point fu

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.  

As I mentioned earlier , JetBlue has a new-to-us perk for it's Mosaic elites with their co-branded Mastercard – VIP tickets to the Lion King on Broadway . As a properly jaded New Yorker I'll admit I was a bit dubious about what "VIP" meant, but we had Saturday afternoon open and figured we'd check it out. Given my age and the fact that I don't have children, I'd actually never seen the Lion King before. A friend who works on Broadway told me that the amazing puppetry and costumes  made it definitely worth checking out. We booked our date online and paid the $50 deposit (which is refunded to you as a Mastercard gift card at the show). When we arrived at the theater, there was a separate entrance for JetBlue ticket-holders which let us bypass all of the lines. The welcome envelope included a generous stack of drink tickets . Our seats were on the main floor, maybe a dozen rows from the stage. The VIP tickets included a Q&A with some of the cast membe...

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...

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 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...

As I said in the post yesterday , status is best earned when someone else is paying. Well, my hubby's most-recent work flight on JetBlue Mint posted this morning and he crossed the threshold into JetBlue " Mosaic " elite status. While he's United gold until Feb 2016, he left them for JetBlue at the start of 2015 (more information on why he left United here ). The other big development driving his move is that his company changed their rules and started paying for Business Class for transcontinental red-eye flights. Since policy also requires him to pick a flight within $100 of the lowest fare offered, Mint is almost always going to be his only choice. JetBlue's loyalty program is entirely revenue-based, so you earn status based mostly on how much you spend. Likewise you redeem points for a fixed amount of money (≈1.4¢ each). The Mosaic benefits are covered here , but I think the most exciting one is that  you immediately get 15,000 bonus points (a $210 value...