Almost 30 years ago, the Sunscreen Song taught to “accept certain inalienable truths”, among them the fact that “prices will rise”. That is unfortunately just what happened this week for some awards booked through Avianca Lifemiles. Thankfully, the Broadway musical Spamalot subsequently taught me to “Always look on the bright side of life” — and the bright side here is that hidden behind the bad news is the fact that many awards can be booked more cheaply with a couple of sharp tricks.
It’s not just award searches where we seek to sharpen our edge; this week, we discussed the ways we clip through the coupon books in our wallets and leverage benefits you may not have even known you can access so that you, too, can grind out some wins. All that and more in this Frequent Miler Week in Review.
This week on the Frequent Miler blog…
Maximizing American Express credit card rebates & credits
Amex’s coupon book model has turned its premium cardholders into prolific coupon-clippers. Sure, it’s kind of annoying, but the truth is that you just need a shiny pair of scissors and the patience to get to work. Think of this post as a sharpener for those scissors — the tool you need to clip with minimum effort and maximum results.
How we use our Amex Gold Card coupon credits | Coffee Break Ep45 | 2-14-25 | Podcast
If you want to know how we’re clipping some of our coupons, look no further than this week’s Coffee Break. Greg and I are both Amex Gold Card holders and Amex has extended their coupon book model to the Gold card in recent years. In this episode, Greg and I talk about how we use the various credits that come with the Amex Gold card.
Indirect Amex Platinum benefits: Free burgers, Champions League soccer, Best Western, Radisson & Sixt status & more
If you thought that clipping coupons was all there is to getting maximum value out of your Amex Platinum card benefits, you’ll definitely need to read this post. Stephen’s list of indirect Amex Platinum card benefits included a couple that I didn’t know existed. While I’m not sure I’ve ever had a Whopper from Burger King, I could see myself picking up that free Whopper a couple of times per year for someone in the family. I also hadn’t realized that I could be saving 10% at Exxon-Mobil gas stations. That’s a benefit that I’d definitely be using.
Amex Blue Business Plus Credit Card Review (2025)
Whether you just don’t have the patience for the coupon book model or you simply want the freedom to close up that coupon book when you’re done with it, the Amex Blue Business Plus is a card that deserves a spot in any Membership Rewards enthusiast’s wallet. That’s because the card earns a solid return everywhere, allows for points transfers to all of Amex’s airline and hotel partners, and it has no annual fee. If you’re going to have Amex cards, this is a great card to have and hold to keep your Amex points alive even as you open and close other cards. If you don’t yet think you have a business, it’s time to become mildly entrepreneurial and add this to your wallet.
Citi Strata Premier℠ Credit Card Review (2025)
If your wallet is completely devoid of Amex cards, I’d bet that you might just have the Citi Strata Premier. This card is probably the most underutilized card we have in my household. I just don’t find many uses given that we’ve kept a Gold card for dining and U.S. Supermarkets, a Wyndham Earner Business for gas, and a number of cards that offer a good bonus on travel (lately, I’ve been using the U.S. Bank Altitude Reserve for most travel). And yet, despite the fact that we don’t put ours to use often, I totally agree with Tim that this card is a great workhorse for someone who wants a really simple (and cheap!) setup that yields outsized rewards that can be transferred to a solid set of partners.
Avianca Lifemiles devalues, but with a huge twist (it’s not all bad news!)
One thing that both Amex and Citi share is the ability to transfer points to Avianca Lifemiles. Unfortunately, Lifemiles has increased the price of many awards, and many of those increases are not pretty. Many business class awards to Europe that increased from 63,000 miles to 70,000 miles less than six months ago now cost 80,000 miles. At the time of writing the post, I had missed that domestic awards on United have increased to 15K where they had been 7.5K miles. However, after hours of trying to crack the code as to what causes price variance, I published this post showing that there are still glimmers of hope, including many award routings to Europe that cost 69,000 miles today — and with some mixed-cabin magic or a check of the right box, you can be paying quite a bit less.
How much are Southwest Rapid Rewards points worth?
Speaking of paying less, you need to know what your points are worth so that you don’t accept far less that what you should be getting out of them. The value of Southwest Rapid Rewards points is tied to the cash price of a flight, so you might think of Southwest points as having a relatively static value. While that’s true relatively speaking, there was still more variance than I may have expected, with some flights yielding a bit more than 1.25c per point in value and others more than 1.6c per point. Still, on average, you can expect about 1.4c. And no, the value of the points does not double if you have the Companion Pass. See my explanation in the comments if you’re not sure why I say that.
What are Delta SkyMiles worth?
While I manually collected hundreds of data points to determine the value of Southwest Rapid Rewards points, our valuation of Delta SkyMiles is based on millions of data points. Thanks to data from Points Path, we have a much more concrete idea of the value of Delta SkyMiles over millions and millions of flights. Unsurprisingly, Delta miles aren’t the most valuable currency, but it is still reasonable to expect to get 1.11c per mile or better based on a sizable data set.
