Travel the FI Way: Get Free Flight Tickets Using Travel Reward Credit Cards

Key Takeaways

• Sign up for the Chase Sapphire Preferred travel reward credit card to earn a sign-up bonus of 80,000 points which can be redeemed for a round-trip flight ticket from the US to Europe or other routes.

• Follow the steps outlined below to spend enough to earn the sign-up bonus while always paying of the full credit card balance each month and never paying any interest. It is easy but takes a bit of discipline.

Baby Steps

Well, there are quite a few baby steps, but it is totally worth it to follow through and get one or more free flight ticket(s).

• Sign up for the Chase Sapphire Preferred travel reward credit card.

• Come up with a plan to spend $4,000 in the first 3 months and pay off the full balance each month! Maybe you have expenses at work which you can pay for with this credit card and can then file an expense report to get refunded via the payroll of your employer. Then use the refund to pay off the full credit card balance. Or maybe you are planning a vacation with friends or family. In this case, offer to book hotels and flight tickets for the group using your credit card, and have your friends or family members pay you back. In any case, you can use your credit card instead of cash for grocery store shopping and other regular expenses you have, then use the cash to pay off the full credit card bill.

• If you manage to spend and pay off $4,000 in the first 3 months, you will earn 80,000 bonus points plus $50 grocery store credit, all while paying $0 in interest. You win the game! However, if you do not pay off the full balance each month and carry forward a balance, you will pay interest and the bank issuing the credit card wins the game.

• As soon as you are ready to book your next flight, search for the best award flight tickets. Airlines offer a limited number of seats on each flight for purchase with bonus points instead of cash. Use AwardHacker or a similar website to find the best award flight ticket deals. On AwardHacker, you can filter the search results to show only those tickets which can be purchased with Chase Ultimate Rewards (UR) bonus points. As of May 2021, you can get a round trip ticket from Portland, Oregon to Zurich, Switzerland for 55,000 UR bonus points if booking through Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer or for 60,000 UR bonus points if booking through United MileagePlus. See screenshot from AwardHacker below. In general, you can normally get round trip tickets from the US to Europe for around 60,000 bonus points. Alternatively, you can typically get several domestic flight tickets for 80,000 bonus points.

• As soon as you find the best award ticket, transfer the required amount of bonus points from the Chase Ultimate Rewards online portal to the loyalty or frequent flyer program of the chosen Chase airline partner. Frequent flyer programs associated with Chase include British Airways Executive Club, Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer, or United MileagePlan. See screenshots below for a complete list of Chase airline partners as of May 2021. You can easily and quickly sign up for any of these loyalty or frequent flyer programs. You do not even need to be a frequent flyer! Bonus point transfers are one way only - after sending them to an airline partner, you cannot send them back to Chase. Bonus points might expire in some of the frequent flyer programs. Therefore, it is best to keep your bonus points at Chase until you are ready to book flight tickets. Do not hesitate to use Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer to book flight tickets from the US to Europe or any other route - we live in a truly global and connected world.

• You will pay an annual fee of $95 for the Chase Sapphire Preferred credit card. But this amount is small compared to the sign-up bonus of 80,000 points. Typically, 100 bonus points are worth $1. In other words, you get $0.01 per bonus point. This is true for many forms of redemption such as using bonus points to shop at Amazon.com or for cash back. So 80,000 bonus points are worth $800, i.e., much more than the $95 membership fee. However, these bonus points are worth more if used to purchase award flight tickets. Again, you can get a round trip flight ticket from the US to Europe for around 60,000 bonus points (which would typically be worth $600), but most of the time you would pay over $1,000 to purchase the same flight ticket using cash. So you typically get around $1,000 / 60,000 = $0.0167 per bonus point if redeemed for award flight tickets, which is 67% more than for other forms of redemption!

• Enjoy your free flight!

• You can close the credit card account after one year with minor impact on credit score. But of course, cancel only after you have used all your bonus points.

The Whole Story

Airline partners of the Chase Sapphire Preferred Ultimate Rewards:

Example of award flight tickets you can buy with 55,000 or 60,000 Chase Ultimate Reward (UR) bonus points. Use AwardHacher to find your award flight tickets.

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