"Free" Amex flight question

[Soon2B4]

I tried finding the thread, but to those with the Amex card that gives travel points how do you see how many points a flight is? I received a credit card offer for the bonus 50,000 points and no fee for the first year, but want to see how much an average flight is from CLE to MCO before I sign up. If it's not going to come close to covering my flights, then I don't want it.

Also, I am not looking for credit/financial advice so please don't jump in with it. I am well aware of credit scores and the effects new credit cards have on them.

 

[Uniquely Young]

60,000 points per person round trip. The flights are running $200. Not worth the points IMO.

 

[pixistix]

We thought they'd cover most of our flights because he had so many points but it came out to a penny a point. Still helped lower the price but didn't motivate me to get the card.

 

[britfish]

A roundtrip flight on Southwest is 24,000 points. Although I think they are not going to partner with Amex starting in August

 

[CC12005]

If you get the Southwest Chase Card directly instead of the AMEX card it's only 19,200 points for a free roundtrip flight.

 

[Soon2B4]

I don't know if it makes a difference, but SW isn't that cheap in Cleveland. We are a Continental airport and they almost always have the best rates. Do different airports have different "rates" on their FF programs?

 

[Ericandjenng]

I don't know if it makes a difference, but SW isn't that cheap in Cleveland. We are a Continental airport and they almost always have the best rates. Do different airports have different "rates" on their FF programs?

Yes, just about every FF program has their own point value/rates. Also, it depends on which AMEX card and which FF, you are talking about. DH has a Delta AMEX and we got his flight from TYS (Knoxville, TN--which tends to be $$$) to SEA (Seattle, WA) for less than 40,000 miles--we paid over $400 for each of the other two tickets--so based on the .01 per mile/point, it was a good deal....with the Delta AMEX, they award miles not points.

 

[dvcgirl]

60,000 points would be for the highest fare seats. You can get domestic flights on Continental for 25,000 flights and for 50,000 to Europe.....RT, per person, coach class. There aren't a ton of seats available, but I did a quick search from CLE to MCO and found 25K RT seats May 1st, returning May 8th.

Here's the problem using these points domestically though....there's now a $75 service fee, plus another $7.50 on tax....so $82.50. We are flying from Newark to MCO next week and paid $224 RT per person with all the junk fees included.

This is why we only use our AMEX points for flights to Europe...at that point it becomes more of a deal as the flights can get upwards of a $1,000.

 

[Soon2B4]

It is the premier rewards gold card. Maybe I will look into the Continental card which I believe is Chase. They send us offers since we have ff points with Continental.

Thanks for the tip about the fees. I didn't think the fees would be soooo high! We have gotten flights for $200 pp.

 

[dvcgirl]

It is the premier rewards gold card. Maybe I will look into the Continental card which I believe is Chase. They send us offers since we have ff points with Continental.

Thanks for the tip about the fees. I didn't think the fees would be soooo high! We have gotten flights for $200 pp.

Yes, if you can get flights for $200 PP with junk fees, then you'd never want to waste 25K AMEX points on flights.

Going to Europe though, our fights would have been $2,400 for the time we were going and so we used 100K points and paid about $150 in fees. That's worth it for us.

 

[PinkRhombus]

60,000 points per person round trip. The flights are running $200. Not worth the points IMO.

BUT!!!!!!! Since you have the delta amex, you can choose to "pay with points" for the flight. Every 10,000 miles you use pays for $100 of the flight. So you could get the flight for about 20,000 miles and the flight selection is MUCH MUCH MUCH better.

That's what we did. The flights were around $200. Using 50K miles, we got two free tickets, plus $100 off another and THEN they gave us a $50 credit. We paid under $300 total for the four of us.

If you're elite on Delta, you get, I think, two checked bags free. We're going to take our biggies and some carryons for the kids.

 

[Soon2B4]

I read the tiny fine print on the back and it says they charge $.0006 per point to convert it to FF points.I am assuming you are still respomsible for the rest of the fees like 911 and so on. If my math is correct, the fee to change 50,000 points over would be $30 plus the other fees. Then with our other FF miles we could probably get another ticket for free plus fees.

I am still debating on this and am really going to have to run all the numbers. With all of our Disney visa points are hotel is almost going to be free.Just trying to see how cheap I can do this Disney trip! Maybe we can do 2 next year! Thank you for all of your help!

 

[CC12005]

Soon2B4. With the Southwest(SWA) frequent flier program it does not work on the price of the ticket. So cost does not matter. SWA offers a flat rate to purchase tickets called Rapid Rewards. You earn one for every one way trip you take. Two for a round trip, etc. Sometimes they have double rewards.
For the SWA Visa they give one Rapid Reward Credit for every $1200 in spending. It takes $19,200 to earn a ticket through SWA Visa. 16 reward points is good for one free ticket earned through any source (such as your AMEX). Points accrured are good for two years from date of issue or until they give you a free ticket at 16 points. Once ticket is issued you have one year to use or you may reactivate an expires ticket up to two years later for $50. This gives a total of 3 years to use. Earn one ticket just for meeting sign up bonus requirements. Two checked bags for free. Hope this makes sense. Whichever card you chose, have fun in your travels.

 

[Trixiezzz]

I have the AMEX "Blue Sky" rewards card and I really like it.

It works differently. You don't save up and redeem airline points. You earn 'dollars' that you can use to reimburse your account for ANY travel expense on ANY airline/hotel/theme park at ANY price. So if you get a really good Ding on Southwest, you can apply your rewards to that, too!

You earn 1 point for each $1.00 you spend and can cash out in $100 increments. And it only takes 7,500 pts to earn a $100 reimbursement, which makes it better than my Chase Disney Visa. (So you get $100 back for every $7,500 you charge over time). And the points NEVER expire, unlike Disney. Also, there's no annual fee. (I sound like a credit card commercial )


Amex Blue Sky = Spend $75 earn $1.00
Disney Visa = Spend $100 earn $1.00

Redeeming is very easy, because you just charge whatever you want to buy in TRAVEL expenses (airlines, hotel, cruise, attraction tickets) at whatever price you want and when you get home and your AMEX statement comes, you just tell them what travel charge you want $100 applied to. And they take $100 off your bill. That's it!

The only thing is, the charge HAS to come through to AMEX in the Category of "Travel". If your hotel messes up and enters it in another category, like "Food", you can't apply it. But I've never had that happen and we've redeemed about 5 times already. You have I think 60 days (2 bills) after you receive the bill to use rewards points to pay for it.

I really like this so much and now only use my Disney Visa in stores that don't accept AMEX.

 

[Uniquely Young]

DVC explained better than I did. I just listed the highest coach point award because awards are not that easy to find sometimes. We use our miles and SWU for EU flights only also. I never even consider Southwest! Sorry.

Regarding pay with points, if you do it from your DL account (which is where AMX redirects me to) only elites can pay that way to get $100 increments off of their total. That's bad for me because I lost Plat status on DL this year and am now plat on CO. A whole new set of rules to learn. Or am I doing something wrong to burn DL miles?

 

[asoko]

I used the Amex/Delta pay with miles too. for 10,000 miles I got $100 off each ticket. So for 40,000 miles and $135 I'm getting 4 of us from Detroit to Orlando.