When JetBlue launched the Barclays JetBlue Premier Mastercard last year, we were less than whelmed. With a $499 annual fee and little in the way of meaningful benefits, it was hard to come up with a demographic for whom this card would make sense versus the $99 annual fee JetBlue Plus and JetBlue Business cards. I even heard the JetBlue Premier card described as “a turd of a card” recently.
Well, it seems like JetBlue may themselves have been less than whelmed with uptake on the card because they’ve announced several new and updated benefits that could make the card a far more compelling option for JetBlue loyalists.
We don’t know yet precisely when these card changes will come into play, other than the press release stating that they’ll be added “this spring.”
Here’s a list of what’s changing.
Companion Pass statement credits
Perhaps the most eye-catching benefit announced is the addition of two big spend bonuses that can each earn you a Companion Pass, although it is important to temper your expectations. JetBlue is calling it a Companion Pass which might make you think of Southwest’s Companion Pass that can be used for an unlimited number of trips for as long as you have it, but seems to be more like a Companion Fare issued by Alaska Airlines.
When spending $15,000 in a calendar year, you’ll earn a companion “pass” that’s good for up to $500 of value. Then if you spend a total of $75,000 in a calendar year, you’ll earn a companion “pass” that’s good for up to $1,500 of value.
If you’d be able to max out the values on those passes, the $15K of purchases will be like an incremental 3.33% return on your spend, while the $75K pass will be like an incremental 2% return on your spend if calculating it based on the full $75K of spend, or 2.5% if calculating it based on the additional $60K of spend needed to get it. Either way, those are pretty good returns considering they’re on top of your standard card earnings.
We reached out to our contact with several questions to get more clarification on how these Companion Passes will work, so here are further details that go beyond what the press release shared:
- Pay with Premier card – Flights that include companion pass bookings will have to be paid for with the JetBlue Premier card in order to get the statement credits (this makes sense seeing as it’s a card benefit).
- Base fare only – It’ll only rebate the base fare, not any associated taxes and fees which could potentially be substantial.
- Any companion – Anyone can be your companion and you don’t need to designate who that’ll be beyond booking their ticket with yours. You could therefore redeem a pass earned after $15K spend with one person and the pass earned after $75K spend with a different person.
- Wait time – After meeting the $15K and/or $75K spend requirement, the companion pass will be issued within 6-8 weeks. I guess there’s a chance it might get issued before that but I certainly wouldn’t count on it, so you’ll need to bear that in mind if your intended use of the pass would be for a flight soon after you expect to hit the $15K or $75K spending threshold.
- Validity dates – Companion passes will be valid for one year from the date of issuance, rather than the date you completed the spend. For example, if you complete the spend on September 1, 2026 and the pass is awarded on October 15, 2026, it’ll be valid through October 15, 2027.
- One-time use – The passes can each only be used one time and only one companion pass per flight is allowed (i.e. you can’t redeem a $15K and a $75K pass for two different people on the same flight).
- Not economy only – Companion passes can be redeemed for Mint in addition to economy (Blue) fares.
15% redemption rebate
The JetBlue Premier card currently benefits from a 10% award rebate, same as the JetBlue Plus and Business cards. Given the much higher annual fee, the Premier card’s rebate will increase to 15%, plus it’ll be valid not only for award flights on JetBlue metal, but on partner awards too.
For someone who redeems a ton of TrueBlue points each year, that additional 5% rebate could certainly add up. If you only redeem, say, 100K points per year though, the additional rebate would only amount to 5K points. That’s certainly not nothing, but you’ll need to take into account your own redemption patterns to calculate how worthwhile this increased benefit will be for you.
25 bonus Tiles each year
This new benefit will be particularly appealing for TrueBlue members who want to earn some level of Mosaic status. The 25 Tiles will be awarded at the start of each calendar year and, presumably, for existing JetBlue Premier cardholders this spring as soon as this benefit is added.
Mosaic 1, Mosaic 2, Mosaic 3, and Mosaic 4 require 50, 100, 150, and 250 Tiles in a calendar year respectively. That means that a 25 Tiles boost will get you halfway to Mosaic 1 and quarter of the way to Mosaic 2.
You also earn 1 Tile for every $1,000 you spend on a Premier card. If you’re looking at hitting one or both of the big spend bonuses for the Companion Pass(es), you’ll earn an additional 15 or 75 Tiles respectively. The latter would get you to Mosaic 2, while the former would get you 80% of the way to Mosaic 1 and that’s before taking into account Tiles earned through flights, via the TrueBlue Travel portal, etc.
TrueBlue Travel statement credits
The final addition/change relates to statement credits earned when booking travel through the TrueBlue Travel portal. JetBlue is marketing this in the following way:
Make more of every trip, beyond the flight. Cardmembers can earn up to $300 in annual statement credits when using the card for hotels, car rentals, cruises and more with TrueBlue Travel.
The thing is, the JetBlue Premier card already has this benefit. A more detailed explanation of how it currently works is that you get $50 for each TrueBlue Travel purchase of $250 or more, capped at $300 in statement credits per calendar year.
