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🤙🏿 Welcome back to the Better Than Points Newsletter - the premier place for all things Credit Card Points News and Travel

My name’s Luis and I’m the one writing this (hit me up here!)

I’m spilling the beans!

So get your toast ready.

crickets

Ahh I crack myself up.

Anyway…lets get to it!

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The year is off to a fast start, and travel has been on everyone’s mind with spring break around the corner.

But let’s be honest finding award flights is time consuming.

That’s why I love Thrifty Traveler Premium:

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Deal Highlight:

Just today, they sent two alert for business class flights to Europe starting at 42,000 points one way.

Yes, business class for 42K.

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I’ll be including some of those Hawaii dates in the Flight of the week section, but trust me:

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Each week, I’ll share something cool I’ve discovered or tackle a question from the community. It’s my little corner to explore ideas, offer fresh perspectives, and hopefully spark your own curiosity.

Something I don’t talk about often (and honestly not enough people talk about it) is that you don’t have to start with credit card points to book a flight for 90% off.

Sometimes you can straight up buy the points and still come out way ahead.

A good example right now is Qatar running a 4 day sale on Avios.

Most of the time, buying points doesn’t move the needle or cost way too much.

It only starts making sense when you see those 50% to 100% bonuses where the math actually works.

Here’s what I mean.

A QSuites flight from North America to Doha can price anywhere from about 70,000 to 140,000 Avios, and the sweet spot is the Saver space at 70,000.

If that 70,000 seat is available, and you buy 70,000 Avios during a 50% bonus promo, you’re looking at roughly $1,100 out of pocket.

Yes, that’s still real money.

But if you were already going to pay cash, you’re basically turning a business class ticket that can easily run $10,000+ into a roughly $1,000 flight.

That’s when this actually makes sense.

But here are a couple of things to watch out for.

You need the Saver award space at 70,000.

If it’s only showing higher award pricing, the deal falls apart fast.

Don’t do this if you don’t already have an account set up and ready.

You don’t want to buy points, then get stuck waiting for things to post, and by the time they do the seat is gone.

And let’s be real, QSuites space can be a pain to find if you dont know what you’re doing.

It’s usually easiest to find it super last minute or almost a year out.

So yeah, buying points isn’t the default move, but when the bonus is big and the space is there, it can be one of the cleanest pay less, fly better plays out there.

If enough people are interested, I can make an in depth step by step guide on how to do this.

Just reply back to the email.

This was a super interesting story that popped off yesterday.

El Paso had a ground stop on all departing flights, plus an alert telling aircraft not to fly in that area for a bit.

Luckily it got lifted, but the official “reason” floating around is that a party balloon drifted into restricted airspace (or something along those lines) and it triggered the shutdown.

Which, sure. That’s plausible.

But I’m just saying… I’m not ruling out aliens.

Also, thank goodness it didn’t turn into one of those multi day airport shutdown situations.

Even a single day of that would snowball into huge delays.

If you think I’m joking about the aliens, check out this.

Bilt 2.0 is definitely hitting a few speed bumps.

I’ve seen reports of people having trouble using their cards in general, and more importantly, some folks saying they can’t get mortgage payments to go through.

And honestly, I get why people are hesitating to run their mortgage through a brand new system right now.

Nobody wants to mess around and accidentally have a payment show up as missed or late because of a rollout glitch.

It’s not shocking either, because Bilt is changing a lot at once.

I don’t know if it’s an issue with payment processors, ACH rails, or how they’re routing these housing payments behind the scenes, but something is clearly not smooth yet.

On top of that, there have also been some weird reports of the card getting declined internationally even though it’s supposed to have no foreign transaction fees.

If you’re traveling, that’s not ideal.

Hopefully, they get all this cleaned up fast.

But for now, if you’re planning to use Bilt for your mortgage, I’d stay on top of it.

Make sure the payment actually processes.

Watch for those confirmations and in your lender portal.

And have a backup plan ready, just in case it doesn’t go through the first time.

With Southwest going through so many changes, a lot of them have been for the worst, not the best.

But surprisingly, this one’s a win.

Southwest is adding Starlink to their fleet, which means free, fast Wi Fi onboard.

They’re supposed to get their first Starlink equipped aircraft in the summer, and the goal is to have more than 300 planes fitted by the end of the year.

That’s a big deal, especially if you fly Southwest a lot.

United is also rolling Starlink out, but from what I keep hearing from people who fly them nonstop, it’s been spotty.

Not all the planes have it yet, and even on the ones that do, it hasn’t always worked great.

So hopefully Southwest nails the rollout and doesn’t botch the execution.

And selfishly, with Austin making up about 41% of Southwest’s flights, I’m hoping that means I’ll actually have working internet on a lot of my upcoming flights.

Check out these crazy award deals!

This section includes some of the best award flights of the week bookable with points and miles.

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This section includes some of the best links videos and articles of the week around the points and travel community