NOTE: Please read comments about potential eligibility requirements that are not officially listed on the promotion site. As with everything YMMV.
For any of you who follow the major blogs, you’ve heard by now that JetBlue is running a promotion where they will ‘match’ your Virgin America points balances after you send them an email with a screenshot of your Virgin America balance and fly a single round-trip flight with them by August 31.
It’s not quite a ‘match’ as the bonuses are tiered, but the ratios are all greater than 1:1:
If you already have the points, shoot an email to pointsmatch@jetblue.com and get on your way (and do it stat because hordes of others will get in line soon)! But if you don’t, then what?
Well, because Virgin America recently became a 1:1 transfer partner of SPG, things are much more interesting, as you can transfer SPG points in order to pad your VX balance before sending a request off to JetBlue. Unfortunately, the requests do take a bit of time to process, but assuming that goes through and then JetBlue acknowledges your registration, is it worth it?
Let’s do some math.
For each tier, here are the number of SPG points (assuming don’t have any Virgin America miles already) you’d need to transfer to hit that tier (remember that for every increment of 20,000 SPG points you transfer, you get an extra 5,000 miles).
Promo Tier | SPG Points |
500-5000 | 0/1500/2500 (depending on SPG status) |
5001-10000 | 5001 |
10001-30000 | 10001 |
30001-50000 | 25001 (+5000 from bonus) |
50001+ | 40001 (+10000 from bonus) |
Virgin American points are worth about 2.1-2.3 cents when redeemed towards their flights, but VX happens to be a bit marked up relative to other airlines, so let’s conservatively (and arbitrarily) say you’ll get about 1.7 cents of value. JetBlue points are good for 1.4 cents towards flights, and they are generally price competitive, so we’ll leave it there.
Since there’s also a required flight component, let’s also assume you live in a JetBlue (B6) serviced-area and can get a round trip flight for either $100 or $200 (both are reasonable from quick glances).
How good a deal is this? Well, here’s the value you get:
Promo Tier | B6 Points | VX Points | Value (minus $100) | Value (minus $200) |
500-5000 | 5000 | 2500* | $12.50 | -$87.50 |
5001-10000 | 10000 | 5001 | $225 | $125 |
10001-30000 | 30000 | 10001 | $590 | $490 |
30001-50000 | 50000 | 30001 | $1210 | $1110 |
50001+ | 75000 | 50001 | $1900 | $1800 |
But this excludes the SPG points you had to give up. Combining the above two tables, we can calculate a breakeven point for how much you have to value your SPG points at for it to be a good deal (breakeven = value / # points). If you value them below the breakeven point, go for it. Above, don’t:
Promo Tier | SPG Points | Value (minus $100) | Breakeven | Value (minus $200) | Breakeven |
500-5000 | 2500* | $12.50 | .50 cpp | -$87.50 | -3.50 cpp |
5001-10000 | 5001 | $225 | 4.50 cpp | $125 | 2.50 cpp |
10001-30000 | 10001 | $590 | 5.90 cpp | $490 | 4.90 cpp |
30001-50000 | 25001 | $1210 | 4.84 cpp | $1110 | 4.44 cpp |
50001+ | 40001 | $1900 | 4.75 cpp | $1800 | 4.50 cpp |
Simply put, this promotion offers some mammoth value if you have more than 10,000 SPG to spare. I’m already game because I actually have enough VX points to qualify for the top tier, and Michael just sent off a 20,000 point transfer. Esther also had enough points to qualify for the top tier from MSing on the VX card. What about you? Are you in?
Happy hacking!
A couple of other fun notes:
You can buy up to 20000 SPG points for 3.5 cents each
You can buy VX points for 5 cents each, which could be helpful to top you up to another tier
You will also get about 10% back in JetBlue points for the flights (600/1200) depending on the flight costs
Plus, if you want to buy more Starpoints to pad your balance first: “Now through July 1, 2016, save 30% on purchases of 5,000 Starpoints or more.”
https://storefront.points.com/spg/en-US/buy
just sent my 40k point transfer as well, hope it goes through soon! now off to learn about using VX points on VA/VS
I used 25k on a one-way to Sydney on VA. 40k if you do roundtrip. Awesome deal. 😀
Esther also forgot to mention they included her SFO-LAX positioning flight for free 🙂
NOTE: (from comments on viewfromthewing): “A friend had their points match denied that had no flights segments or credits. The account only had points in it from a previous Amex transfer. Be warned. YMMV.”
Some analysis from Seth (the Wandering Aramean) about Jetblue point values: http://blog.wandr.me/2015/10/trueblue-jetblue-point-value-2015/
Why isn’t there a subscribe button on this site?
See “subscribe to RSS” on the sidebar. You can select an email subscription from there. Will rename it so it’s clearer. Thanks for reading!
[…] past few months, and I even went so far as to sign up for the JetBlue credit card in wake of the ridiculous promotion they were offering (from which I netted 75,000 JetBlue miles for a round trip flight that cost me $75). Doctor of […]
[…] past few months, and I even went so far as to sign up for the JetBlue credit card in wake of the ridiculous promotion they were offering (from which I netted 75,000 JetBlue miles for a round trip flight that cost me $75). Doctor of […]
[…] tempting, especially since Jetblue is strong in Boston and we fly a lot of coach. Here’s a nice analysis of the value you can get. Also @robertdwyer is really doing a great job of peer pressure on […]