You can now earn JetBlue miles flying Iceland Air

One of the weakest things about JetBlue is their mileage program – they have very few options for earning and redeeming miles beyond their own flights. 

 

You can earn TrueBlue points when you fly on:

• Emirates
• Hawaiian
• JetsuiteX and Silver Airways
• Singapore
• South African
• and now Iceland Air!

To celebrate Iceland Air being added to the family, they're running a special double-miles promo through July 7th. If I were flying soon, I'd probably take the 2x credit to JetBlue, but once the promo is over and it's back down to 1x, I'd probably choose to credit any Iceland Air flying to my Alaska account. They have lots of great redemption partners, whereas JetBlue doesn't.

 

 

When you want to redeem your TrueBlue points, you still only have two options: JetBlue and Hawaiian. When you redeem for JetBlue flights you get a fixed value of around 1.4¢, which works out to a 4% rebate on the purchase price of your flight. (If you have their credit card, attain Mosaic status, and hit all of their bonuses, you can bring that up to 13%).

Redeeming for Hawaiian airlines flights can only be done over the phone, and yields you around 1¢ per TrueBlue point. More information about that over at TPG.

 

I hope this is part of a series of enhancements to JetBlue's loyalty program. JetBlue (and the combined Alaska/Virgin) is on the cusp of becoming a real nationwide carrier and stepping up the value of their TrueBlue program is an essential part of that.