The best lounge card you didn’t know about, Turkish surprises but doesn’t delight, and more [Week in Review]

My wife and I spent all day yesterday planning our full route for JetBlue’s 25 for 25 promotion. I literally sat in a chair next to her in the nail salon yesterday as we talked over airports and flights (I can only imagine how ridiculous we must have sounded to anyone listening to our conversation as we talked about flying from A to B to C to A in a day and that sort of thing). Lounge access quickly became part of the conversation: if we made this quick turnaround or tried to string together those flights, would there be a lounge where we could eat in between?

Thankfully, we have a number of great options in our wallets for lounge access. I love that credit card issuers continue to try to out-do each other for snazziest lounge experience and that was on full display for us at the Sapphire Lounge by The Club at LGA this week (literally next door to the Amex Centurion Lounge!). Access to lounges will have a measurable impact on the overall cost of our 25 for 25 trip (given the volume of travel involved), but it more generally often takes away an area of stress for us. We almost always travel with our kids and it isn’t always easy to find the right foods to suit all of the moods in an airport terminal, but a lounge can usually do the trick. Thankfully, the right credit cards mean that we have access more often than not — and this week, Greg wrote about which cards are best for that purpose (including a couple of cards that don’t often make a “best of” list).

Elsewhere on the blog this week, you can read about dumping fees with Delta, why you might upgrade to a Business Platinum late in the cardmember year, the cards that should add to your wallet at the beginning of your card journey, and more.

This week on the Frequent Miler blog…

The best card for Priority Pass lounges, experiences, and restaurants

I’m personally very excited that the Ritz card will seemingly not be undergoing the rumored annual fee change because it has long been my go-to card for lounge access, most recently for accessing the Chase Sapphire Lounge at New York’s LaGuardia airport with Greg just last week. I was bummed when that card’s Priority Pass lost restaurant access, but the 8 visits per year on my Altitude Reserve card’s Priority Pass can be used at restaurants and I have thus far found that sufficient for my needs. However, the UBS cards arguably offer the best Priority Pass access of any cards available — and I’m betting that most readers might not have even known those cards existed before Stephen covered recent changes in them this week. You can read more about a number of cards that can make for excellent access to Priority Pass in this post.

Sapphire Lounge by The Club at LGA

Speaking of lounge access, Greg and I enjoyed a visit to the Sapphire Lounge at New York’s LaGuardia airport the other day (I believe he got in with his Sapphire Reserve card while I used my Ritz-Carlton credit card for access). While not nearly as large at the Boston location, I thought this lounge was nonetheless excellent. The food at breakfast was excellent (the sweet potato hash with vegan chorizo was a highlight, and I’m not vegan). I look forward to another visit and I share Greg’s excitement with card issuers trying to one-up each other with their lounge offerings.

Straight from the JetBlue Dunkin’ plane…sort of | Coffee Break Ep62 | 7-8-25 | Podcast

Wondering why Greg at I were at LaGuardia on Monday? That’s because Greg and I made a last-minute day trip to Orlando this week, flying there and back home in order to hop on the JetBlue Dunkin’ plane and pick up 3 months of temporary JetBlue Mosaic 1 status — and we recorded our coffee break live from what should have been the coffee-and-donuts themed plane. Unfortunately, there was an equipment swap that left us Dunkin’less, but JetBlue nonetheless followed up with an email a day or two later to confirm that everyone who booked the Dunkin’ flights would get the expected status. As an update, Greg has already been upgraded to Mosaic 1. Unfortunately, I haven’t been so lucky: I keep refreshing to check, but I have not yet received the temporary status, though I am certainly hoping I will soon since we decided a couple of days ago to kick off our quest for 25 airports with a few flights this coming week where I am counting on having Mosaic benefits. To answer the final burning question on your mind, yes, I have received the Dunkin’ boosted status, so if and when I ever get around to spending all those $7 monthly Dunkin’ credits, I’ll earn an extra two Dunkin’ points per dollar spent.

(Update: Promo pulled) Turkish Airlines launching its own 1,000,000-mile contest…is it a delight?

While JetBlue pulled the Dunkin’ plane off our route, that was far less painful than Turkish pulling its entire promotion. In what was most certainly not a delight from Turkish, the airline abruptly ended its one million mile promotion without much (or any?) advance notice. Those customers who have flown or booked a qualifying flight by July 8th are said to maintain their eligibility for the million miles, but one has to imagine that this promotion received such wide coverage that there will be some who move forward with booking after that date without knowing that the promotion has been pulled. It would have been one thing if Turkish had announced the initial promotion making it clear that it could end at any time, but announcing details and dates and then walking that back just a couple of weeks into the promotion is poor form.

