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Does buying airline miles count as travel for BofA travel rewards?

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yellowcake
Regular Contributor

Does buying airline miles count as travel for BofA travel rewards?

Thinking Southwest airlines, or Delta. Thanks for your help!
Message 1 of 4
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K-in-Boston
Credit Mentor

Re: Does buying airline miles count as travel for BofA travel rewards?

As long as the merchant codes as TRAVEL through the Visa or MasterCard network, it would as it is valid for credit on "any travel purchase."  Basically if the charge is indeed from the airline you should be fine; if it's a 3rd party and bills as ABC Web Services or something like that, it would not code as travel.

Message 2 of 4
NRB525
Super Contributor

Re: Does buying airline miles count as travel for BofA travel rewards?


@yellowcake wrote:
Thinking Southwest airlines, or Delta. Thanks for your help!

This would most likely be a terrible purchase. 

Delta will probably charge you 3c or so for the SkyMiles. 

The BofA card earned points at 1.5 per dollar, perhaps more. So effectively you earned 0.5 SkyMiles per dollar of spend on the BofA card, granted without an AF.

Typical redemptions of SkyMiles for tickets run at 1.2c to maybe 1.5c on a good day. 

 

It it might make sense on some updgrade tickets where redemption values may work out to a higher rate than 3c. 

 

For regular coach fares, however, it would be more efficient to use the BofA card to buy those with cash so you can apply the 1.5+c you earned already. 

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Message 3 of 4
wasCB14
Super Contributor

Re: Does buying airline miles count as travel for BofA travel rewards?

As NRB says, buying revenue tickets with the card and redeeming rewards against the cost of the tickets probably makes more sense than buying miles.

 

You might also consider getting an Amex ED and just transferring MRs to Delta. Of course, the FTF on ED and limited international Amex acceptance may be concerns for you.

 

$10k spend on BofA @ 2.625% (assuming Platinum Honors in a best case scenario) = $262.50. For $280 you could buy 8,000 SkyMiles (3.5 cpp unless you can buy them at a discount).

 

$10k spend on ED @ 1x MR (ignoring any grocery spend or transaction count bonuses in a worst case scenario) gives 10k MRs. 10k MRs plus a $6 fee yields 10k SkyMiles.

Personal spend: Amex Gold, Amex Schwab Plat., BofA PR+CCR(x2), Costco
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