The Offer
- The U.S Bank Korean Air SKYPASS personal and business cards have had their bonuses increase to 30,000 miles after $2,000 in spend. The standard bonus on these cards is 15,000 miles after first purchase.
- Annual fee of $80 on personal card not waived first year
- Annual fee of $75 on business card not waived first year
Card Benefits
The personal cards and business cards are virtually the same, personal comes with $1,000,000 in travel accident insurance and business comes with $500,000.
- 2 Korean Air VIP Lounge coupons each year
- Card earns at following rates:
- 2x miles per $1 spent on all Korean Air ticket purchases
- 1x mile per $1 spent on all purchases
- Receive 2,000 miles on card renewal
- Valid until June 30th, 2015
- No foreign transaction fee (based on credit worthiness)
Our Verdict
Targeted offers for 40,000 miles are fairly regular, they also recently offered a 15,000 miles (10,000 miles for business card) and a $100 statement credit without the annual fees being waived. This 30,000 mile offer is much better, problem being that 30,000 miles still isn’t enough for most award flights people want to take. I’ll be passing on this offer. This 30,000 mile offer comes around fairly frequently.
William, I plan to move to South Korea this year. I’m planning to apply for some Airline cards soon for the bonus miles, and I would be interested to know your opinion of the best loyalty program/frequent flyer program for travel in Asia. I would like to visit other Asian countries while living in South Korea, and I’m not certain how far my current (small) collection of points with various points programs will take me.
I just closed this card last week. Can I reapply and get the bonus or it’s not churnable?
US Bank will give you the bonus if you’re approved, but they are sticklers for approval: https://www.doctorofcredit.com/list-of-churnable-credit-cards/#US_Bank
Note: For a more efficient way to earn Korean Airlines miles through spending on credit cards, and also for more bonus points, consider getting a Starwood credit card, or a card earning Ultimate Rewards points. Starpoints, for example, transfer to Korean at a 1:1 ratio, plus a 25% bonus for every 20,000 points transferred. And cards earning Ultimate Rewards points have lots of bonuses for certain types of spending.
So these plus the miles from Korean’s credit cards should get you lots of miles to go wherever you want.
Can you buy gift cards using Amex? The one easy way to meet spend using serve is shutting down.
What did you guys do to get targeted for 40k? Or why do you suspect you were targeted?
I have had a single US Bank card for several years with no other applications since then with them. I also set up a Korean Air account at some point that I never used. If I had to guess, I would think it’s the latter that did it, given that the offer came written in both English and Korean (and there seems to be more info in Korean).
Also worth noting: my 40k offer has no annual fee for the first year.
I also got targeted for the 40k for $2500 spend. But I have my eye on the amex business gold 75k offer for $5k (targeted) and SPG 35k. What do you think the odds of approval are for the korean air after those two? Probably pretty low since it’s US Bank, right? All three bureaus over 770 btw, 9 HP on EX.
I was targeted for 40k , what can I redeem these points for?
Here’s the complete award chart. https://www.koreanair.com/global/en/skypass/redeem.html#cta-large=/global/en/skypass/redeem/skyteam-awards/skyteam-bonus-north-america.html
A popular redemption option is to go to Hawaii. Hawaii is considered part of the North America region, and a round-trip economy ticket is 25 000. A first class ticket is 45 000, so you’d almost have enough for that.
If you have access to more of them through SPG or Ultimate Rewards, you can use them for really good business / first class availability on Korean Air itself (one-ways allowed). You also have access to premium class awards on Skyteam (plus a few more) partners for round-trips, including first class redemptions which most accessible Skyteam programs don’t allow, e.g. Delta, Flying Blue, Aeromexico.