I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it for clarification: The easiest way to earn miles and points for award travel is by opening a new credit card to take advantage of a welcome offer of bonus points. Typically, a welcome offer is 50,000-100,000 bonus miles/points after spending $3k-$5k in the first three months, but offers vary.
My family charges all of our spending/bills on credit cards, and we pay off the balances in full each month. I’m always on the lookout for our next great credit card offer to repeat the process and add more miles and points to my travel stash. See my Beginner’s Guide: 7 Steps to Free Travel with Miles and Points.
Due to buying a new house, I’ve been on a self-imposed hiatus of new credit cards for the last few months. But now, I’m ready to get back in the game.
Hawaiian Airlines Business Mastercard
I applied for and was approved for the Barclays Hawaiian Airlines Business Mastercard (non-affiliate link).
- 50,000 bonus miles after spending $4000 in the first 90 days
- One-time 50% off companion ticket for round-trip flights between North America mainland and Hawaii
- No foreign transaction fees
- $99 annual fee
Is this the best credit card welcome offer out there? Not by a long shot. In fact, the welcome bonus on this card has been higher in the past.
However, due to the merger between Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines, both this business card and the personal version will be going away soon since Alaska Airlines cards are with Bank of America. I already have both the personal and business versions of the Alaska Airlines cards, as well as the personal version of the Hawaiian Airlines card. This business card is the only one I’m missing. And, getting 50,000 miles for just the $99 annual fee and a relatively low spending requirement is a no-brainer for me.
Nobody knows exactly when Barclays will stop accepting applications for these Hawaiian Airlines cards. But until then, you can have both the Alaska cards and the Hawaiian cards and earn welcome bonuses on all of them. You can convert Hawaiian miles to Alaska miles easily online.
Alaska miles are very valuable to me since Alaska partners with American Airlines and I live near an AA hub. I used Alaska miles to book flights on AA to Florida for spring break. In addition, I used Alaska miles to book flights to Japan on Japan Airlines (trip coming up this summer!). I’m confident I can put these miles to good use for award flights to Europe next year or domestic flights for smaller trips.
Approval Process
Barclays can be stingy on card approvals. You may not be approved if you’ve opened 6 or more new cards in the past 24 months from any bank (see this post for more information). I’m currently at 5/24, and my application went to pending status. A few days later, Barclays called me, asked me to verify some information, and approved me for the card.
Are you planning to apply for the Barclays Hawaiian Airlines credit cards before they go away?
Hi Nancy –
I applied for the biz card too back in August or so. It also went pending and I called and they asked several trivial questions but then I was told that is was going to be passed on for processing and that it could be up to a month before I get an approval. When I first heard this, I was like ‘wtf?’. Although they seemed confident that it would get approved. So about a month later, it was approved. This was my first Barclays biz card approved ever!
@GBSanDiego I’m glad you got approved! A month seems like a long time, but maybe they were inundated with applications due to the merger.