Thai Airways awards wide-open exclusively through United
You can certainly expect higher value out of your miles and points if you’re interested in redeeming them for premium cabin international travel. If you’re looking to fly Thai, you’re going to want United miles. That’s because, as Loyalty Lobby discovered and Greg confirmed for this post, United has access to far more Thai Airways business and first class availability than other partners. Someone in the comments pointed out that LifeMiles will show that Thai availability if you check the “Thai Airways” box, but LifeMiles can’t book it. I ran into exactly that problem during our Flying by the Seat of Our Points challenge last summer — the Thai flight showed up via Lifemiles, but kept erroring out on me. I eventually got it booked through Air Canada Aeroplan, but if it had errored out there, also, I might have assumed that it was phantom space that United couldn’t book, either. now I know better.
PointsYeah: Free award searches and alerts (now with seat maps, hotels & more)
Award search tools can make it far easier to figure out things like that Thai Airways business and first class award space that’s only available to United. PointsYeah is an awesome tool that does a lot of things really well. Like Greg, I’ve been in the habit of using AwardTool because of the ability to tweak the number of airports and dates in ways that suit my needs, but I’ve been meaning to check out PointsYeah again because a lot of these tools just keep getting better. I had somehow missed PointsYeah’s hotel searches entirely until Greg mentioned it recently, and that’s a use case that really excites me, so I’m glad that Greg published this update to his review.
Alaska Mileage Plan starting to sell mixed partner award flights (but mind the price)
Something you might start noticing in your award searches is that there are finally some awards bookable through Alaska Mileage Plan that include two different partners that aren’t Alaska. We’ve long waited for that functionality to launch, but at the moment it isn’t functioning as we’d expect. Unfortunately, awards with two partners are pricing in an additive way, which we don’t think is intentional. Since Alaska has only launched this with a couple of partners, I am very hopeful that this is a glitch that they’re trying to fix before they launch this capability more broadly.
Million points received! (Stephen’s Million Mile Madness trip journal)
Broadly speaking, SAS has really muddled their way through missing flight credit claims and the process of awarding miles to members who completely the EuroBonus Millionaire challenge. However, it is exciting to report that Stephen has done it! He’s received the full million points from the SAS EuroBonus Millionaire promotion. Congratulations to him as he joins Greg in millionairedom. That just leaves me wishing and hoping for my points. Unfortunately, I’m a bit discouraged as the page within my account where I have been periodically checking on my “Customer Claims” now shows an error and says that I have no current claims. That’s certainly not encouraging! I had previously resigned myself to just sitting back and waiting for the process to play out, but I’m significantly less comfortable now that my claims don’t appear on the record. I’ll probably try submitting again within the next few days since the new final day to submit a claim is 2/28/25.
Would you pay more for fully refundable rewards? What do you do with pets when you travel? These questions and more | Ask Us Anything, Live Ep72 | 2-5-25
Our most recent Ask Us Anything featured a broad array of good questions. To kick things off, we identified our most helpful readers for the SAS EuroBonus Millionaire promotion. Since Stephen and Greg have both earned the million miles, their readers are all set to take home their prizes — Stephen’s chosen helper will receive 100,000 miles and Greg’s is due to receive 400,000 miles and 5 free nights at Hilton properties. My chosen reader is awaiting 100,000 miles if and when SAS credits me for my final airline and I earn the million miles. Catch the replay here or on your favorite podcast platform.
The best programs for lap infant award tickets
When you’re expecting a child, frequent travelers always say that the first six months after your baby is born is the easiest time to travel. I tell expecting parents that (at least based on my experience), they won’t believe that’s true until about Month 13, when they realize that it’s just not going to get easier for a long while than it was during the first six months. But if you’re going to travel with a young child, one of your considerations may be lap infant tickets. It’s important to know that the price for such a ticket can vary wildly — from as cheap as a thousand miles to (quite literally) thousands of dollars (10% of an international first class revenue fare can really sting!). This guide has your best programs for lap infant tickets.
Hyatt Regency Waikiki: Bottom Line Review
Tim travels to Hawaii with some frequency, so I read his review of the Hyatt Regency Waikiki with curiosity to see what he’d think. Overall, I took his review as quite positive — I’d consider this hotel if I were planning a trip to Oahu. That said, I got a chuckle out of his mention about how aggressive the birds were on the lanai. I’ve stayed at the Hyatt Place a couple of times and those same birds must rotate between the two properties competing for breakfast.
American Express Business Green Card Review (2025)
I keep seeing reports that Amex plans to “refresh” something like 35-50 products this year. I can not imagine that they could possibly refresh that many products and fail to do something about this total snoozer. I guess maybe this card makes sense for Amex to be able to offer something to folks who are both new in business and with thin or weak credit history — perhaps this card offers them more latitude in approval with very low cost to them in terms of benefits or rewards? The only reason we have had a couple of these in my household is that Amex at times offers a really compelling referral bonus. For instance, at one point Amex offered an additional 10 points per dollar at restaurants for 3 months on up to $25K in purchases if you referred a new customer or at another time they offered an additional 4 points per dollar on travel with a similar time and spending window and in both cases that stacked on top of the standard referral bonus points. During one or two of those referral windows, that Business Green card offer had been waiving the annual fee for the first year, so referring my wife for one (and vice versa) was a “free” way to earn a valuable referral bonus (since we could just cancel the card after a year if Amex hadn’t actually refreshed it…and they didn’t.
That’s it for this week at Frequent Miler. Keep your eye on this week’s last chance deals to catch the best of them before they’re gone.
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Is there no full length episode this week?