In Tim’s post about the Alaska Airlines/Hawaiian Airlines merger yesterday, he noted that Bilt Rewards had removed Hawaiian as a transfer partner. We therefore wanted to publish this separate post to highlight that change just in case you missed it amongst the main Alaska/Hawaiian news.
This came to light after JT Genter at Award Wallet noticed that the Hawaiian Airlines transfer guide on the Bilt Rewards website was now displaying a 404 error message.
As our original 3-year agreement came to a close with HA, we were confident as reported this morning that the merger with AS would be approved. Given we are the only transfer partner Alaska has at a 1:1 ratio, the ability to book Hawaiian with Bilt points should return shortly.
— Richard Kerr (@KerrPoints) August 20, 2024
JT subsequently published this post where he highlights that Bilt in fact stopped offering Hawaiian as a transfer partner at the end of May. Apparently in late May Bilt had put a small notification over the Hawaiian Airlines option that “Hawaiian Airlines is pausing point transfers starting 5/31”. On June 1 though, Hawaiian Airlines completely disappeared as a transfer partner in the app, a change that largely went unnoticed.
Bilt clearly knew that this partnership would be ending on a specific date, so it’s disappointing that they once again neglected to give its customers any kind of proper heads up about an upcoming negative change to the program, other than hiding away in the app that points transfers would be paused – and specifically not stating that they’d be ending permanently. This is sadly the latest in an increasingly long line of poor-to-non-existent communication from Bilt about upcoming negative changes.
Ultimately this probably isn’t affecting too many people seeing as a) transferring Bilt points to Hawaiian wasn’t a great redemption option and b) very few people seem to have noticed this change. However, it’s a shame that rather than being open, honest and upfront about future changes that could have a negative impact on its customers, they’re instead repeatedly choosing to hide it away. Hopefully they start making more effort to not destroy the goodwill they Bilt (ahem) up over the last few years.
The post Another no notice, no communication Bilt change: No more Hawaiian Airlines as transfer partner appeared first on Frequent Miler. Frequent Miler may receive compensation from CHASE. American Express, Capital One, or other partners.