What is happening?

Guess which dormant blog whose meager remaining traffic is entirely due to a series of posts about a churning hack that has been defunct for over a year is back with a brand new post? If you guessed, “Windbag Miles,” you are a genius! What stunning development in the world of credit cards, points, and miles could lure me out of semi-retirement? Honestly, I just feel like rambling about stuff for a while. In past times I would just head over to X.com and X a bunch of times and then privately seethe about how few likes I got on my Xs and how no one wanted to re-X me, and that would be that. But, because I refuse to contribute to the unjust enrichment of Elun Mosk – no matter how brilliantly he re-names very recognizable companies whose products have become both a noun and a verb– I have solemnly refused to X since his takeover was complete. So, here I am, back on my blog where I am unencumbered by both character limits as well as the psychic pain that comes from being a cog in the boneheaded decades-long “PICK ME” tantrum of a megalomaniacal wannabe Arthur Fortune whose greatest desire is for Joe Rogan to compliment his bench press. That’s right, I’m extremely hardcore.

Okay, with that out of the way, the reason I felt motivated to write today came out of a conversation I had with friend-of-the-blog Patrick Pibb about the state of the credit card landscape. The catalyst was the announcement by Doc o’ Credit about how Amex is moving to once-per-family rules on Delta cards, and I felt like for once in my time in this fucking hobby, a prediction I made was coming true. See, for reference, Windbag Miles in 2021:

​​One of the most frustrating things about the hobby in general is shifting goalposts. You see it in awards being devalued, where you save and save and then as soon as you’re ready to use your miles, you don’t have enough. However, another big way the goalposts shift is with updates to the way banks restrict who can earn sign-up bonuses or even open cards in the first place. This was painfully apparent a couple years ago to anyone who spent 18 months with their foot off the gas while waiting to get under 5/24 and then realized that Chase had increased the bonus restriction on the Sapphire cards from 24 to 48 months. Citi did something similar when they changed the restriction on cards to one bonus per card family, rather than per card. Citi has started to change some of those rules back, but now they’re taking a page from Chase’s book and dabbling in 48 month language. Barclay has an unofficial 6/24 policy that they started using without notice. And on and on.

So, while I’ll feel mighty stupid if the Delta Gold card has a 100k bonus next month, I’ll feel mightier smarter if Amex adopts a once-per-family rule out of the blue (something I’m convinced will happen, although I’ve been convinced of this since 2018, so maybe don’t put too much stock in my predictions).

My point in that post was that I kept getting bonuses during the pandemic even though I had no use for them, and that doing this violated one of the key tenets of the hobby: EARN AND BURN. During the pandemic, I couldn’t burn due to travel being shut down. After travel was opened back up, I still couldn’t burn due to my income taking such a hit that I couldn’t afford to travel. But, I could still earn points, and earn points I did. 

I still agree with my conclusion from a couple years ago, which is that you should earn as many points as you can, all of the time. Sure, points will only devalue over time, but what we’ve seen time and time again is that having a big stash of rapidly devaluing points is still worth vastly more than earning no points at all because by the time you had a use for the points and signed up for the card, the bank had changed the rules so you could no longer get the points in the first place. In fact, one of my counterarguments to the worthlessness of SkyMiles (no, not even after Delta’s latest fuckery will I adopt the borderline racist moniker “SkyPesos”) was that you could pretty easily rack up half a million Delta miles by speedrunning Amex’s Delta card portfolio, which is something you couldn’t do with either American or United. Now, of course, Amex is tightening the purse strings on their giant purse of SkyMiles, and as the entire SkyMiles program teeters on the brink of uselessness, I started reflecting on where we’ve been and where we are now.

I missed the golden age of churning – back when you could open up 24 Alaska cards in a year and exclusively fly Emirates first class around the world. Back when you could get millions of AA miles due to a quirk in Citi’s application process and use them to get Cathay Pacific to hook an IV of Krug n’ Kaviar straight into your veins. In fact, when I got into churning, it was right after Amex instituted a once-per-lifetime rule on sign-up bonuses, and the relevant thread announcing the move on FlyerTalk was titled “Put a Fork In It.” But for me, that was millions of miles ago, and the hobby lived on. It survived 5/24, it survived the “Great Bonvoying,” and it will probably survive whatever it is that’s happening now. In fact, the only thing I actually think would portend the end would be a crackdown on interchange fees, but since such a move would mean the immediate bankruptcy of all four major airlines, I would expect massive loopholes to be negotiated during the implementation of said crackdown. (Hopefully, right?)