It turns out that their press release is underselling the updated benefit. We checked with our contact and they advised that although the maximum benefit will remain the same at $300, you no longer have to spend $250 on a transaction to get $50 back. Instead, you’ll be reimbursed on a dollar-for-dollar basis with no minimum spend requirement. That means that if you book a $75 rental car through TrueBlue Travel, you’ll get a $75 statement credit. Book a $125 hotel? You’ll get $125 back.
That makes the $300 credit much easier to use and makes it more akin to things like the Capital One Venture X and Venture X Business $300 travel credit. That in turn helps justify the card’s $499 annual fee much more when taken into account with all the other benefits.
Your thoughts
Will these new and updated benefits make it more likely that you’ll apply for a JetBlue Premier credit card? Let us know in the comments below.
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Still hard to pull the trigger. Both Delta and United reward you with more status miles when you spend on their higher-tier cards — Delta gives you one MQD per $10 spent on the Reserve versus the one MQD for $20 on Platinum.
Even AA gives you more Loyalty Points if you use their business card.
Compare this to Delta’s card lineup: with all four Amex cards, one gets 10K MQDs, and the credits more than cover the annual fees. Plus the companion pass does not require any spending. That means I only need to spend $180K to reach Diamond, which comes with four GUCs and four RUCs.
With American, if you hold the business card and add your spouse as an authorized user, both of you can reach Executive Platinum with Choice benefits — the spouse needs to put $250K on the card, and each of you walks away with six SWUs, twelve total.
JetBlue requires $225K in spend to reach Mosaic, which gets you eight upgrade certificates.
Of the three, JetBlue still comes in last — weakest route network and weakest credit card portfolio.
Hopefully barclays will be a little more flexible with product changes or approvals for this card. I tried calling several times to see if I could change my JetBlue plus card to the premier even before these added perks just because we have a few flights out of jfk and I wanted the lounge access. No dice, all reps said it needs to appear as a promo on my account first. Can’t imagine why, in its current state where the benefits of the plus and premier are basically the same, they didn’t want an extra $300 from me
Thanks for the great details Stephen. We’ll written and useful information. It seems like you’re the only one keeping the site going these days. Did everyone else quit?
Nick’s on vacation this week, so I was covering for him yesterday. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are my normal days to focus on quick deals and there’s been a seemingly endless influx of things to post about, so that’s why this week is kicking off with my byline seeming to be on everything. Everyone else on the team is working just as hard; it just looks like I’m more busy as I’m knocking out short post after short post.
Thanks for these additional details, Stephen!
One additional detail. The 10% points rebate on the Plus/Business card has been restricted to B6 metal, not partner bookings. But the 15% rebate with this card explicitly includes partner bookings.
In my mind, that makes the rebate significantly more valuable. Even more so if one has a large stash of B6 miles, as many of us 25 for 25 challenge finishers do.
Another “improvement is lounge access. When the card was released, there were literally no lounges completed: the benefit was vaporware. Now, one can access the only lounge in JFK’s terminal 5. BOS is due to come online this summer.
Obviously this will matter more to frequent B6 flyers. With the large number of flights connecting through JFK and BOS, it might come in handy often.
One big bummer: currently there is no signup bonus if you have *or have ever had* the lower fee Plus card. (This will make former Plus cardholders wish they had applied for the similar Business card instead.) There is also no upgrade bonus. This is an oversight that Barclays and JetBlue should address.
All that said, if I flew B6 more frequently, I’d get this card and keep it. Before yesterday, it would not have been worth a second look.
Great point regarding the partner bookings. I meant to flag that in the post and forgot about that, so I’ll add that now.
Does this card get you into the lounge in JFK
Yes, that’s a benefit on the card already; you don’t have to wait until the spring for that one.
Thank you for getting clarity on those details! What a terrible job by their comms team to undersell the changes on the credit. That makes a huge difference and makes the math much more reasonable.
I definitely use trueblue travel regularly due to the ability to earn tiles via that spend and often book when there are 2x or 3x promos. The way I see it. The $300 credit is as good as cash plus it earns me 3-9 tiles based on if I’m booking during a promo time.
Additionally, their priority pass is one of the few that include restaurants so that will be a great addition.
This went from hot garbage to something I can justify getting.
I’m not sure I’ll spend 15k to get the companion ticket but if I did this would be a no brainer.
Here my math:
$499 annual fee – $300 trueblue travel credit (same as cash)= $199 effective annual fee.
JetBlue Plus card is $99 annual fee so the difference is $100
So $100 in incremental annual fee for an incremental benefit of 28 tiles (adding 3 tiles based on tiles earned from trueblue travel credit), GE/TSA credit ($0 value IMO), blue house access and priority pass with restaurants. I think this makes sense even without accounting for the potential companion pass.
Not to mention an additional 5% award rebate over the Plus card’s 10% back
I just saw the other post that the 15% rebate includes partner bookings. That is a huge deal because there are some phenomenal deals for condor Business class to Germany that I want to save up for. That is a huge deal actually and makes this even MORE of a deal. Is the subscription for Jetblue also includes partner bookings? Cuz 25% rebate on partner bookings would be insane.
Just read the details on points on repeat. 10% rebate stacks but only for JetBlue operated flight