I missed out on flights for 3,375 points.

Happy Friday gents & ladies.

Got a DM this week: “Heard you have a spicy newsletter.”

Why thank you.

Here to keep it spicy.

As spicy as travel can be I guess?

You’re going to laugh at me this week.

I might be dumb.

And this is coming from a guy who got kicked out of homeschool.

I transferred all of my Bilt points to American Airlines this week.

Why does that matter?

Some background:

• Bilt is the only bank that transfers to American.

  • American has an amazing rewards program.

• Bilt announced they were ending the partnership on June 24th.

  • Silver lining: They were adding Alaska Airlines.

So I transferred everything over to American - who’s having a sale right now - meaning I could fly my family anywhere in the U.S. (10k round trip flights and I have 30k).

See my post about that!

So why am I dumb?

Because the DAY I did transferred everything to AA, Bilt announced a 25-100% transfer bonus to Alaska Airlines.

Alaska is a Oneworld partner that allows you to book American flights for as low as 4,500 points.

My Bilt status would have given me a 25% transfer bonus.

So I could have booked some American flights for 3,375 miles one way.

Crazy crazy crazy.

However, Alaska does have a mileage-based award chart.

Short-haul flights are crazy cheap, but the longer one’s get more expensive.

AAdvantage, in contrast, was still charging only 5k miles for me to fly all the way out to California!

My points strategy is always to stretch my points as far as possible.

So, plot twist here. I still think I made the right decision.

While it’s cool to fly to Charlotte for 3,375 Alaska miles, it’s way cooler to fly to Santa Barbara, CA for 5k American miles.

Having American miles gives me some incredible options for getting my family around the U.S.

But dang, booking a flight for 3k miles would have been a score.

The big lesson here for you:

The cheapest way to book a flight with an airline IS NOT ALWAYS THAT AIRLINE’S PROGRAM. Ex: what I just showed you.

Ex: You can often book a United flight with Avianca miles for less than United charges (in miles).

So my final verdict: I missed out on a cool opportunity, but I ultimately made the right decision.

I’m thrilled to have 30k AAdvantage points.