5 Huge Airline Holiday Shopping Portal Bonuses
I am a HUGE fan of shopping portals. When you walk into a store to purchase something, then you are generally missing out because online shopping opens up so many opportunities for “Ninja Tricks”. Sometimes shopping portals even run bonuses where you get to keep the normal payout plus they give you more. Right now five major airline shopping portals are running holiday bonuses. Here is a complete list and breakdown from highest bonus to lowest along with my analysis at the end.
United MileagePlus
As you can see, you can earn 6,000 bonus miles for $1,250 in spend. This is perhaps the best of all of the bonuses, especially if you have a use for United miles.
- Promotional Dates: November 8 – November 24, 2015
- Bonus Earning rate at highest tier: 4.8X
You can find the full terms and details of the promotion here.
Southwest Rapid Rewards
This one requires a bit more spend than United’s and awards 500 less points/miles. Still a great deal!
- Promotional Dates: November 11 – November 26, 2015
- Bonus Earning rate at highest tier: 3.67X
You can find the full terms and details of the promotion here.
American AAdvantage
So this one is sort of in the middle of the other two. It does award less miles overall, but requires less spend for the top tier.
- Promotional Dates: November 10 – November 26, 2015
- Bonus Earning rate at highest tier: 4.17X
You can find the full terms and details of the promotion here.
Delta SkyMiles
As you can see, this bonus is quite a bit less than the others, but it only requires $500 in spend which may be easier to attain for some people.
- Promotional Dates: November 6 – November 23, 2015
- Bonus Earning rate at highest tier: 3X
You can find the full terms and details of the promotion here.
Alaska MileagePlan
As you can see this is pretty much identical to the Delta deal, with the exception of the larger spending requirement on the bottom tier. I would say Alaska miles are much more valuable though, so I would choose this bonus over the SkyMiles one.
- Promotional Dates: November 10 – November 20, 2015
- Bonus Earning rate at highest tier: 3X
You can find the full terms and details of the promotion here.
Full Analysis
To complete all of these shopping portal bonuses you would need to spend $4,950 and would be awarded 19,500 bonus points/miles in addition to the normal portal payout. In almost all cases it makes sense to do this if you have the opportunity.
If you notice, all of these promotions end on or before Thanksgiving, meaning you won’t be able to partake in Black Friday deals. My best advice if you don’t think you can spend that much is to form a strategy. Look at which points/miles mean the most to you and also look to see which portal tiers you can hit. If you don’t do them all, then no big deal. You’ll still do pretty well.
Conclusion
With all of these deals you are earning at least an additional 3X on top of the normal portal payout and any credit card rewards you get. For that reason, I would keep these bonuses in mind when you are shopping online over the next couple of weeks. Keep an eye on the dates though. Not every bonus ends on the same day. Happy shopping!
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Can you buy ebay or target gift cads with any of these stores?
Nonw that I know of but sometimes portals payout when they aren’t supposed :P.
Does anyone know if the 5000 mile AA bonus is only on the first $1200 spent? Or is it for each $1200 spent? Meaning, if I were to spend $2400, would I receive a 10,000 mile bonus?
It is once per account.
Question – will I get the bonus if I’m just buying gift cards?I wouldn’t expect to get a portal bonus of 2x from Staples for example, but would I get the 5500 bonus points from Southwest if I spent the full $1500 on gift cards?
Thanks!
You only get the bonus on qualifying purchases. So if the portal normally pays out then you get the bonus if you meet the spend. Staples doesn’t pay out on gift cards so that wouldn’t work to meet the spend.
Do the bonuses work if we purchase visa gc through the portal?
If you buy from a store that pays out for Visa gift cards. If a store pays the portal, that spend counts.