Refunding Airline Tickets to Earn More Miles — and Where to Join the Smile High Club

by Gary Leff

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News and notes from around the interweb:

  • Have a JetBlue Plus Credit Card? JetBlue is doing something with it I’ve never seen before.

    According to Zach Honig if you’ve purchased a JetBlue ticket with a different credit card you can ring JetBlue and they will refund that card and charge your JetBlue Card instead. That way you can earn the 6 points per dollar on the JetBlue ticket spend.

  • New American AAdvantage online shopping bonus

  • New York JFK’s airport dentist helps passengers join the Smile High Club. Here’s where to find the dentist.

  • Macon, Georgia wants federal subsidies so that Counter Airlines can start service to DC. Since Delta left Macon in 2008, two other airlines have failed there. Counter plans to use your $4.6 million a year to offer $49 introductory one-way fares and hopes to raise those eventually to $89. There’s a simple reason though why Macon service fails, and subsidies are completely wasteful and an unfair use of other peoples’ money:

  • Emirates raising money to purchase 10 Airbus A380s. This is presumably for deliveries in their fiscal 2018 year, because the airline says its 2016 and 2017 new aircraft are already fully financed.

    The Dubai government-owned carrier plans an 18-month bridge loan priced at about 135 basis points over the London Interbank Offered Rate, said the people, asking not to be identified because the information is private. The bridge facility will later be converted to a 12-year loan to fund about 10 A380s, which will be delivered before the year end, one of the people said.

  • Alaska Airlines flight attendants.. dancing in the streets of Seattle. (HT: Ralph G.)

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  2. I used to work at JetBlue. They’ve been doing the credit card refund/recharge for years. I don’t understand how no one else figured this out before now. Last year, when i got an Explorer card, i called up United and did the same thing – refunded old ticket and purchased new tickets to new card at the original fare etc.

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