View from the Wing Archives.
Customs officers seized more than $53,000 in undeclared cash from an airport passenger headed overseas. Plus: a Citi transfer bonus, American’s filthy Philadelphia lounge, Royal Ambassador suite exclusions and a Southwest dance party.
Chase has brought back a 100,000-point bonus on the Ink Business Preferred, giving small-business owners and those of you with a side hustle one of the strongest bank card offers available right now. The card’s $95 annual fee is low for a bonus this large, and the points can be transferred to valuable airline and hotel partners like Hyatt, United, Air France KLM, British Airways, and Singapore Airlines.
Rove Miles now transfers 1:1 to Qantas Frequent Flyer, with a 50% launch bonus through August 14 and live Qantas award searches on Rove’s website. Qantas members receive access to additional seats unavailable through American, Alaska or British Airways, plus unique partners including El Al and Aircalin.
Bilt has closed a loophole that awarded 250 points even on $1 rent payments, allowing members to scale tiny transactions into meaningful balances. These payments will now earn one point per dollar, capped at 250 points per monthly payment, while card-based housing rewards remain unchanged.
American, United and Southwest all offered the same $523 Chicago–Denver fare, reviving suspicions of price-fixing. Identical fares occur about half the time: ATPCO and near-instant competitor monitoring let airlines match prices without an illegal agreement—though carriers have sometimes tried to cross that line.
Air Canada picked Anko van der Werff as CEO, and his French appears more than good enough to satisfy Quebec’s language establishment. But the fight that helped push out Michael Rousseau was never really about fluency—it was about politics, power, and timing.
July 2026 brings a new best-ever credit card offers, with several new bonuses added and others already gone. Here’s the up-to-date list of the most lucrative deals still available.
The biggest rewards credit cards are easier to understand when you strip them down to what they actually do best. Sapphire Reserve, Amex Platinum, Venture X, Citi Strata Elite, Bilt Palladium, Bilt Blue, United Explorer, and Citi AAdvantage Business all have real strengths, but each one also has limits. The key is knowing whether a card is worth getting for a bonus, keeping for benefits, or actually using for spend.
The fastest way to earn a large pile of miles is still a new-card bonus, and several current offers can jump-start a trip with 100,000 points or more. But a great initial bonus is not the same thing as a great long-term card: take the upfront value when the math works, then shift spending to the cards that actually reward you best after the bonus is gone.
Most people ask for the best rewards credit card, but the better answer is often a pairing: one card that earns the most in your biggest spending categories and another that earns more than 1x everywhere else. Signup bonuses and benefits matter, but ongoing spending should be judged separately, whether that means pairing Ink Business Preferred with no-fee Chase cards, Citi Strata Premier with Double Cash, or using Bilt Palladium as a powerful catch-all.
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 »
