point fu

A few JetBlue news nuggets: JetBlue is going to start serving 2019's most important beverage: hard seltzer They're adding Showtime, Spotify, and a bunch of other " bingeable " media onboard  They're completely leaving Mexico City They're forming a partnership with Norwegian Their new A320s started arriving , and you can now pair your phone with the seatback TV For real, if White Claw hard selter ran for president right now, it would win. JetBlue is actually going to serve one of their competitors, but it's good to see them keeping up with food and bev trends.  The Mexico City news is a bit disappointing but not surprising, since our flight there in February was practically empty. But the Norwegian thing is puzzling. Are they looking to eventually buy Norwegian if/when they go bankrupt like so many of the other transatlantic Low Cost Carriers? I've been super excited about JetBlue's entry into the transatlantic market, but this mig...

UPDATE: they've officially announced the A321-LR with London as the destination starting in 2021 ! As I expected, details are scant. Seth Miller has a live Twitter feed with lots of good images and quotes. All the travel blogosphere has been waiting for JetBlue's "big announcement" today. While there was no official word from JetBlue about the topic of the announcement, they cheekily included a London Underground seat fabric pattern in the background to drive heaps of speculation that it's about new transatlantic service. They've been teasing this for years , and this really does seem like the "put up or shut up" moment for it. While the announcement won't happen for a few more hours , their cakemaker's Instagram post seems to indicate London and Paris are the first destinations. While a lot of folks have dreamed of having a new and exciting ( and hopefully more valuable ) way to redeem their fixed-value TrueBlue points, JetBlue...

I've been hopeful yet extremely suspicious about JetBlue's long-rumored expansion to Europe, and it appears I'm not the only one. Lucky and the Wandering Aramean are both calling out JetBlue for their continuing indecision about converting their A321neo orders to the long-range LR version of the aircraft. JetBlue has been teasing this decision since mid-2016 and even if they decided tomorrow to go with the LRs, it still means that any potential European flights wouldn't happen until at least 2021 or later. On a personal note, we'd been sorta stockpiling the JetBlue points hoping that there'd be some great introductory offers on transatlantic service, but we gave up on them early in 2018 and spent 100,000-ish of our TrueBlue family pool balance. JetBlue has been slowly, quietly devaluing their points and it doesn't make sense to hold them for something that might never come . Instead of enabling transatlantic service, the LRs could also potentially e...

JetBlue posted on their blog today that they're going to continue the race to the bottom and add Basic Economy. ( I predicted this would happen ). While this makes me sad, we've seen mountains of data that show most passengers won't pay extra for a nicer experience in the cabin. They haven't figured out all of the details yet, but it sounds like their messaging is going to be about letting people have JetBlue's superior experience for the same price as flying Spirit or Frontier. While I'm sure it'll be cheaper than JetBlue's regular fares, I've found that Basic Economy on the legacy carriers is still priced higher than flying an Ultra Low Cost Carrier. The unfortunate reality is that their existing customers will be getting a taste of that ULCC spirit when JetBlue finishes retrofitting all of their old A320 planes . Their industry-leading 34" seat pitch in Economy is dropping to 32", and they're shrinking the lavatories to accommo...

This week,  JetBlue announced service to Mexico City from JFK and Boston's Logan airport. Given how many Caribbean and Latin American destinations they currently serve, I'm surprised it took them so long to offer this route (they already fly to Mexico City from two of their Florida hubs). The flights are timed really well: JFK 9:58am > MEX 2:25pm MEX 3:55pm > JFK 10:52pm BOS 8:31am > MEX 1:15pm MEX 2:20pm > BOS 8:42pm UPDATE (Sept 2018) : We're booked on this flight in early 2019. Looking forward to doing a trip report for it! They'll be flying these routes with A320s, so sadly that means there's no Mint seats onboard. No word yet on whether the planes will feature their refreshed A320 cabin – given the timing it seems possible the planes might get a plane with the " Phase 1 " update.  Bring your Priority Pass card with you so you can use the lounge in Mexico City Both flights begin service 25 October 2018. JetBlue now ...

JetBlue has a fixed-value rewards program called TrueBlue, where points are earned based on the cost of the flight and redeemed at a fairly fixed rate based on the current price for the flight. While these types of programs don't let you take amazing 10-cents-per-point aspirational reward flights like our ANA First flight, they do mean that you can easily redeem your points for any seat on any flight without hours of planning and searching for the ever-elusive award seat. Most of the bloggers value JetBlue points at 1.3¢ each . In my own observations, there's been a little bit of variability over the years: I've seen the occasional redemption at 1.4¢ or even as high as 1.7¢. Well, yesterday I was pricing out a one way Mint flight from SFO to JFK and noticed that my Mint flight has reached an all-new low: 1.0¢ .  While it's easy to think, "it's only 7/10th of a cent", that actually represents a 40% devaluation from the rates we were routine...

