Max Miles Points

You're one of the lucky few that get to see the first 4 Points Friday Newsletter ever. Hope you find this newsletter helpful and if you have any feedback just hit the reply button and let me know!

This month's Flying Blue Promo rewards are coming to an end but the new ones are going to be announced on May 1st. I had a follower this month book from San Francisco to Florence for 32k + ~$200 in taxes and fees each way for PEAK summertime in business class! I was doing a flight search for a client yesterday and still saw a few business class flights from IAH to London for under 40k + ~$200 in taxes and fees. [YouTube Tutorial]

Stack this with the Flying Blue Promo rewards to score a really good deal. Ends 5/15

This bonus is useful to get to the Maldives in Qatar Qsuites. I've noticed decent availability for March 2023 for Q-suites out of multiple U.S. cities [YouTube Tutorial] Ends 5/15

It's not the 100,000-point bonus we saw last fall/winter but 80,000 is still higher than the usual 60,000 bonus. If it's been 4+ years since you got the Sapphire bonus you can run this strategy to get the Sapphire bonus a second time. [Referral Link]

You can score this 90k bonus through personal referral links. This is an all-time high for the Amex Gold. If player 2 has a referral link use their link if you need a personal referral link here is mine (Referral Link) Make sure you see 90k as the bonus before applying!

Last week I signed up and paid my taxes with the Amex Blue Business Plus. This completes the Amex 3 card combo. (I hate the word ‘trifecta’ for some reason). 

My wife referred me Amex Blue Business Plus so she earned 30k and I earned 15k on the signup bonus. Not a ton of points for a sign-up bonus but not bad for a card that has $0 annual fee and earns 2x on everything. More on Amex referrals further down in this newsletter in the maximize section.

Each flight has a certain amount of seats that are considered ‘saver awards'. These are the cheapest seats you can book with miles/points. Once those ‘saver awards’ are gone there might be other seats bookable with miles/points but those seats will cost more miles/points. 

Some airlines release their ‘saver awards’ seats 9+ months out, some airlines release them a few weeks before departure, and some release them based on flight load or demand for the flight. It can be unpredictable sometimes.

 

My recommendation is to book as far out in advance as you can, if you can't find the availability, check back often or set seat availability alerts using a tool like Expert Flyer.

This isn't a super awesome redemption but it's still pretty decent value. My wife needed a flight back from Amsterdam. Redeemed a total of 19,600 Flying Blue miles and about $136 in taxes and fees for economy one way. Still a solid 6.76 Cent Per Point.

On Instagram yesterday I posted this Reel about Amex referrals. The cool thing about Amex referrals is that you can refer people to cards that you don't have. For example, if you have the Amex Gold, you can refer someone to the Amex Platinum or an Amex Hilton card if you wanted to. Chase, on the other hand, you have to have the card to refer someone to a card. 

Check out the quick video below on how to refer a friend to an Amex card that you don't have. [YouTube link]