True blue [poor redemption value]

As a fan of Jet Bue airline I decided to get the Jet Blue Amex card. I have always had a Citibank AA card before this. After 2 years with this card I am thinking that it is not equal to other mileage cards. It seems that the points used to book travel are very high. The points I am given for actual travel are based on how much I paid for the ticket. Does anyone else have this card and are you satisfied or dissatisfied with it. I just flew to Maui from Bos using my AA miles. It took only 35,000 for the entire trip and I booked it 2 mos before my travel. I just checked a flight on Jet Blue to San Diego from Bos and they wanted 51,000 pts for one way!! Unless I'm completely wrong about True Blue I will return to my Citibank Card for AA....... or is there something else out there I should look at.

You should probably start by visiting the True Blue forum.

^

Additionally it is not fair to compare to separate routes for the purposes of points redemption, just like you can't compare two different routes for fare prices.

Disclaimer: PLEASE, let's avoid the discussion I might have just started on how "ridiculous" airfare pricing is and how it's not based on logic.

im a big fan of jetblue and i also agree with you as they are expensive points wise.The true blue program is revenue based as in aa there are fixed based on destinations you can say.True blue is good for me for my flights from jfk to florida which is 15k so i have 100k MR points that i wanted to exchange for jetblue but it only gives you 80k.The good thing is the awards are always there and usually non-stop for me rather with aa its always two stops or more and i hate stopping.

Jetblue works for me and i will get a card in my wifes name and im going to cancel my card and reapply for it in 10 months for another 20k.The points are really hard to get on jetblue and there card only pays 1x on everything.I hope they have promotions for 2x or 5x atleast twice a year.Last year i flew with them 10 times and barely had enough points for 2 flights to florida.

Welcome to FlyerTalk. I have moved your question from the very broad MilesBuzz! Forum to the dedicated TrueBlue Forum.

Revenue based points systems are where all the airlines are heading. It's the only system that makes financial sense to them. I'm sure you've noticed all the carrier bankruptcies, tell me, were they using revenue based point systems?

The FF programs were minting cash even while the carriers were going bankrupt; the two are not tied so closely.

I agree that it is the direction the industry is heading, but not because of the bankruptcies.

True Blue is a great program for people who think that the problem with Southwest is its extensive route network.

Yes, by selling miles to partners they made money. But not enough to stave off bankruptcy.

And switching to a revenue-based model doesn't change that. :-:

They're sho' 'nuf gonna try before they just give up.

If they would do that, I predict airline credit cards go the way of the dodo. Why? Because a straight 5% cash back card will be more valuable than 1 cent/mile cards.

I have booked 4 free trips on UA this year while buying none (so far). Last year 1 booked 4 paid trips on UA and 4 free trips. (and 3 free trips on AA (and 2 on B6 (my sons points paid for one of them) I am not an airline expert but seems that flying for free cannot be good for the airline (I get most of the points via the CC on spending I would have done anyway). At least with B6, when I am stuck paying for the high december/february fares I get more points out of it (as compared to UA). Delta is adding a revenue requirement for Medallion status and the other airlines may try to do it indirectly (via minimum flight requirements).

I don't think the vast majority of people see this, make the comparison. Moreover, I think a big part of the shift to revenue-based airline loyalty programs is the affinity credit card. The program's units become much more fungible than blocks of miles. This was discussed a lot when Southwest followed JetBlue to the darkside. Moreover, the credit card is driving much of the evolution of all travel industry loyalty programs. Moreover, look at the discussions in FlyerTalk and the blogs about how to optimize credit card spend to "earn" free travel, now especially maturing into the "Manufactured Credit Card Spend" FlyerTalk board.*

All competitive, and zero sum, with real (flight, stay etc.) loyalty, and the programs that rewarded it, that we've grown to know and love. But the credit cards are like a drug to the travel companies because they are like a drug to us.


* Gone this morning when I looked to get the title right (?!)

There may be rewards programs that, technically, work out better than True Blue but I would imagine there are a lot of people who are in a similar situation to myself. That is, we're not business travelers so we don't have the chance to rack up a lot of miles and affinity cards are the only way to get miles.

Over the past 20 years, I've been on a few different affinity cards - had some changed right out from under me (like an old CitiMiles card that repeatedly changed). Every time I went to look at what an award cost, it was way out of my league. I went years on a particular MasterCard to find out that even one transatlantic ticket would cost 60,000 points. Never mind two. I finally ended up getting SOMETHING out of that card when I took a vacation in California this year and used those points for the rental car.

True Blue? Ok, it helps that I'm near Boston and they fly to places I want to go. My airline of choice USED to be Southwest. It also helps that they had an offer a couple years back for a total of 20,000 bonus miles when signing up if you hit a particular spending point (which was easy for me). I signed a lot of my auto-pay bills over to that card and FINALLY - that vacation I mentioned above? I paid for my BOS-LGB tickets with points - *2* round trip tickets for 44K points. For the first time, I actually GOT a 'free' flight.

Granted that Capitol One seems to be trying to get my business (and with their card being a Visa, it's taken in more places than AmEx) so I'm tempted but if JetBlue ever started transatlantic routes, I don't think anything could pull me away.