Recap Week ending 6/28/26

Of course we see a pretty slow news week in the points & miles world after I get married and now have more free time…

My time sensitive announcements this week are to 1) use your expiring credit card credits and to 2) sign up for Rakuten to get $50 worth of points as a sign up bonus with my referral. It likely drops to $30 on July 1 based on the term & conditions. More details on what Rakuten is on my blog post here.

My bad news of the week is Air France/KLM Flying Blue has devalued their award program a little more this week and is now charging seat selection fees for business class awards to/from the US. Oh, and the Amex→Etihad transfer ends on June 30 (so transfer by June 29 if you want/plan to use Amex)

Looks like another devaluation with the Flying Blue program. This is the loyalty program for Air France and KLM and has long been one of the best ways to get between North America and Europe. You can book economy awards starting at 15-25k points, premium economy for 40k points, and business for 60k points.

However, prices to book those saver awards keeps going up. The taxes and fees component of booking awards has continued to rise and now costs $340+ to fly from the US to Paris and nearly $600 in tax/fees to fly from Europe back to the US. For perspective, the tax/fees were $250-300 each way around two years ago and were around $250-500 just a year ago. The change/cancel fee also went up to €70 from €50.

Earlier this month, it looks like AF/KLM is now charging you to pick your business class seats on award seats on flights between US-Europe. This is another ~$170 in fees you are paying to AF/KLM each way. You can also pick the bulkhead seat for ~$230 as well. Previously, AF/KLM didn’t charge seat selection fees on business class awards. Then they started charging seat selection fees for flights that don’t touch the US in 2023. (OMAAT for details). Now, they’re charging them for US flights as well.

To put this in perspective, a round-trip saver flight with seat selection will cost you 120k points + almost $1,300 in taxes/fees. Paying cash for an equivalent nonstop flight from the East Coast to Paris can be anywhere from $3,500-$4,000. I hate using cpp calculations but it nets out to around 2 cents per point valuation, not really that outsized in value. But math is important in this game because you want to compare opportunity costs. In this case, if you paid cash, you also earn more points, can earn towards status, could hit a SUB, and potentially save your points for a different redemption that provides more “value”. Chase Points Boost can potentially get you 2 to 2.5 cpp if you have the Sapphire Reserve.

Math = ($3,750 midpoint price - $1,300 tax/fees for the award)/120k points = ~2 cpp).

Terms of booking a business class award ticket also shows that seat selection is now free at check-in. It used to be free at time of booking.

Bilt generally has some unique 1-day only promotion on the first of the month, with the day called Bilt Rent Day. July 1 is focused on Hilton, where you can get a 75-200% transfer bonus from Bilt to Hilton. You can transfer a max of 100k Bilt points at the bonus rate and you have to use $150 in Bilt cash and be a Bilt Platinum member to get the 200% bonus.

This is 99% a bad deal. I love Hilton’s rewards program and I love Bilt, but looking at the math, this is not a good deal. Bilt transfers to Hilton at a 1:1 rate compared to American Express at 1:2. You can also often buy Hilton points at 0.5 cents per point and get Amex NLL offers for Amex business cards or Hilton personal credit cards. So the opportunity cost of using Bilt points (which are somewhat hard to get vs. other points) is pretty high.

Bilt also adds new transfer partner. The newest partner is I Prefer Hotels and at a 1:2 rate (Bilt PR here). I Prefer has around 700 global boutique properties participating in their loyalty program but not all of them participate in being bookable with I Prefer points. You can find hotels bookable with points here (I Prefer). Some quick searches also indicates there isn’t really an easy way to get outsized value from I Prefer points.

I am not too familiar with the program but Frequent Miler also indicates many hotels in the I Prefer ecosystem are bookable with Choice points.

It’s a slow news week and you probably have a lot of expiring credit card credits. So here’s a reminder that if you are shopping online, you should use a shopping portal to earn points or cash back on your purchase. Using shopping portals for points is essential to anyone in the points & miles hobby, it’s free points at the expense of giving up shopping data (which your web browser and social media accounts already take for free).

