Transfer bonuses and business class seats

Good morning, beautiful people.

How’s your morning so far? Did you sleep well? 😌

I hope you’re fully rested and ready to indulge in the best travel happenings from this past week. Let’s get to it!

✅ Have you seen our new Miles and Points Encyclopedia? You’ll be able to find definitions and acronyms for all the travel lingo we use!

✅ [Targeted] Earn 15,000 bonus Southwest points before November 20th, 2024.

✅ Catch up on our latest YouTube video about how to book a $5,000 cruise with points.

✅ [Targeted] Earn $150 back for staying at Hyatt properties in Hawaii.

✅ Hyatt and American Airlines have made some interesting changes to their partnership.

🏆 Favorite pick of the week: Transfer bonuses galore

There are few things in the travel world that make me happier than seeing a new transfer bonus come through.

And this week, we got a few new ones! I’ll highlight them here so you’re in the know and can hopefully take advantage 😎

40% transfer bonus from UR Points to Virgin Atlantic

40%?!?! Dang.

That’s right—you can transfer UR Points over to Virgin Atlantic with a 40% bonus until November 30th.

This is exciting, but there’s one thing to remember in this scenario.

Virgin will be moving to a dynamic pricing model on October 30th, so the cost of an award flight in miles that you see today may not be the same in a few weeks 😬

For that reason, I’d be cautious about speculatively transferring points if you don’t have any specific redemption in mind.

But if you know that you fly Virgin regularly and will be able to put some points to use in the future (or you for sure have a redemption ready to go), a 40% bonus is hard to pass up.

20% transfer bonus from MR Points to KLM and Air France’s Flying Blue

20% may not sound like the best bonus right off the bat, but remember that Flying Blue features its regular Promo Rewards where you can book flights to and from the U.S. and Europe for as few as 15,000 points one way 🙌

With this 20% bonus, you’re now looking at only 12,500 MR Points for a flight… or just 25,000 points for a round-trip itinerary.

Plus, Flying Blue miles can be used to book domestic Delta flights, if that’s more your style (thank youuuu, SkyTeam alliance).

Being able to stack a bonus and promo is just so, so sweet, and this transfer bonus is good through November 10th.

20-40% transfer bonus from ThankYou Points to Etihad

Buyer beware. This has the potential to be super valuable, but there are a few things to know…

This particular bonus is offered by the airline (Etihad) rather than the bank, so you won’t see this in your ThankYou Points account ahead of time.

The structure for different bonuses is as follows:

• Transfer 1,000-9,999 points, get a 20% bonus

• Transfer 10,000-49,999 points, get a 30% bonus

• Transfer 50,000 or more points, get a 40% bonus

So the more points you transfer, the bigger the bonus you’ll get.

And if Etihad seems like an obscure airline to you that has routes to parts of the world you’re not interested in, you can actually use their program to book flights on both American Airlines and JetBlue (if you want examples of this, read more here).

However… Etihad has a TRASH cancellation policy.

Depending on when you cancel, you may have to forfeit all of the points you used to make your booking, which is NUTS 🤬

So, this has the potential for greatness, but beware of what could happen if you need to cancel.

🏃🏻‍♀️ Runner-Up

🥇WIDE OPEN award availability to Germany in Lufthansa business class

I have flown Lufthansa’s long-haul business class before, and I’m excited to say that I just booked another flight for early next year!

Any opportunity to fly business class for 8+ hours is a good opportunity, and I’m still seeing a ton of availability to fly from various U.S. cities over to Frankfurt in business class for just 60,000 or 70,000 points when booked via Aeroplan👇

I’m still finding some November days available, and the price only goes up from there through next spring.

And even if you don’t actually want to visit Germany, it’s one of the most centrally-located and best-connected countries in Europe. So you shouldn’t have any problem finding a cheap flight to whatever your final destination would be (which is my plan).

And remember, most banks transfer to Aeroplan at a 1:1 ratio, so no matter what card you have, chances are you can send those points over to your Aeroplan account 😎

📣 Quick Callouts

• 🙌 Great: Bilt adds TWO new transfer partners

• 😏 Exciting: View Singapore Airlines’ latest Spontaneous Escapes

• 😊 Good to know: Earn bonus cash back by using merchant shopping offers

• 🤓 Travel trivia: Bette Nash holds the Guinness World Record for the longest-serving flight attendant. How many years did she serve??

That’s all I have for you this time around. Enjoy the rest of your day, and I’ll see you next weekend.

Love you, bye.

52°22'35.4"N 52°15'17.4"W