On last week’s podcast, Nick and I discussed Alaska Airlines’ impending purchase of Hawaiian Airlines. With the Department of Justice not objecting, the merger seems more and more likely. In addition, Alaska Airlines has stated that they will merge the two loyalty programs into one: Alaska Mileage Plan. In addition, Alaska Airlines confirmed to Beat of Hawaii that Hawaiian miles will convert 1:1. Since most of us consider Alaska miles to be far more valuable than Hawaiian miles, this situation raises some questions for the near future:
- Should we apply for a Hawaiian Airlines credit card before it’s (possibly) too late?
- Should we transfer Amex points to Hawaiian Airlines while the 20% transfer bonus is valid through 8/31/24? This could be a good way to indirectly convert Amex points to Alaska miles, but we don’t know if the Amex to Hawaiian mile transfers will continue after the merger.
For me the answers were Yes And Yes.
Whether the Hawaiian Airlines credit cards and/or the Amex to Hawaiian transfer bonus are a good choice is up to each individual to decide, but since some readers have asked what I’m up to, I thought I’d answer it here.
I chose the large one (bigger than originally thought).
Hawaiian Airlines credit cards
At the time of writing, there are 70,000 offers available for personal and business cards. This ad shows the current offers:
| Card offer and details |
|---|
 70,000 miles after a purchase in the first 90 days – any 6-digit code (e.g. 123456) must be entered when applying$99 annual fee Information on this map was collected independently by Frequent Miler. The publisher did not provide the details and is not responsible for their accuracy. Earnings rate: 3x Hawaiian Airlines ✦ 2x gas stations, restaurants and grocery stores ✦ 1x everywhere else Map info: Mastercard World Elite, issued by Barclays. There are no foreign currency conversion fees for this card. Notable benefits: Two free checked bags when booking your flight with Hawaiian Airlines ✦ One-time 50% discount on companion ticket ✦ $100 off a companion ticket for round-trip economy class flights between Hawaii and North America on Hawaiian Airlines on each account anniversary |
Both of the above offers are excellent. The consumer card is especially great because the only requirement to receive the bonus is to make a single purchase.
I try 5 cards and 350,000 miles
My wife and son both applied for cards (personal and business). I only applied for the business card since I’m almost 5/24 and wasn’t ready to get over it yet.
To find out your 5/24 status, see: Easy Ways to Find Your 5/24 Status. The easiest way is to track all your cards for free with Travel Freely.
More:
According to Doctor of Credit, the following banks not Report business accounts regularly to credit reporting agencies:
- American Express (except Canadian Amex)
- Bank of America
- Barclaycard
- Capital One Spark Cash
- chase
- City
- FNBO
- Marine Bundeswehr CU
- PNC
- US Bank
- Wells Fargo
The following banks get in touch Business cards in personal credit reports (and therefore count towards 5/24):
All 5 applications are pending review. We keep our fingers crossed.
Normally I wouldn’t be too keen on collecting miles separately across multiple accounts, but in this case it’s not a problem at all. One cool feature of the Hawaiian Airlines cards is that you can transfer miles to and from friends for free. Once my wife and son have collected their miles, they should be able to transfer those miles to my account with no problem.
Instant millionaire plus 20%
In the post “Does this Amex to Hawaiian transfer bonus make sense now that the Alaska merger is likely?” I explained that I would probably transfer about 350,000 of my ~1.5 million Amex points to Hawaiian while the 20% transfer bonus was in effect. But then I looked at my wife’s Amex account. She had 3 million points. I decided to score big. She transferred 995,000 points to my Hawaiian Airlines account. She was able to do this because I had been an authorized user of one of her Membership Rewards cards for over 90 days. But that wasn’t strictly necessary: Assuming at least one of her credit card applications went through, she could have transferred Amex points to her own Hawaiian Airlines account and then freely transferred her Hawaiian miles to me.
Thanks to the 20% transfer bonus, my wife’s 995,000 Amex points turned into 1,194,000 Hawaiian Airlines miles (also known as HawaiianMiles). Now I’m crossing my fingers three times that all of those miles will become Alaska miles.
Why I decided on such a big project
In December 2021, American Airlines ran an incredible promotion with SimplyMiles where you could earn 240 miles per dollar donated to Conservation International. That was the equivalent of buying AAdvantage miles for less than half a cent per mile. Incredible. I bought 1.2 million AA miles through this offer and later wished I had bought a lot more. Having that many miles in a program as valuable as AA was great. I was able to book several international business class trips whenever I found award availability, even when I wasn’t sure I would take those trips. AA offers free changes and cancellations.
With a huge stash of Alaska miles, I can do the same thing, only better: Alaska has more non-alliance partners than AA, and Alaska allows free stopovers. Once Alaska adds the ability to combine partner awards in a single booking, I expect it to become one of my favorite programs. I don’t like that Alaska charges a non-refundable partner booking fee of $12.50 per passenger per direction, but otherwise I’m impressed with things like short-haul flights for just 4,500 points and business class to Europe for just 45,000 points with one stop in each direction.
Would you like to know more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or listen to our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
