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We are back once again for…..another one. Rebooked a saucy trip this week and can’t wait to tell you about it in my hacks section. Enough jabbering let’s get to the news!

Here are 3 headlines, 2 hacks, and 1 question answered this week…

3 Headlines

One.

United MileagePlus members are now able to pool miles with family and friends (Link)

Now what’s better than sitting in a pool with all your homies at home? Chilling in a pool with all the miles you pooled together to sit in a pool on vacation. Too much pool? Okay I’ll tone in back. The main takeaway is that it’s easier now to pool miles together for trips rather than having to transfer them. No pool hopping unfortunately. Hopefully other airlines jump on this bandwagon so Chan an I can stop having to transfer miles from each other accounts.

Two.

Headline Hilton Partners with AutoCamp (Link)

Hide your kids, hide your wives, hide your hotel groups too because Hilton’s out here partnering with everybody. First they snatched Small Luxury Hotels from Hyatt and now this; if you don’t know, AutoCamp is the Airbnb for glamping. A great option for those looking to go to National Parks and wanting to stay close by. It’s nice to see Hilton spreading out and continuing its domination over every avenue.

Three. 

Bilt drops American Airlines for Alaska (Link, Link)

Bilt is out here playing musical chairs with its partners. Seemingly out of the blue they announce they were ending things with AA in June. Without giving us much time to process getting blindsided they announced Alaska Airlines as a new partner. While both airlines have limited transfer partners, they are both part of the OneWorld alliance so I’m still not quite sure if this was an upgrade.

Bonus

Qatar’s in the kitchen cooking up a new first class (Link)

They’re ordering new planes. New CEO wants new first class experience to be 🔥

2 Hacks

One.

If you’re a parent redeeming travel with points to fly internationally, make sure to pay attention to who you redeem your points with. While lap infants fly free domestically, it’s not the same case internationally. Air Canada Aeroplan only charges $20 to add a lap infant while Virgin charges 2.5k - 5k depending on ticket type. United Caps charge at $250 but others like Japan Airlines charge you 10% of the full ticket price. If you redeemed a business of first class seat this could definitely add up.

Two.

So here’s the one you’ve been waiting for. If you booked a ticket with points or cash you’re usually able to upgrade with points. I had to change an upcoming flight and looked into first class seats. They were 80K points but because I first transferred over my economy ticket to that flight first then upgrade, it was only 50K. For this specific airline they can sometimes be 25K but this specific one was not. I’ll let you know in a future newsletter why. If you’re dying to know just reply to this email and I’ll tell you why.

1 Question From You

Every week I answer one question from the community. Reply to this email with yours because you’re probably not the only one that has it.

Question

Nav just applied for a Chase Sapphire Preferred card. After getting it in the mail he wanted to know if he could product change it to the Chase Sapphire Reserve without getting into trouble.

Due to the Card Act of 2009 you have to hold the card for 1 year. After that you’re able to upgrade it. It’s best practice to keep a card open for at least a year until the annual fee charge hits. Otherwise the card issuer might block you since they might think you’re collecting card bonuses and then closing the cards.

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Appreciate you,

Luis 🤙🏿

More Better Than Points

• I stayed at a hotel where influencers and the rich stay and wrote a review about it. (LINK)

• How I used my credit card credits to get a free flight. (LINK)