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If you follow many of the travel blogs, you’ll have probably heard of the recent promotion that JetBlue is offering, where they will match (PLUS some) any balance that you have in your Virgin America Elevate account. I assume this is an attempt to woo Virgin America travelers who may not be happy with the airline’s upcoming purchase by Alaska Airlines.
Jet Blue / Virgin America Promotion details
You can look at the full details of the promotion here. Basically, it’s fairly simple though – based on however many Virgin America Elevate points you have, Jet Blue will give you a certain amount of JetBlue TrueBlue points
Note that this is not a point TRANSFER – it’s just a straight out GIFT from JetBlue. One other thing I’ll mention is that I have heard talk of some unscrupulous folks trying to somehow photoshop or alter their Elevate point balance in order to reach the maximum value. While I realize sometimes these types of deals involve grey area, to me at least, that would be straight out wrong.
Depending on how many Virgin America points you have, some people have talked about transferring in points from SPG or Citi ThankYou points
The only other thing that you have to do is book and fly a roundtrip JetBlue flight by August 31st. Note that you have to book the flight AFTER you successfully register for the promotion. Miles to Memories has some additional details on the promotion.
Why I’m passing up on the 75,000 TruBlue points (~$1050 in value)
I thought long and hard about doing it, since 75,000 TrueBlue points has a value of somewhere around $1,050. In the end, I’ve decided I’m going to pass
I liked Free-quent Flyer’s take – “let me gently remind my readers that the point of travel hacking is not to accumulate as many points as possible in as many programs as possible, but rather to pay for the trips you actually want to take, while spending as little money as possible”
And the fact of the matter is, not only would the requirement to take a JetBlue flight be fairly onerous for me (closest airports would be CLE or PIT, both 3-4 hour drives just to GET there), even then the points themselves would not be as useful, since I’d have to make my way to a JetBlue served city in order to USE them.
Did you enroll in the JetBlue point match? Is my reasoning way off?
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
You can obviously let someone with a closer airport to jet blue use the miles and it’s a no-brainer in the sense that, as you state, it is not a transfer but a gift. You still get the virgin miles which, at the very least, will end up being Alaska miles.
this is one of the BEST promotions we have seen in years amidst all the devaluations and degradations of programs.
Bear in mind jetBlue points can be exchanged through points.com – I just topped up my IHG balance from TrueBlue last week at a ratio of about 8:5
There’s a maximum exchange amount of 50K TrueBlue points allowed per year – which would get approx 31K IHG.
There are some other options too, with various values.
Doesn’t make it any easier for you to take the trip to earn the points but gives a few more options for using them maybe.
I’m actually using some Southwest miles to fly MSY-FLL, so that I can spend $106 for FLL-JAX and back. Right now, B6 only flies from MSY to BOS and JFK, but the addition of MSY-FLL this September will make JetBlue work very well to the Caribbean. I already got the JetBlue Plus credit card, and I already had over 20k in VX Elevate. VX doesn’t even fly to MSY, but I can and will use the miles with partners. The Southwest Companion pass makes it inexpensive for two people to reposition for international flights (and l have to connect for almost all international flights anyway).
It’s great to hear this sentiment from a blogger. Blogs provide lots of value, but sometimes I think we as readers get caught up in this idea that we HAVE to maximize value at any cost, and I think that you ultimately get hacked when you devote so much time, energy, and money that it outweighs the reward of in this case the status match.
Anyway, nice post.
You can book mint on B6 for roughly 45k each way. After the three bonuses I got for cc signup plus this promo I will have close to 200k on B6. LAX-JFk on AA is now 50k each way so this is a much better deal as there are no blackout dates and if you book on first day schedule is open you can easily get the 45k rate. Sucks you are in the middle!
I signed up for this promotion as I have 100,000 Elevate points in my account (they are quite good for Virgin Australia trips and I did enjoy a one way Virgin Atlantic trip with Elevate points). Given your local airports I can understand your reluctance for any personal use. I plan to try Mint with these extra points in my account so it is a win-win.
If you have top status with a major US airlines, those JetBlue points may be worth much less than $1000. Lets say you almost always get upgrade on AA as an Ex Plat. A $200 economy ticket on AA from JFK to LAX upgraded to biz class would be the equivalent of a $600 JetBlue mint class ticket. So $1000 JetBlue points are actually worth less than $400 in this case