As part of our efforts to give more attention to some of the lesser known card issuers we bring you the “Sun Country Airlines Ufly Rewards Credit Card“. This card is issued by First National Bank of Omaha and it looks like it was first released in June, 2014. Below are the key selling points of the card, along with our verdict.
Contents
Key Selling Points
- Receive a 40,000 points as a sign up bonus when you spend $500 or more within the first three billing cycles
- $69 Annual fee is waived for the first year
- Card earns at the following rates:
- 4 points per $1 spent on qualifying on-board purchases
- 2 points per $1 spent on qualifying Sun Country Airlines products and services, including tickets and upgrades
- 1 point per $1 spent on everything else
- 0% intro APR on purchases for your first 6 billing cycles, then an APR of 14.99% to 18.99% based on your credit worthiness
- 5,000 bonus points each year you put $10,000 or more in spend on your card
About Sun Country Airlines
They are based out of Minneapolis/St. Paul. All of their aircraft are currently Boeign 737 Next-Generation airplanes and offer economy and first class cabins.
They have mostly domestic flights, but do also fly to the Carribean, Mexico & Costa Rica. For a short period of time they also offered a seasonal service to London Stansted but they now offer a seasonal flight to London Gatwick instead.
Our Verdict
One thing that is surprising is that it looks like a free FICO score is not offered on this card, this usually comes standard with all FNBO issued cards. This doesn’t really matter though as so many other card issuers offer these scores for free. Â As the earn rate is low (1x) and there are no category bonuses apart from Sun Country purchases this card really only makes sense in two circumstances:
- You sign up purely for the sign up bonus
- You fly with Sun Country a lot
I’m going to assume that my readers don’t fly with Sun Country at all and just focus on the 40,000 point sign up bonus.
How much are points worth?
Sun Country uses a system similar to Southwest. As long as there are seats available, you can book them using points. Unfortunately there is no fixed value to points and no award chart that I was able to find, you basically just need to do a search and then select “Ufly points” instead of dollars.
Click here to start searching Sun Country using points.
The value seems to vary by quite a lot depending on which flights you select. In some instances we saw a value of 0.8¢ per point and others you’d see value at over 1.2¢ per point. There is also no option to redeem your points for giftcards or merchandise, only flights and upgrades are available.
Update: As of June 7th, 2016 points are worth  0.769¢ if you book for premium travel dates and 0.909¢ per point for all other dates. Dates are listed below:
One downside is that if you book award travel within 7 days of departure their is a fixed fee of 5,000 points in addition to what you’d normally pay.
One upside is that they allow you to pool your points with up to 9 other people, this means if you’re just short on points you can get some from a friend or family member. Mom doesn’t care for booking award flights? Use her points and buy her something nice instead! This isn’t as good as being able to transfer points to anybody you like for free, but at least it’s something.
Final Thoughts
The sign up bonus on this card is worth between $363.9-$307.9 depending on the dates you want to fly. It’s not the best bonus ever, but could provide some good value especially if you’re in the Minneapolis area.
If I lived in Minneapolis I might consider this card, but there are other cards I’d be signing up for first. What are your thoughts on this card? Will you sign up for it? What are some other unknown credit cards that are worth taking a look at?
