Award travel on JetBlue has been limited. You’ve mostly been able to use their own points, in their revenue-based program, at low value. And it hasn’t made much sense to transfer points from credit card programs to JetBlue.
Emirates redemptions for JetBlue business class (‘Mint’) could be a good value, but those are gone. And American AAdvantage offered JetBlue redemptions, but the federal government put a stop to that.
However Qatar Airways replaced Emirates as close partner with JetBlue and One Mile at a Time flagged that redemption of Qatar Airways Privilege Club points for travel on JetBlue is now live. And those points are accessible by many:
- American Express and Citibank points transfer to Qatar
- You can transfer points between active accounts in Avios programs, for instance from Chase, Capital One or Bilt into British Airways and on to Qatar.
- There are frequent transfer bonuses to Avios programs. Through November 10 you can transfer from Citi to Qatar with a 30% bonus.
Qatar’s partner award chart is distance-based and prices premium transcon flights at 38,750 points each way and transatlantic at 62,000 points.
You can search availability on Expert Flyer. Economy awards book into P class and business class books into I class. Find Flights For Me flags that availability on JetBlue transatlantic flights is wide open. These flights (broadly speaking) haven’t done very well, and there’s been little competition for transatlantic redemption seats.
Searching close-in for New York – Paris, I see good availability. Over winter, too, and also next summer.
JetBlue has a good narrowbody business class product, and good inflight catering, especially with their new product.
Credit: JetBlue
Credit: JetBlue
Some short-haul international routes, such as to the Caribbean, offer a ‘Mint’ cabin as well which can be a value using Qatar’s points.
Booking requires you to go to the Qatar Airways website for redemptions, choose the JetBlue flight detials you want, along with passenger details. You ‘request’ the space and then if it’s available it will be put on hold pending payment for ticketing. Find Flights For Me reports that Qatar isn’t adding carrier-imposed (‘fuel’) surcharges to JetBlue redemptions.
Bear in mind that JetBlue doesn’t offer lounge access for business class passengers. At some airports you’ll have credit card-based lounge options.
So a devaluation of all of the “Move to Mint” certificates JetBlue has given me when they matched me to Mosaic 4 from Delta Diamond, eh?
Suboptimial
@Anthony – it is incredible how unhappy everyone is about getting free stuff! Airline cant even make seats available for points without pissing people off.
Omg thank you and lucky for flagging this. I’ve been bashing my head in trying to figure out how to book mint with partner awards. Wide open for the dates I wanted to get to Europe. Got to a point where I was scratching my head trying to figure out why there’s partner space when there no partners that could book it
are there no surcharges on the london flights either?
I see flights on EF but when I go to Qatar to book it, it says “Award flights to your destination are unavailable for the next 30 days. To continue, please select ‘Pay now’, ‘Hold my booking’ or ‘Cash + Avios’. ” Does that mean I cannot book a flight more than 30 days from now?
@Ken – you’ll pay the UK’s Air Passenger Duty … that’s not a carrier surcharge, it’s a tax
Today there is nothing available. Looks like they pulled all inventory. Any idea whats going on?