Everyone loves JetBlue's new Mint planes , but, as I've complained about in the past , their old A320s are looking a little long in the tooth. Well, they just announced the details of their coming refreshed interiors. UPDATE: TPG has a full review of a 'Phase 1' retrofitted plane The good news the seatback in-flight entertainment (IFE) screen is getting a lot bigger and HD they're installing their Fly-Fi free high-speed Wi-Fi  the IFE now supports multiple languages for audio tracks the IFE also has support for streaming video content all seats will have power and USB ports The bad news Regular economy seats are losing 2 full inches of seat pitch (though the slimmer seat materials might mitigate that a bit) Those slimmer seats will likely be less comfortable than the previous ones Galleys and lavatories are being moved so they can add 12 more seats to each plane My thoughts The new 32" seat pitch will still let them claim "...

I was looking over our JetBlue statement the other day and was surprised to see that my husband's points upgrade from Economy to Even More Space (EMS) qualified for the JetBlue Mastercard's 10% rebate. ( FYI, his work only pays for Business Class on transcontinental flights when it's a red-eye into a workday ). This means he's upgrading for 990 points or just under $14 at a 1.4¢ valuation. More importantly, when I was discussing this with other Mosaic members online, many of them pointed out that gate agents will often give Mosaic members a complimentary upgrade to Even More Space if there are seats available . I know some folks have complained that free EMS upgrades should be an official benefit of Mosaic, but honestly I prefer it this way. JetBlue's seats already have decent legroom, so few people pay to upgrade. This means I get a much more valuable perk – an empty middle seat next to me.  

One of my rules for the frequent flyer game is "never chase status unless someone else is paying". Due to my husband's employer's travel policies, he occasionally ends up making Mosaic on his their dime. And when he doesn't, I point him to well-timed status challenges so he can keep it. I've written a long breakdown of the actual benefits of Mosaic, but he got a surprise benefit in his inbox the other day – free tickets to the Lion King on Broadway . I just checked and the cheapest seats for this show are $199 each and we're supposedly getting premium seats… so conservatively this makes Mosaic status worth another $450 . This appears to be targeted to Mosaic members who also hold the JetBlue card, but if you're Mosaic, having the card is a no-brainer. Yay for secret benefits! another $400+ to stack onto the value of Mosaic status

As I mentioned earlier this year , JetBlue ran both a status challenge and status match promotion where you could quickly earn elite status with them. My husband already has Mosaic status, but unfortunately he was not on-track to make it again for next year. He was about to book an expensive Mint flight to California for work and realized that flight would earn enough points to qualify for him the status challenge. Well this email showed up last week... Mosaic! and along with it came the 15,000 bonus points (worth $210) that you get when you qualify for Mosaic the normal way . I mention this because in several online forums many were wondering if people doing the challenge would receive this bonus. On top of that, this was apparently his 10th Mint flight so he got an additional 1,000 points for the "Never a Dull Mo-Mint" badge as well. Double bonuses! My post about the actual value of Mosaic status is here .

Over the weekend I got an email from JetBlue that they're bringing back status matches and status challenges. The former allows people with status on another airline to try out JetBlue's Mosaic elite status, and the latter allows non-elites to earn status through the end of next year by flying $1250 worth of JetBlue flights in 90 days. My husband ended up earning Mosaic status largely by accident ,  and we've scrutinized the benefits we've gotten from it and found that we got around $1200 of value out of it . Since people use some benefits more than others, you might want to look carefully at what it's worth before you make any decisions. In our case, it's looking like my husband might miss making Mosaic status for next year due to fewer work trips this year, so he's planning on signing up for the challenge to still requalify for 2018. The one downer here is if you qualify via the challenge, you don't get the 15,000 bonus points (worth about $20...

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...

One of the perks of the JetBlue Plus MasterCard is a 10% rebate any time you redeem JetBlue points for travel. My husband and I are in a family pool, and I'm a cardholder on his MasterCard account. I was looking at his points activity, and yep, his 1100 point Even More Space upgrade had a rebate a few weeks later called "B6 CoBrand Card Redemption Bonus". A few months ago, I had redeemed 42,000 points for a trip but saw no such rebate. After a call to both JetBlue and Barclays I can confirm that only the primary cardholder gets the 10% rebate. ☹️ UPDATE (Sept 2018) : The primary cardholder also gets the 10% points rebate when they redeem for other people in their household account. The rebate doesn't happen until the flight is completed.   10% points rebate As I've mentioned before , we set up the family pooling with me as Head of Household, and that was a mistake. The customer service folks at JetBlue were very kind about helping me finally fix...

JetBlue announced a promo where you get double base points (base points also count toward Mosaic status). Register and book by March 23rd, fly by April 30th . Registration is required . If you're not already a member, they're currently running a 5000 point signup bonus. They also routinely have great fare sales like this one .

