If you have any JetBlue TrueBlue points and plan to travel in the coming weeks, this is a great time to redeem them.
In this post:
JetBlue offering 20% off award tickets
JetBlue is offering a 20% discount when you redeem TrueBlue points for flights:
- This is valid for bookings made today (Tuesday, May 16, 2023)
- This is valid for travel through Wednesday, June 21, 2023
- Mint tickets, as well as transatlantic tickets, are excluded from this sale
- There’s no registration required, but rather the rate shown will automatically reflect the discount
Even if you’re not sure you’ll be able to travel, keep in mind that JetBlue has no change or cancelation fees on most types of fares, so you can always book a TrueBlue ticket now, and then cancel it later. Similarly, if you’ve already booked any travel, you can see if the price hasn’t changed (or has only gone up a bit), in which case it could make sense to rebook.
This is lucrative for a revenue based program
JetBlue TrueBlue is a revenue based frequent flyer program. This means that the number of points required for a ticket is based on how much a ticket would cost in cash. Because of that, there’s ordinarily not a way to get outsized value with JetBlue points, since the points cost is correlated to the cash cost of a ticket. To be able to redeem TrueBlue points for more value is awesome.
For example, take a $141 fare from Palm Beach to New York (Blue Basic fares aren’t bookable with points, so this would be for the Blue fare).
If you booked this on June 22 (a day after the promotion ends), you’d pay 8,800 TrueBlue points plus $5.60 in taxes & fees. That gives you a value of 1.54 cents per point, after subtracting the taxes & fees.
Meanwhile if you booked this on June 21 (the last day of the promotion), you’d pay 7,000 TrueBlue points plus $5.60 in taxes & fees. That gives you a value of 1.93 cents per point, after subtracting the taxes & fees.
Suffice it to say that’s a much better value. Also keep in mind that if you have a JetBlue credit card, you can get up to a 10% rebate on award redemptions, stretching your points even further.
Bottom line
If you’re going to be traveling in the coming weeks, then it’s definitely worth considering JetBlue’s TrueBlue award sale. At the moment you can get 20% off an award redemption, except on transatlantic flights and in Mint. Usually it’s hard to get outsized value with a revenue based frequent flyer program, so promotions like this can really make a difference.
Do you plan on taking advantage of this JetBlue award sale?
The thing is, when I try to book with points or cash plus points, I always get an error message upon checkout. The website is not very reliable.
When you redeposit miles, JetBlue keeps your taxes and fees in a Travelbank account that can not be used for further awards, but only for paid tickets. The Travelbank funds expire a year from original ticketing date.
While it is usually a minimal amount, except in the case of international travel, it does involve "fees" for redepositing miles and is an incurred cost.