Chase Ritz-Carlton Visa airline fee credits: What works?

The Chase Ritz-Carlton Rewards Visa Infinite card is no longer available to new applicants, but it is available to those with Chase Marriott consumer cards via a product change.  The Ritz card carries a hefty $450 annual fee, but the Ritz card offers both an annual free night certificate worth up to 85,000 points per night and it also offers $300 per year in airline fee reimbursements. These reimbursements can help to mitigate a large chunk of that $450 annual fee if you can put them to good use.

Chase Ritz-Carlton Visa Infinite card airline fee credits are offered by calendar year. Ritz cardholders can get up to $300 in fee credits for charges made from January 1 to December 31st of the same year.

Note that the date of the charge determines which year’s credit you’ll use. In other words, a charge made on December 31, 2024 will count toward the 2024 airline fee allotment even if you call in early January 2025 to request reimbursement.

How to request reimbursement for airline incidental fees with your Chase Ritz-Carlton Visa Infinite card and why this is the key difference

Unlike other premium cards that offer automatic travel reimbursements, the Ritz card requires the cardholder to manually request reimbursement for qualifying charges. You can do this by calling the number on the back of your card or by sending a secure message through your online Chase account.

As a result, what works or doesn’t work to trigger the airline incidental reimbursements is highly subjective in that it is entirely up to the agent fielding your reimbursement request. We’re updating this post with data points about what has worked for various readers, but the fact is that any type of travel-related charges could work depending upon the agent — and at the same time, any successful data point of something outside of the “official” uses of the credit only indicates that at least one agent was willing to reimburse the charge (another agent may not).

Agents do seem to have wide latitude in terms of deciding which charges qualify. While we have of course had readers have success with many types of airline charges beyond the “official” list of uses, we’ve also had occasional data points of success with charges that clearly shouldn’t have been reimbursed. For instance, we once had a reader report getting reimbursed for a Marriott hotel charge and another for an Airbnb charge. Those obviously weren’t airline charges and I imagine that they wouldn’t be reimbursed by 99% of agents, but the point here is that it seems to be up to the agent to determine whether the charge qualifies and so what works or doesn’t is likely to vary considerably based on the agent who fields your request. It therefore also means that if you call to request reimbursement and are turned down for a particular charge, it is probably worth trying again via secure message or vice versa since the next agent may see the situation differently.

All of the above makes the data points shared in this post different than those you’ll find in our post about Amex airline fee reimbursements. Whereas a positive data point in the Amex post means that the same type of charge is more or less sure to work for you on your Amex card, a positive data point in this post just means that the corresponding type of charge might work for you. Again, whether a charge qualifies or not is ultimately up to the agent you reach.

Personally, I find the potential flexibility to be a major strength of this card’s fee reimbursements, though some will no doubt find it frustrating to not “know” for sure which charge will trigger the credits beyond the list of officially-qualifying uses. I accept that if I put a charge on the card that isn’t listed in the “official” uses, it may not be reimbursed. For instance, we had a positive data point for a BLADE helicopter transfer and another for airport parking. While I might take a swing at putting those types of charges on my Ritz card and trying for a reimbursement, I accept that they may not be reimbursed and only use my Ritz card for those types of charges when I feel like it is “worth a shot”.

What purchases officially count towards Ritz airline fee credits?

Eligible incidental fees include:

• Airline lounge day pass
• Yearly lounge membership of your choice
• Airline seat upgrades
• Airline baggage fees
• In-flight internet/entertainment
• In-flight meals and drinks
• Global Entry fees

And, officially, the following purchases are not deemed to be incidental fees:

• Airline tickets
• Mileage points purchases
• Mileage points transfer fees
• Gift cards
• Duty free purchases
• Award tickets

What purchases count “unofficially” towards Ritz airline fee credits?

Sometimes purchases of gift cards, award fees, or even low-cost airfare are reimbursed even though they shouldn’t be.

As noted above, the key that makes the incidental credits of the Chase Ritz-Carlton card different from those of other premium cards is that the fee reimbursement is not automatic on the Ritz card. You will need to either call to speak with an agent or send a secure message in order to request reimbursement. This means you will be relying on a human to manually credit the reimbursement (and therefore relying on that human’s interpretation of what works and scrutiny (or lack thereof) regarding your charge).

If you are looking to get reimbursed for gift cards, you may want to consider denominations that line up with fees that would ordinarily qualify for the credit. Gift cards purchased in a denomination that correlates with the associated fee for a checked or overweight bag, for instance, might be more likely to be reimbursed. On the other hand, if the charge shows up on your statement as “AIRLINE ABC – GIFT CARDS”, an agent may deny reimbursement even if you had purchased it in a denomination that corresponds to a fee. Secure message may be an easier method to request a credit than over the phone, though some report the opposite is true.

The things that work or don’t work vary by airline and by agent and may change over time and certainly vary by agent. Something that worked yesterday won’t definitively work today — but since the best way to predict future behavior is by looking at past behavior, we will collect datapoints here to try to determine the trends.

Remember that a successful data point is more powerful than a negative datapoint in that a successful data point shows something is possible. Recognize that in some cases, you may need to HUCA (Hang up, Call again) or send a message again in order to be successful.

If you have recently attempted to receive reimbursement via your Ritz travel credit, please comment to add your data points including:

1. Type of charge
2. Date of charge
3. Requested via phone or secure message
4. Success or failure

The following table shows the unofficial stuff that works or doesn’t work with each airline that we have collected so far (note that I am including some things that officially count as well, like a seat upgrade in economy class on Lufthsana as readers sometimes ask about charges from foreign carriers and for small upgrades like extra legroom, etc):

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