The JetBlue Plus Card
REVIEW

The BarclayCard JetBlue Plus is arguably the best airline and frequent flyer card mainly because you can up to double the points and miles that you earn from buying your tickets just from having the card. No other card we know offers such a boost.

In 2015, both American Express and Jetblue announced that they were ending their partnership with regards to their affinity card agreement. Barclays Bank is now Jetblue's new partner and they launched their cards in March 2016. There are two consumer cards and a business card. The one that we will be reviewing here is the higher end version (which comes with an annual fee).

6X on JetBlue Purchases - This is considerably more than most of it's peers as most only allow you to earn 2X on their airline tickets. Furthermore, you can actually earn even more points. Here is how it is done. If you are a TrueBlue member (which I assume you are), you will earn a base of 3X points when you book a Jetblue Flight. You will also earn anywhere from 3 to 5 points for booking on their website depending on the type of flight you book (Blue - 3 Pts, Blue Plus - 4 puts and Blue Flex - 5 pts). So with this card, you will actually earn anywhere between 12 points and 14 points if you book your flight with Jetblue's website and if you have a JetBlue frequent flyer account.

2X on Restaurants and Grocery Stores - This is also great because it gives you more incentive to use this card for everyday spend.

1X for regular purchases

Annual Fee : $99. First, let us get this out of the way. The annual fee (for the benefits you get is actually pretty good as we shall see later).

Free First Checked Bag - This feature is common in most other frequent flyer cards so one would expect this feature. Here is how it works for this card. You can have your first checked bag free for yourself and up to three traveling companion. You would have to book all the flights with the card and you would have to enter your frequent flyer number when you book it. Question is how much can you save? It cost $20 if you check in your bag online or at the kiosk or $25 at the ticket counter. If you have three traveling companions (most likely your family, then you can save anywhere from $80 to $100. This will be helpful when you are booking "blue level" flights. If you are booking "blue plus" or "blue flex" tickets, your first checked bags will be free regardless.

No Foreign Transaction Fee - Not all airline cards have this feature. But one would assume that a frequent flyer would do some international travel once in a while and this is a really handy feature.

Chip Technology - This used to be a big deal but there are more cards with this feature. Soon, all cards in the US will be Chip enabled.

50% savings on eligible inflight purchases including cocktails, food and movies. This trend started with Delta and is now a common feature. Please note that wireless internet access and duty-free purchases do not count.

$100 statement credit after you purchase a Getaways vacation package with your card

Anniversary Bonus - You will get 5,000 bonus miles every anniversary. This is obviously an incentive to have this card for the long term.

Get 10% of your points back every time you redeem to use toward your next redemption. BarclayCard started this feature with the Arrival card and it is now a standard feature of their rewards card. This is another feature that incentizes you to keep using the card.

Get TrueBlue Mosaic benefits for one year after you spend $50,000 or more on purchases annually with your card.

Sign Up Bonus - Earn 30,000 Bonus Points after you spend $1,000 on purchases in the first 90 days.

To be honest, we can go through all frequent flyer cards. But it would be pointless because if you are interested in a JetBlue card, what Delta or American Airlines card offer is really irrelevant. That being said, this is the only card that gives you 6X for ticket purchases. So for this review, I'll highlight the differences with JetBlue's other no annual version of this card.

The main difference between the no annual fee version and this card is that you only earn 3X for Jetblue purchases (which is still very good compared to other airline cards) and you also will not receive most of the benefits that you get with this card.

The JetBlue Plus Card is arguably one of (if not) the best frequent flyer card. The key reason is because you can earn 6X points for ticket purchases. Most other cards allow you to 2X or at best 3X points for ticket purchases. 2X or 6X may not mean a lot if the frequent flyer program isn't worth much. But lots of industry pundits have figured that one TruBlue point is at least worth 1.45 cents or 1.45%. In the example that we showed earlier, it was worth 1.69 cents.

Because you can earn 3X points as a FF member and an additional 3X to 5X points for booking directly through their website, an additional 6X from using this card means that you can earn points twice as fast. Assuming you earn 12X points, it means that you have only spent 8.3 cents to acquire one point.

Another great feature of this card is that you can get Elite status (Mosaic) through credit card spending ($50,000 a year). There are a couple of cards that offer such feature. For example, both the Delta Reserve and United Club Card allows you to get elite status based on card spending. But these cards come with a hefty $450 annual fee (in contrast, it is only $99 for this card).

If you are a frequent JetBlue flyer and you live around their hubs, then this card is an absolute no-brainer.