Airfare Strategy Is Changing Fast — You Can Now Double-Dip A Travel Portal And Out-Earn Booking Direct With Your Best Card

Airfare strategy is shifting. If you’ve always booked tickets directly with airlines to maximize card rewards and protect benefits, there’s now a better play: using a travel portal that codes as a direct airline purchase while earning a second layer of points on top of your best-earning card.

I book most of my airlines tickets direct with the airline, and pay with my American Express Platinum Card® (see rates and fees). That way I earn 5 Membership Rewards points per dollar spent, and I get Amex travel protections.

However I’ve been considering shifting airline ticket spend over to the Chase Sapphire Reserve® (See rates and fees) because bookings through the Chase travel portal – including airfare – earn 8 points per dollar.

That’s especially valuable to me because $75,000 spend on the card also earns $500 in Southwest credit via Chase Travel, $250 Shops at Chase Credit, Southwest Rapid Rewards A-List status, and IHG One Rewards Diamond status.

There’s a bit of a monkey-wrench in my thinking, though, and that’s Bilt’s travel portal. They moved largely to a direct booking model, where you’re booking through them but these are actually airline and hotel provider reservations. You can still get customer service directly.

• Bilt gives you points on all of your travel portal purchases – even airfare.

• You can use any card that you wish and link to your Bilt account.

• So that’s points-earning in addition to what your card gives you.

Bilt Rewards members will earn 1 Bilt Point for every $1 spent on all eligible transactions that are not charged to a Bilt World Elite Mastercard® and are made through the Bilt Travel Portal.

For transactions made with a combination of cash and Bilt Points, you will receive 1 point per $1 spent on the cash portion of the transaction. Points will be awarded within 5-7 business days of the trip being taken, not at the time of booking.

The following transactions made through the Bilt Travel Portal are eligible: airfare, hotels, car rental & things to do.

Here’s a Delta Air Lines ticket purchase through the Bilt travel portal which also earns 5 Membership Rewards points per dollar for paying with an American Express Platinum Card.

Confirmed: Flights through Bilt portal code as airline MCC- Amex Platinum 5x stack
byu/ayoglizzychexk inbiltrewards

At that point, why book direct instead of through Bilt?

• You’re getting an extra Bilt point per dollar on your airline ticket bookings for going through their portal.

• I consider Bilt points to be the single most valuable currency. They have the best transfer partners (as well as the best transfer bonuses).

• And these points count towards Bilt Rewards status. I really want to keep my Bilt Platinum status – which got me free airport helicopter rides this year and Air France Gold status (free checked begs, priority and free exit row seats on Delta) and Accor Platinum status this year, and qualifies me for the biggest transfer bonuses.

The natural play is to book airline tickets through Bilt (unless they flag a transaction as not direct, possible with some obscure carriers), paying with your best-earning airfare card, e.g. Amex Platinum 5x + Bilt 1 or Chase Sapphire Reserve 4x + Bilt 1.

My inclination is to go with Chase Sapphire Reserve that spend should also help me reach the $75,000 spend threshold rewards. But this is a perfectly great play regardless of what card you’re using, whether it’s an airline co-brand or a card that earns 3x on airfare as well.

Plus, between this and earning Bilt points with Rakuten it shouldn’t be too hard to keep Bilt Platinum for 2027.

• New Rakuten members can earn 5,000 bonus points. Sign up directly with Rakuten – not through the Bilt app – and link your account with Bilt later. That’s because this is a bigger bonus than the one offered through Bilt.

• You can make any purchase at the Rakuten shopping portal through one of their participating merchants, and when you spend $50 or more you’ll be earning 5,000 points. And for now that’s like getting 5,000 free Bilt points (only Bilt elite members are promised 1:1 transfers after the first six monts of the relationship).

• The $50 can be purchase of a gift card you’ll use. You’re spending $50 and getting Bilt points worth more than that back.

This same sort of Bilt double dip works, by the way, with hotels – make sure you’re booking these direct rates – just bear in mind that you may be able to do better with discounted rates like AAA or contract rates.

It’s similar to what Rove is doing and Rove promises to bring AAA and similar rates online. You just need to check that Rove isn’t overcharging the room.

For rates and fees of the American Express Platinum Card®, click here.