JetBlue recently announced "gate to gate" Wi-Fi connectivity but for now I'd recommend against using their onboard Wi-Fi until you're in the air. I just flew from New York JFK (where cellular reception on the ground is a bit spotty) and used the onboard Fly-Fi to access the internet at the gate and during taxi. Once we were airborne I couldn't get my phone to connect . I'm a software engineer and a former technical support person (as is my husband) and neither of us could find any trickery to get my phone to connect. I found a thread over on Flyertalk where a user (ostensibly a JetBlue employee) is reporting that this is currently a known issue. Until a fix is posted, it's probably best to use Fly-Fi only after you've taken off . With my phone now unable to access the internet, I grabbed the laptop out of my bag and it worked fine. Until I tried to access my Google account: Yup, I'd recently enabled 2-factor authentication...

JetBlue was a little late to the in-flight Wi-Fi game – early on they said that they were waiting for the much faster second-generation options to become available. I also think they expected their DirecTV to tide people over while they waited. I've used their "Fly-Fi" internet on many of their flights and it's fast and free – like 10x faster than the GoGo option that most other carriers have but it still didn't allow you to stream video. For that they offered an un-throttled paid Wi-Fi option that was fast enough to stream Netflix, Hulu, and the like. Well, JetBlue put out a big press release yesterday that seems very oddly-worded , so allow me to rephrase it: JetBlue now offers streaming-speed Wi-Fi for free on all of their flights . The pay option is gone. This might completely change what I watch on board... They also made a point to mention that it works even when the plane is on the ground, which is nice considering how crummy my reception often is on ...

UPDATE 3/2018: JetBlue has effectively ended this program I'm not a huge Amazon customer mostly because I try to buy as much as I can from the amazing Essex Market near my house. It's a slice of old school New York that's still hanging on and I want it to be around forever. But there are lots of times when I need something they don't carry, and since I have zero loyalty to the dozen local Walgreens I could walk to, I'll buy online. One of the nice parts of buying online is that you can use shopping portals to get airline points from your purchases on top of whatever points your credit card gives you for the purchase. The EV Reward website lets you comparison shop which portal is offering the highest bonus for a given merchant. It may seem small, but it adds up – last year I earned 50,000+ points with shopping portal bonuses. EV Reward results for Macy's (click to enlarge)   Unfortunately Amazon.com basically never partners with any of these portals...

You can now earn JetBlue miles whenever you take a ride with Lyft. It's not much (30 JetBlue miles for every trip, max of 1200 per year), but if you're already a frequent Lyft user it's free money. They're also adding Lyft capabilities to the JetBlue app, and eventually   launching a designated Lyft pickup area at JFK T5 . I mention this because at the moment (Fall 2016) the taxi situation at Terminal 5 is an absolute mess, so any improvements on that front are more than welcome! In a Web browser, log in to your account on Lyft.com Click your name in the upper right corner and go to Dashboard Then click Connected Services and enter your TrueBlue account number It probably wouldn't hurt to go to the App store and make sure you have the latest version of the Lyft App while you're at it. 

JetBlue has a fairly straightforward rewards program. You earn 3 points for every dollar you spend, and each point is worth about 1.3¢ – in other words, you're getting slightly under 4% as a rebate in point form. (Taxes and fees on airfare don't earn points) If you have the no-fee JetBlue Mastercard, you'll earn an additional 3 points per dollar spent on JetBlue flights, for a total of 6, which  brings your rebate up to almost 8%. But if you'd like to earn yet another 3 points per dollar and get a 10% bonus every time you redeem your points, you can upgrade your no-fee JetBlue Mastercard to the JetBlue Plus card. That brings your effective rebate up to 12.8% . (But beware! ONLY the primary cardholder gets the 10% bonus!) The PLUS card carries a $99 a year annual fee, but also comes with a card anniversary bonus of 5,000 every year (a $70 value), bringing the effective annual fee down to $29. Ergo: If you spend more than $700 per year on JetBlue airfare, get t...

One of my rules of traveling is that airline elite status is best earned when someone else is paying . I'm still seeing friends planning crazy year-end mileage runs (during the holidays when airports are at their worst!) just to keep Delta/United/American status. I can't help but wonder if they're doing that out of old habits or if they've adjusted their math for the new reality. These days airlines reward points based on dollars spent (not miles flown), and  airlines are actively pushing to sell every single upgraded seat instead of giving it away as a free upgrade to their elites . With load factors on the airlines at an all-time high, the era of the complimentary upgrade is largely a thing of the past. (And as I've written about before , I found complimentary upgrades to be way more stress-inducing than you might expect). My husband flies JetBlue for work and was surprised  when he made their "Mosaic" elite status only halfway thru 2015 . JetBlue...