so limited that it really isn’t worth the hassle. In addition to the opportunity cost AS keeps chipping away use cases for wallet credit.