Update 5/24/19: American Express is sending out more BLADE gift cards, this time for $295. Blade rides are currently $120 from Manhattan.
On occasion American Express sends out gifts to select Platinum cardholders, for example last year they sent out Amazon Echo’s. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of rhyme or reason why some cardholders are selected and others aren’t (e.g even those with really high spend aren’t always if ever targeted).
Some TPG readers have reported receiving a $250 gift card to BLADE. BLADE provides helicopter transport and airport transfers via helicopter. Rides start at $195 for scheduled flights between JFK and Manhattan, a BLADE Ultra passport will set you back $20,000 (but comes with $20,000 in BLADE credit and other freebies).
From the datapoints I’ve seen, only personal cardholders are receiving this $250 gift card and it seems to be highly targeted as well. It’s also not a true gift card as it expires on July 15th, so the window to use it is small. It would also be useful to know how this arrived if any readers also received one. I like these freebies, but I don’t think it’s a smart play to send out high value items to only a few select cardholders as it ends up causing resentment across the cardholder pass. I think Discover does a better job of this by sending small occasional gift cards to some cardholders.
