Bank of America has a new bigger bonus for the Asiana American Express card.
Here are the details of the bonus, for someone who won’t buy an Asiana ticket it’s 25,000 miles after $2500 spend within 90 days.
Get up to 38,000 Bonus Miles after qualifying purchases! 10,000 miles after first purchase + 15,000 miles after $2,500 in purchases in the first 90 days + 13,000 miles after purchasing a qualifying round-trip Asiana airline ticket with your new card by December 31, 2014.
I first became really interested in the Asiana program five years ago. See The Hidden Value of the Asiana Award Chart and Asiana American Express.
The card at the time offered 2 miles per dollar on all spending, and a distance-based award chart. So spend $35,000 on the card for a roundtrip business class ticket from the US East Coast to Europe including 5 destinations. Plus get a $100 rebate on Asiana purchases, so a nice credit against award taxes. And with the 10,000 mile discount on an Asiana redemption a one-way first class award to Asia could run just $30,000 in spend.
Sadly the 2 miles per dollar earning doesn’t exist any longer, except on gas and groceries. (3 miles per dollar spent with Asiana.)
But there never used to be a particularly enticing signup bonus for the card, so at least there’s now that.
Here’s the new region-based award chart, with roundtrip pricing to or from the US/Canada:
Asiana does add fuel surcharges to award tickets. Booking with them over the phone is far easier than with Korean Air.
Unfortunately it’s not super-easy for US residents to earn Asiana miles outside of spend through this credit card. The program isn’t a transfer partner of Chase or American Express (though it is a transfer partner of Starwood).
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100k for Europe in first class is a steal… any idea how they are with changes in terms of rules and fees? Basically if I want to book USA-UA-FRA-LH-EUR ticket now and then change USA-FRA to LH if/when it opens, how are the change fees/rules?
Gary: is this repeatable like others from this issuer?
@Robert should be..
Unfortunately the miles expire after 5 years and no way to extend. Elites get 7 years.
best, free way to search for asiana partner award space please?
@Steve 5 years I can deal with, 3 years a la Singapore makes me nervous
@gary
The fuel charges take most of the benefits away
Back in the day with 2 miles, you could go from DEL/BOM-EWR for 110k
or to WAS for 150k = 75k spend = lost cash back of 1500$ + taxes of 450 = ~2000 from Asia to US
Once the 2 for 1 went away once BofA went bust, now the simple math is it take 135k spend = 2700$ lost cash back on a Barclays or Fidelity Card Then to add 500$ fees = 3200$ in bz for possible space.
.
Cash back is the new king on cards UNLESS there is a 5-10 fold bonus for new account sign ups
I do not even get the UA explorer card or Club Card for the spend anymore
Blue Cash for spend and Fidelity for everything else is just fine.
The best value of Asiana used to be their Diamond Status at 40k miles
but now that Aegean has come in to the picture, so much for that one option
do you know if asiana releases a lot more space for their own program? That could make it a valuable card. Plus this is amex so good for sync offers as well.
@andreas in my experience they do not