All Blog Posts 🗺️

🤙🏿 Welcome back to the Better Than Points Newsletter - the premier place for all things Credit Card Points News and Travel

My name’s Luis and I’m the one writing this (hit me up here!)

Boy do they love kicking us while we’re down.

But don’t worry, its not all bad.

We have some friends in high places that hooked us up with some travel insights.

Instead of keeping you waiting lets get going.

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Travel News

Iberia Sweet Spot No More (LINK)

Iberia really woke up this week and chose to mess up a good thing.

For a while, one of the best sweet spots in the game was flying business class from the East Coast to Madrid for just 34,000 Avios off peak.

It fell under that magical 3,001–4,000 mileage band on Iberia’s award chart.

Well, that deal’s officially done.

They just updated their chart, and now those same flights cost 40,500 Avios off peak and 59,000 on peak dates.

Sure, it's still a good deal compared to other programs, but it always stings a little when a favorite sweet spot vanishes.

Also worth noting: Air France’s lowest biz class redemption is 60K miles too, so it looks like most of the big programs are slowly inching toward the same price points.

The silver lining? Virgin Atlantic’s East Coast biz redemptions are now cheaper than Iberia’s, so if you’re trying to fly to Europe in style, it might be time to shift your search.

Now excuse me while I go update all my guides 🫠

No More Free Checked Bags (LINK)

The End of an Era.

If you didn’t hear the news, Southwest just axed their two free checked bags policy.

As of yesterday, passengers will now be charged $35 for the first bag and $45 for the second.

Sure, charging for checked bags isn’t anything new in the airline world, but this was one of the last things that made Southwest stand out.

But no, they’re falling in line with the rest.

What stings more is that executives had previously reassured everyone they wouldn’t touch the baggage policy yet here we are.

And when leadership backtracks like that, it’s hard to trust anything they say going forward about the airline or its loyalty programs.

On the (very) small bright side: elite members, highest fare classes, and Southwest credit card holders will still get one checked bag free.

JetBlue and United Make It Official (LINK)

United and JetBlue Just Became Besties

United and JetBlue just announced a new partnership under the name Blue Sky Alliance.

There’s a lot of info floating around about it, but I’ll keep it to what stood out most to me.

Since 2019, JetBlue hasn’t turned a profit and has been on the hunt for a solid U.S. partner.

First, they tried teaming up with American Airlines, then they went after Spirit which both got blocked by the courts and now, it looks like they’ve landed with United.

The good news? They plan to give customers access to each other’s flights for redemptions, which could mean more award seat options when booking with miles.

This deal also brings United back to JFK, which might be a win for some East Coast travelers.

🤓 Hack

• If you’re not familiar, Bilt drops a Rent Day promo at the start of every month, and this one has a sneaky angle you’ll want to know about.

  Zach over at Monkey Miles broke down a clever trick for this month’s deal. During the promo, you can get up to a 200% bonus when transferring Bilt points to Accor. On its own, it’s good, Accor has a solid footprint in Europe but here’s where it gets interesting.

  This also opens up a path to transfer Bilt points to programs like Virgin Australia and Korean Air. These are programs we usually don’t have solid transfer options for in the U.S.

  Here’s the play:

  1. Transfer Bilt → Accor with the bonus.

  2. Then Accor → Virgin Australia or Korean Air.

  Normally, this would be a terrible value. But with this bonus? It suddenly makes sense especially if you’re sitting on points with nowhere exciting to send them.

🛋️ Luis’ Lounge

Each week, I’ll share something cool I’ve discovered or tackle a question from the community. It’s my little corner to explore ideas, offer fresh perspectives, and hopefully spark your own curiosity.

I saw wherethehechts talking about this on their instagram stories so I wanted to cover it.

The Hilton Moorea Lagoon Resort, which can easily go for over $1,000 a night, just dropped some standard award availability at 95K points per night for November and December, something you don’t see often.

If you have Hilton Silver status or higher (which you can get just by holding one of their credit cards), you get your 5th night free, making a 5-night stay only 380K Hilton points.

This could also be a great chance to tack on a few extra days in Bora Bora, Aitutaki, or Fiji while you're out that way.

For flights:

• LAX to PPT can be booked for 90K points on Air France, or even better, for 60K via Alaska or Qantas, both flying on Air Tahiti Nui.

I went ahead and ran some airline award searches for French Polynesia and Fiji this summer, and I dropped them into the Flight of the Week section.

Check out these crazy award deals!

🔬 Secret Travel Research

This section includes some of the best award flights of the week bookable with points and miles.

• Flights from LAX and DFW to the main island in French Polynesia and Fiji.

👀 My Favorite Finds

This section includes some of the best links videos and articles of the week around the points and travel community

• Two pigeons cause havoc inside plane (LINK)

• These newsletters are changing the game (LINK)

• Top 10 most on time airlines in North America (LINK)

• US Issuing warning for citizens traveling to Italy (LINK)

• United Changing how late passengers can check in for flights (LINK)