(Update) Etihad offering up to 5 million miles with The Extraordinary Challenge

I can’t mention the Turkish challenge above without also mentioning Etihad’s mileage millionaire promotion, though I almost fill guilty spilling even this much (digital) ink on this thing. The juice just isn’t worth the squeeze here given the small and limited prizes and lack of any way to know where you stand in terms of getting one of the few prizes, making it foolish to spend time and money reaching for what could be nothing at all. There is just nothing really compelling about this one at all unless you just happen to be going to all of the destinations anyway, and that’s probably not very likely for most readers.

A strategic Business Platinum card upgrade, without a bonus

In other million-mile news, I had big plans for us to use my wife’s Amex Membership Rewards points to pay for our JetBlue 25 for 25 trip using her Business Platinum card’s 35% pay-with-points rebate. That sounded like a great plan until I realized that she no longer had a Business Platinum card. Rather than open a new one, we opted to strategically upgrade a Business Gold card that was already 3/4 of the way through its membership year. That will mean only paying 1/4 of the annual fee for the Business Platinum card while still being able to enjoy benefits like the airline incidentals rebate, Dell credit, wireless credit, Hilton credits, and that 35% pay-with-points rebate (enrollment is required in all of these), which is good for up to a million points back per year. That plan worked out swimmingly well, and in what I think is a new change I am excited to report that the 35% rebates have been posting next calendar day on our airfare purchases this week.

No longer traveling? How to cash out your transferable points | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep314 | 7-11-25

Sometimes, cash is king. Recent conversations that Greg had with a couple of family members brought to top of the mind just a couple of the many situations that may exist where trading your points for cash might be more important than the potential value of a fancy flight or hotel. However, most issues offer very poor value ways to “cash out” your points. On this episode, we talk about the ways to get at least 1c in cash per point from your major transferable points.

AutoCamp Catskills: Bottom Line Review

I’d been curious about the AutoCamp concept ever since their partnership with Hilton was announced last year, so I finally satisfied my curiosity with a bit of a “staycation” at AutoCamp Catskills. We were mostly curious as to whether we would enjoy a longer stay in an Airstream and we found it to be a very comfortable way to get a “camping” sort of experience. That said, the campground itself felt too small and it lacked the open space to feel more like a camping experience. I definitely wouldn’t recommend the Catskills location as it just didn’t have enough going for it to justify the cost, but I’m hopeful to try this again in a better location down the road.

Bilt to ditch Wells Fargo for Cardless while adding two premium cards

Bilt announced this week that the partnership with Wells Fargo is ending and they will be moving to a tiered card system with Cardless. The Wall Street Journal reports that Wells Fargo was losing a lot of money on the Bilt card — from the sounds of the Wall Street Journal report, that’s because they had been eating the transaction fee on rent and essentially still paying Bilt for the points renters earn. I’ll be curious to see how that affects the value proposition with Cardless. More importantly for many people, I’ll be curious to see how things shake out with mortgage. The credit card aside, I have to imagine that processing mortgage payments may well become a far more significant piece of Bilt’s business than anything we’ve seen so far.

Is hotel elite status obsolete? | Ask Us Anything Ep77 | 7-2-25 | Podcast

The first Wednesday of every month at 9pm, the Frequent Miler team goes live on Youtube to answer your questions about miles, points, travel, and everything else related to the hobby. If you missed our July livestream, you can catch the replay on Youtube or your favorite podcast platform.

Dumping fees when booking Delta One with Virgin points

Yes, it is still possible to book Delta One flights via Virgin Atlantic Flying Club without paying $1,000 in taxes and fees. Unfortunately, the tricks to do do are not highly likely to be helpful for you, but if you find yourself in the position to take advantage of this, it could obviously make for a great savings. Over the past 24 hours, I have noticed that Flying Blue Delta availability is showing up via award search tools — in fact, I just last night booked a domestic Delta flight for 5,000 miles per passenger one-way (when cash prices were $200 per person!) thanks to a short Delta award I found available through Flying Blue thanks to Award Tool.

What are the “must have” Chase cards?

Tim’s post about the Chase cards you definitely want in your wallet hits the mark for most folks and it is a particularly important post to consider if you are relatively new to credit card rewards. Anyone who didn’t consider their Chase strategy carefully (including yours truly!) before ending up over 5/24 would tell you to think this one through at the start. In any year prior to 2025, I would have considered a Southwest card a “must have” that I very much wanted but didn’t have, though with so much uncertainty around the future of Southwest and its coveted Companion Pass, maybe I’ll be thankful that I didn’t wait around for it.

That’s it for this week at Frequent Miler. Keep an eye on last chance deals to catch the best of those ending this week.

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