A tip for Lululemon. There’s a lot of different portals and they all offer different earn rates and may even have different retailers. Your $75 Amex Platinum Lululemon credit expires this month and Lululemon isn’t on Rakuten anymore. But they are on airline shopping portals and Chase’s shopping portal. American Airlines and Alaska Airlines are some interesting ones that have Lululemon.

How do I know all of this? I use two sites to check what my options are and the earn rates. Cashback Monitor is the first one I usually check. Then there is Savewise. Savewise also can show you if there are potential credit card offers to use as a stack but you’ll need to create a free account to see potential credits for stacking. These sites help me figure out if I should use one shopping portal over another. An important exclusion is Capital One Shopping/Capital One Offers. Those 2 sites don’t track them as those rates are often variable based on person.

With the American Express transfer to Etihad going away in 1 day, here is a way to book Etihad First Class on the A380. They call it The Apartment because it is relatively big for a plane seat. In North America, Etihad flies this plane type to and from Toronto (YYZ). It used to fly to NYC (JFK) until June 2025.

These flights cost 200k Etihad miles and $600-650 each way. Importantly, Etihad has a really terrible cancellation policy where you will lose 25% of your miles. You lose all your miles if you cancel within 72 hours.

You could potentially book a round-trip on cash for as low as ~$6,000 if you connect through AUH. I even found some one-way fares to Singapore for ~$4,300 and both segments are on the A380. Food for thought.

How to book
Etihad: 200k miles + $600-650 in taxes and fees each way. $55 change fee. Lose 25% of miles if you cancel. No changes or cancellations allowed within 72 hours of the flight.

Transfer partners: American Express (starting June 30), Bilt, Capital One, Citi, Rove

The Residence: Etihad has a special seat called The Residence that is an even more luxurious first class travel option. It is an upsell at checkout, and the airline will sometimes call you a few days before travel to try to upsell it to you. It is a 3-room suite that has a separate bedroom, living area, and your own shower. I believe you get the private chauffeur service and your own private room in the Abu Dhabi first class lounge. From YYZ, upsell offers appeared to be around $3-5k when I tested a few dates.

Reviews
The Apartment AUH-LHR (One Mile at a Time)
The Residence AUH-CDG (One Mile at a Time)

YYZ-AUH
July: 2, 4-7, 11-31
August: 1, 2, 5-8, 11, 13, 15, 16, 18, 21-23, 25

AUH-YYZ
July: 1-10, 13-18, 21-23, 25, 27-30
August: 1, 3-6, 9, 11, 12, 14-21, 23, 25, 26

Need help finding deals? (affiliate link)
Check out seats.aero, a search engine for all things award travel. View award availability for flights for the next 60 days for free. Subscribing unlocks a full year of availability and helps you get the edge over others. You can also set alerts, get access to an invite-only Discord community, and find hotel award availability.

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💸 Earn extra cashback or Amex or Bilt points when you shop online at your favorite stores using the Rakuten shopping portal. It’s free to join, and new members get $50 (or 5k points) after spending $50. To learn more about Rakuten, check out my post here

✈️ Join Rove Miles, a new travel loyalty program where you earn points shopping online or by booking travel through their portal. Free to join and using my affiliate gets you 1.5k points to start (vs. public offer of 500 points). Rove has some unique transfer partners like Lufthansa, JAL, SAS, and more. Details on my blog post here

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About Find Flights for Me.

I started the idea of Find Flights for Me back in 2023 to help educate and inspire people to use their credit card points more effectively, with a focus on using points to fly business and first class flights.

When I’m not working on Wall Street or searching for flight deals, you can find me going to all the World Cup games in Philadelphia, enjoying local restaurants, helping my parents book their next trip, traveling internationally, or visiting friends/family in NYC, Philadelphia, or DC.