JetBlue’s rewards program is TrueBlue and personally, I have always found much availability booking award tickets for very low and attractive point redemptions through this program. In fact, Rob is going to Puerto Rico for a 50th birthday guys weekend this October. (How are we so close to 50?) I got him a ticket on JetBlue using TrueBlue points for a mere 25,200 points. Even better, I booked my family to go to the Bahamas next April for spring break, a destination that was not yet on my radar till I started doing the research and found tickets for only 19,000 TrueBlue points per ticket!!!! Crazy deal!!!
Every year I travel to St. Petersberg, Florida with my daughter for a swim meet. We almost always fly JetBlue to Tampa. I usually book the flights using TrueBlue points.
At this point, you may be wondering how I always have so many TrueBlue points to book all of these tickets. Well the first way is from transferring points to my TrueBlue account from my American Express Membership Rewards account. JetBlue is an American Express Membership Rewards travel partner.
Another way….. As I have said, I have a very hard time passing up an offer for points that is basically going to require very little of me. So as I was on the JetBlue website researching my spring break flights to the Bahamas, I saw the offer for the American Express JetBlue Card.
Knowing that I was soon going to have to book our annual flights to Tampa, I could not pass up the following terms…..
$0 introductory annual fee for the 1st year, then $40.
So I applied. Remember, I have a lot of American Express Cards. At the time I applied I had many active American Express Cards in my wallet. So instead of issuing me a new line of credit for this JetBlue American Express Card, American Express approved my application and just reallocated some of my credit from my Hilton HHonors American Express Card. But who cares??? I do not need the additional credit and I do not use my Hilton HHonors American Express that much anymore anyway. I only wanted the JetBlue American Express card to take advantage of the 20,000 TrueBlue point bonus offer. 20,000 True Blue points will likely get me one of my tickets to Tampa for free for basically doing nothing except just using this credit card for $1,000 in purchases in 3 months that I would be making anyway!!!! Don’t forget, Chase also will do this reallocation of credit but unlike American Express who seems to do it automatically, I have found with Chase that you need to call. See item 6 in Getting Started.
I will likely not use this card often after the bonus as you only earn one TrueBlue point per dollar spent on everyday purchases. (You earn 2 points per dollar spent on JetBlue tickets with the card–but I never pay for JetBlue tickets )
I should also let you know, I used to have this card back in 2011 and canceled it in August of 2012 when it came time to pay the annual fee. I still have my approval letter from July 23rd, 2011 where my application was approved. Now, here I am in 2014, reapplying, getting approved and getting the bonus points! I have heard from various sources that once you cancel, you can get approved for the same card again after about 3 years. This gap was just 2 years. Go figure….