Here’s the latest miles, points, travel, and deals news:
Bilt’s November Etihad Bonus
Bilt cardholders can score an Etihad Guest transfer bonus on November 1, 2025, with the percentage varying by elite status: Blue members get 25%, Silver gets 50%, Gold earns 75%, and Platinum members receive a full 100% bonus when moving points between 12:00AM ET and 11:59PM PT.
The standard Rent Day benefits also apply, meaning you’ll earn double points on all purchases throughout the day—6x on dining, 4x on travel, and 2x on everything else (rent still earns 1x), with a cap of 1,000 bonus points per month.
Etihad Guest miles work best for booking Etihad’s own premium cabin flights, since the airline has been restricting award availability to partners like American AAdvantage, making direct redemptions through Etihad Guest increasingly necessary for business and first class seats.
The program has some downsides to consider, including high redemption rates for premium cabins, substantial carrier-imposed surcharges on awards, strict mileage expiration policies, and hefty cancellation fees that make speculative transfers risky.
Capital One’s 48-Month Restriction
Capital One updated the welcome bonus terms for the Venture X, Venture, and VentureOne cards to prevent you from earning a signup bonus if you’ve received one on any card within the Venture family in the past 48 months — though the Venture X Business Card isn’t included in this restriction.
The 48-month countdown starts when your bonus posts (not when you open the card), and while some cardholders report still receiving both bonuses despite the new language, the updated terms suggest Capital One plans to enforce this rule consistently going forward.
Chase Confirms Reserve Upgrade Offers
Chase just confirmed on Reddit that upgrade offers from the Sapphire Preferred to the Reserve are finally coming soon, marking a major shift since the bank has never offered bonus points for product changes despite competitors like Amex doing so for years.
The announcement comes after Chase raised the Reserve’s annual fee from $550 to $795 and denied welcome bonuses to most existing Preferred cardholders who applied for the revamped card, while the bank also confirmed it’s expanding its dining program beyond the current 300+ restaurants in 25 cities and adding more hotels to The Edit collection.
T-Mobile Ends Autopay Workaround
T-Mobile closed the loophole that let you set up autopay with a debit card but pay manually with a credit card before the due date, allowing you to keep the $5-per-line autopay discount (maxing at $40 monthly) while earning credit card rewards.
Now any credit card payment invalidates the autopay discount for the next billing cycle, which particularly impacts those using American Express Business Platinum cards for the $10 monthly wireless credit since losing the autopay discount offsets much of the value from rewards and cellphone insurance.
Delta’s New Riyadh Route
Delta will start flying nonstop from Atlanta to Riyadh in October 2026, operating three times weekly on the A350-900 with all four cabin classes (Delta One, Premium Select, Comfort, and Main Cabin).
This route is over 7,283 miles long—one of Delta’s longest—and will connect Saudi travelers to 150+ U.S. cities through Atlanta, though it’s launching about a year later than originally planned when Delta and Riyadh Air signed their partnership deal in July 2024.
United Diverts Over Dropped Laptop
A United Airlines Boeing 767 flying from Washington Dulles to Rome on October 15, 2025, turned back about an hour into the flight after a passenger somehow dropped their turned-on laptop into the cargo hold — and the device landed in an area without fire suppression.
The plane returned to Dulles about 2 hours after takeoff, then departed again nearly three hours later, ultimately arriving in Rome over four hours behind schedule.
