With US Bank’s FlexPerks program, flight awards usually offer the best value (see: FlexPerks award charts for flights, hotels, car rentals, and annual fees). And, it has been possible to maximize value from flight awards by selective use of multi-city searches and first class flights (see: Maximizing value from the U.S. Bank FlexPerks Travel Rewards Visa Card). Recently, though, the online FlexPerks flight search interface has changed. Now, multi-city and first class flights cannot be booked online.
New FlexPerks Flight Search interface
The new search interface has no option for multi city reservations. They now require calling (but fortunately they do waive the $25 phone fee for this):
And, the class of service selector allows economy or business class, but not first class:
Domestic first class flights are sometimes classified by the airline as business class. In these cases, those flights will appear in your search results. When they are classified as first class, though, you’ll have to call to book those flights.
These changes aren’t a huge blow since it is still possible to book first class and multi-city over the phone (make sure they don’t charge you for the privilege though!). But, it clearly makes FlexPerks flight awards much less user friendly than in the past.
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[…] travel through the same interface used for the FlexPerks card. And that’s not good. See: FlexPerks nerfs online first class and multi-city flight awards). That said, it should be possible to call to redeem points for the flight you want. Notably, […]
Just FYI, I’m not sure if this is temporary or permanent, but it looks like you can use either travel portal.
The orbitz one: https://travelrewards.usbank.com/TravelSearch.aspx
and the new third party travel agent one: https://www.qrttravel.com/search.jsp#/air
(must be logged in to work)
Awesome find! Thanks!
Not sure if this always happens, but I get an error on OJ bookings (e.g., EWR-DCA; IAD-DEN)
[ServletException in:/jsp/travelocity/flights/Outbound.jsp] 1′
Hi Greg, I just logged into the Flexperks travel portal and it looks like the old interface is back. Not sure if it is here to stay or if this is some sort of glitch.
Interesting. I currently see the new interface, so I guess it was only temporary.
What a lousy and stupid program flexperks is. A complete waste of time and hard pull.
its not that bad, u have to accept it for what it is- 4x on ms in best case circumstances
So where should one search to find first class flights that correspond to the flexperks search engine pricing?
Any flight search engine should work. I use Google Flights, for example. The number of FlexPoints needed are based on where the ticket price falls within their different fare buckets. Click the link near the top of this post to see the FlexPerks award chart