Flying on JetBlue for Free...from Hawaii?

A Round-About Way for Round Trip Airfare

It's no big secret that JetBlue is the 'little' guy of the airline industry. It isn't a part of any major alliance, and in fact just lost some of its point sharing benefits with American Airlines. But that doesn't mean it doesn't still have a few tricks up its sleeves - one of which is the Hawaiin Airlines partnership. You'll be hard pressed to see any blogger or churning touting the Hawaiian credit card, but if you're looking to fly JetBlue, it isn't a bad deal.

How the Program Works

In an unusual setup, Hawaiian Airlines gives a general guideline to how redeeming miles to JretBlue works, but does not actual transfer them. The Hawaiian website provides a chart giving the estimated cash value that increments of miles count towards JetBlue flights,but to get the actual redemption value you need to call into the Hawaiian Miles Service Center (1-877-HA-MILES) to book your JetBlue flight using your miles. The below chart may serve as a guideline for the value to expect, but I have yet to bok a flight using this method and so cannot verify the process personally.

To compare the value to TrueBlue points, instead of just monetary worth, we can use a trip from JFK to SFO. The flight is on a Friday, because I wanted to to get close to the $339 value category on the Hawaiian chart. This is relevant for the 35,000 miles you get as a bonus from the credit card (to be covered later).

 This flight costs 23,000 TrueBlue points, meanijg that Hawaiian Airline miles are valued at about 2/3 of a TrueBlue point for redemption. However, for the true worth of these transfers the credit card offer needs to be looked at.

Hawaiian Airlines Barlcay Card

This card offers 35,000 Hawaiian Airlines miles as a signup bonus for spending $1,000 in the first three months after receiving the card. As noted earlier, this can be redeemed for flights on JetBlue that vary from $260-$339 in worth.

The catch here is that the annual fee is not waived for the first year. If we factor in the $90 annual fee, then the value decreases down to $242 for 35,000 Hawaiian miles for our flight example above. This still puts it within the 35,000 mile range on the chart, but basically any worth is brought down by close to $100 thanks to the fee. While this isn't the best deal out there, it's one of the few opportunities to get be able to use other miles to book with JetBlue. Other than using a generic travel card to book rewards with (a la Barclay Arrival or Chase Sapphire Preferred), JetBlue has rare opportunities such as this.

Final Remarks

While the lack of annual fee waiving is a disappointment, you're still coming out on top with at least $200 in free JetBlue travel. With a low bonus requirement, it shouldn't be too much of a pain to get the miles either, but I don't think this one is high on anyone's list.

 - John