I think it’s important to view the evolution of the hobby holistically, because in some ways it’s better now than ever before. How could I possibly defend something so completely fucking moronic? Well, let me at least try. Let’s all close our eyes and time warp back to the heady days of 2014, when you could still get bonuses on Amex and Chase cards once a year. Sure, these bonuses were rarely more than 50k points (if that), but redemption rates were similarly inexpensive. Aeroplan offered transatlantic business class flights for a mere 45,000 miles. I can’t remember what United’s chart was, but it had a chart, and that’s what mattered. Delta was about to abandon charts, and we felt like offering business class awards for 90,000 miles was outrageous. Yes, things were good… until you stepped on the plane. That United award got you 8-across business class seats with no storage and a decidedly un-businessy hostel vibe. Your FlyingBlue award got you a choice between 2-2-2 angle flat seats on Air France or 2-2-2 flat bed seats on KLM… IF you were lucky enough to avoid their older planes that still had worn-out recliners. Herringbone seats were still innovative, which was great for you if you wanted to fly Virgin Atlantic or Air Canada. I don’t remember what American had back then but I bet it sucked.

My point is that only focusing on the flights that you could buy at those mid 2010s bargain rates is to ignore what you were actually buying. Nowadays, sure you’ll have to pay way more for premium travel, but that travel is also way more premium. (Unless, of course, you fly Delta and wind up on one of their 767s, which have had the same butt-ass seats throughout the entire timeline I’m describing. SkyMiles are so worthless, we should name them after some sort of worthless currency, amirite?)

One of the things that makes the current moment so ripe for past reflection is that I honestly don’t know where things are going. I know American Airlines is going to nuke their redemption rates soon and I’m going to mourn the loss of the last reasonably-priced transatlantic awards. I know Delta is going to cross the million-mile award threshold soon. I know more and more seats are going to have doors even though doors are stupid. But aside from that, I’m not really sure.

My fear is that we’re actually moving backwards, and that a year or two from now, we’ll have business class products that are half as good as what we have now, coupled with award rates that are higher than ever. To wit, after almost being phased out save for a couple holdouts, herringbone seats are back with a vengeance. Everyone fucking hated these seats, but apparently the only way to have a passable business class product on a narrowbody plane is to have a herringbone seat, so here we are. American is revamping their A321T with herringbone seats, and United is following suit. JetBlue acted like the reinvented the wheel because they put in a herringbone seat but with FLANNEL, as if rubbing the fabric equivalent of Ron Swanson’s mustache for the duration of a transcontinental flight will make up for the fact that you can’t move your arms or legs due to the seat being half the width of your body.

At the same time, more and more airlines are segmenting business class, and I wonder how long it will be before that translates to saver awards (or whatever the equivalent of a saver award is in this brave new chartless world). British Airways already charges for seats in business class, and Finnair is probably going to start soon as well. How long before lounge access and checked bags aren’t included either? (Well, aside from Air Canada, who already excludes award tickets from their top-end lounge.) Or on-board meals? Honestly, business class is about the seat, so it wouldn’t be the end of the world for this to happen, although you just know that the press release announcing it would make a big deal about offering consumers more choice than ever before, and then like two days later, award prices would double so you pay more than ever to get less.

And to make matters worse, we’re in a pronounced downswing in the relative easiness of earning miles. There was a fertile period post-pandemic when Amex was absolutely making it rain with points, but those times are over and we’re stuck farming fallow ground. More and more restrictions are piling up – and the Delta Amex once-per-family rule is only the latest example. In fact, when doing some research before writing this post, I found new-to-me language on Amex’s site that suggests that they’re going to get even more restrictive about bonuses:

You also may not be eligible to receive a welcome offer based on various factors, such as your history with credit card balance transfers, your history as an American Express Card Member, the number of credit cards that you have opened and closed and other factors.

Yikes. Although, if there’s one thing I’m sure of in this crazy world, it’s that churners will continue to find a way. I do believe that the boom times will return when the card issuers’ pendulum swings from “the rewards program is too expensive” back over to “not enough people are signing up for cards.” I have no idea when that will happen, though, so in the meantime I’m just trying to capitalize on whatever offers I can find in order to keep at least some points coming in while waiting out the end of these lean times. 

Unless congress steps in and shuts it all down, in which case, “Put a Fork In It.”