Sweet-spot awards courtesy of Japan Airlines | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep325 | 9-26-25
Frequent Miler on the Air
Frequent Miler
4.9 • 640 Ratings
🗓️ 26 September 2025
⏱️ 78 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, we'll talk about how Citi is showering us with transfer bonuses, then we'll talk about the incredible uses for Japan Airlines miles. Now that Capital One is making transfers available to Japan Airlines (in addition to Bilt, which has already been offering this), it's worth talking about what you can do with those miles!
Giant Mailbag
(01:42) - "I'm a YUGE fan of ya'll. I'm an Army National Guard member that puts in just enough active duty time to get Servicemembers Civil Relief Act benefits (waived annual fees). So I have so many luxury cards I get FAR more value from the cards than I do from my Guard paycheck.Ya'll have been a key factor in deciding to stay in the National Guard, so 'Thank You For Your Service'."
100K Vacay Challenge Update
(04:06) - By the time this airs, Greg will be heading to his destination for his Benchmark Trip. As a reminder, he's setting the bar for the rest of the challengers with a trip showcasing how far 100K Chase Ultimate Rewards points can go. (Once he's back, Tim, Nick, and Stephen will attempt to match or outdo his trip with alternate transferable points currencies.) Read more about that here!
Card News
(09:34) - Spirit Travel More credit card holders now get 2 free checked bags (Read more about this update here)
(11:11) - Amex will exclude gift cards from Hilton credits starting in 2026
(12:28) - Southwest debit card (Read more about the Southwest debit card here)
Read the View from the Wing article here.
Awards, Points, and More
(14:42) - Air France / KLM Promo: Earn 10,000 bonus Flying Blue miles when flying from the US to any destination served by Air France or KLM.
(18:16) - Avianca LifeMiles Award Sale
(20:19) - Transfer bonuses
(24:50) - Rove Miles transfer bonus (Use our referral link here.)
(27:25) - Capital One added transfer partners and also has some transfer bonuses
Main Event: Sweet-spot awards courtesy of Japan Airlines
(30:18) - How to get JAL miles
Learn more about the Best Uses of Japan Airlines Mileage Bank Miles here
(32:01) - The Bad News
(33:05) - Japan Airlines Mileage Bank 36-month hard expiration policy
(34:30) - Family restrictions on award redemption
(35:58) - Carrier-imposed surcharges
(36:19) - JAL Mileage Bank awards can not be changed (but they can be cancelled for a reasonable fee)
(36:56) - Best uses of Japan Airlines Mileage Bank
(42:54) - Japan Airlines partner awards
Question of the Week
(1:10:20) - Buying points isn't usually a good value unless you have a specific redemption in mind, but what about Atmos for 1.66 cents per point? (Especially with Rove miles?)
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Music Credit – “Ocean Deep” by Annie Yoder
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. |
| 0:11.0 | On today's show, City is going to be showering us with transfer bonuses, and we'll talk about incredible uses of Japan Airlines miles. |
| 0:19.8 | Frequent miler on the air starts now. |
| 0:23.9 | Today's main event, Sweet Spot Awards, courtesy of Japan Airlines. |
| 0:29.3 | So for a little while now, built rewards has offered one-to-one transfers to Japan Airlines. |
| 0:37.2 | But now, Capital One is making transfers available |
| 0:40.6 | to Japan Airlines as well. Not quite one-to-one, but still, that makes it an exciting new world |
| 0:49.5 | to go into and to investigate. And Nick has been diving into their award charts and discovering some |
| 0:56.9 | really awesome things about what you could do with Japan Airlines miles. That'll be the topic of |
| 1:02.7 | today's main event. Yeah, you know, it's been a lot of fun diving into it a little bit. I had |
| 1:07.4 | long heard about the positives with Japan Airlines Mileage Bank. And for years, |
| 1:12.3 | there was just no easy way to get the miles. But I knew that people, some people still did |
| 1:16.8 | transfer Marriott points to Japan Airlines Mileage Bank because the values were so good. And I've |
| 1:21.9 | long known that, but I hadn't really dug into it much until Capital One added them as a transfer |
| 1:26.6 | partner. And I'm really pleasantly surprised by what I've seen. We'll get more into that further into today's show. But for now, don't forget that if you want to jump ahead to that or you want to come back to something later on, you can always find the timestamps in the show notes. So just expand the show description to find that. That's also where you'll find links to more information about all the various things that we're talking about today. Wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to like this. |
| 1:48.2 | Give it a thumbs up. Leave us some stars for a review. Leave us a comment. We always appreciate |
| 1:52.8 | hearing from you. Now let's drag out this week's giant mailbag. Today's giant mail comes from |
| 1:58.3 | Zach. Zach writes, I'm a huge fan of y'all. |
| 2:04.5 | I'm an Army-Navy Guard member that puts in just enough active duty time to get |
| 2:10.0 | Scra benefits, which is service member Civil Relief Act, and he gets from that waived annual fees so some credit card |
| 2:20.3 | companies including American Express will waive the annual fees if you're an active duty military. |
| 2:26.2 | So he goes on to say, so I have so many luxury cards. I get far more value from the cards than I |
... |
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