While I was doing a 4th Quarter Review of my Credit Card Perks and Benefits, I saw that I still had a sizable Airline Fee Credit left on my Hilton Aspire card.
The credit is $250 a year and American Express makes you select just one airline to use it on. Mine was set to Southwest Airlines, but we didn’t fly a lot with them this year so I still had $210 left.
I love the Aspire card, but it has a high annual fee of $450. I count on using the Priority Pass Benefit, Free Night Certificate, $250 Resort Credit, and the $250 Airline Fee Credit to get enough value from the card to offset the fee.
The Airline Fee credit isn’t always straightforward to use and what triggers it can vary from airline to airline. I recently read that a Southwest flight under $100 might trigger the credit. Since we are about to book flights for a trip in February, it seemed like a good time to test it.
The plan was to book any flight under $100 and charge it to my Aspire card. I booked a $98.98 flight to Chicago and then waited for it to code. When I saw that it did indeed trigger the credit, I booked a second flight for $94.58. It also triggered the credit!
Woo Hoo! I was able to get reimbursed for both flights and ended up using all but $16 of my Airline Fee Credit for 2023!
It only took a few days to book the flights, wait for them to code, and receive the credits to my account.
A bonus that I hadn’t planned on was earning 7 points per dollar on the purchase. So I also earned 765 Hilton points!
The next step was canceling the flights on Southwest. Since I bought Wanna Getaway flights, they refunded the purchase as a Travel Credit. Now I have $193.56 to use toward booking our flights to Florida in February.
Final Thoughts
As a Budget Traveler, I strive to get the maximum value from my credit cards and love a great Double or Triple Dip.
There was no guarantee that this would work as well as it did. But in this situation, I had nothing to lose. At worst, I wouldn’t have received the Airline Fee Credit but still would have earned the 7X points and the Southwest Travel Credit.
To be safe, I proceeded cautiously and booked one test flight to ensure it would work before going all in. A big thanks to The Frequent Miler website and the travel blogger community who provided this tip and the data points that it would work.
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