Hilton Aspire Card $200 Flight Credit: How It Works – One Mile at a Time

July 14, 2024

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Link: Apply now for the Hilton Honors American Express Aspire Card

The Hilton Honors American Express Aspire Card (Review) is one of the best value hotel credit cards around, thanks to the incredible benefits the card offers.

The card has a hefty annual fee of $550, but with benefits like Hilton Honors Diamond status, a free annual night reward, $400 in hotel credits per year, and $200 in flight credits per year, I think the amount is easily justified.

In this post, I want to take a closer look at how the card’s $200 annual flight credit works. While this benefit (annoyingly) must be used quarterly, I’ve found it very easy to use and wanted to share the details with you.

Hilton Aspire Card $200 Flight Credit Details

The Hilton Aspire Card offers up to $200 in flight statement credits per calendar year in the form of a $50 credit per quarter. Naturally, there are some terms and conditions to be aware of.

The $200 credit is split into $50 credits per quarter, so you can use one from January to March, one from April to June, one from July to September, and one from October to December.
Credits can be applied to tickets purchased directly with the airline or through amextravel.com.
To qualify for this benefit, the airfare purchased must be for a scheduled flight on a passenger airline.
This credit does not apply to ticket change or cancellation fees or ticket purchases made through a third party.
After a qualifying purchase, it may take 8-12 weeks for the statement credit to appear, although in most cases it may appear sooner.
Eligible purchases can be made by either the primary cardholder or an authorized user, but only a maximum of $200 in credits can be earned in the aggregate each year.
No registration is required to take advantage of this offer, just use your card to make an eligible purchase.

Book a flight with a $50 quarterly credit

How to use the $200 flight credit from the Hilton Aspire Card

The Amex airfare credit that comes with products like the Platinum Card® from American Express ( review ) can be tricky to use because it specifically excludes airfare and only applies to airfare, something that many of us don’t use very often. In comparison, the Hilton Aspire Card credit is great because it’s only good for airfare.

Now, the problem is, I don’t want to buy all my flights with my Hilton Aspire card because I’m trying to maximize my points on airline ticket purchases. So, what’s my strategy? Well, every quarter, I’ll book a very cheap ticket (at least $50) with my Hilton Aspire card and receive a $50 credit each quarter.

Airlines don’t charge change fees these days (most of the time, at least for non-basic economy tickets), so you can always cancel the ticket and save the money as credits to book another flight. Since I fly American Airlines a lot, that’s where I end up using my credits.

By the way, here’s another way I used this credit, although it wasn’t intentional: I have the Hilton Aspire card attached to my American Airlines AAdvantage profile (because I book a ticket with Hilton Aspire at least once a quarter).

I accidentally started charging my American Airlines monthly Wi-Fi subscription fee to my card, then realized they refunded that fee with flight credits too. I can’t guarantee this will work for everyone, but it doesn’t hurt to know.

Of course, in an ideal world, you wouldn’t have to redeem this credit every quarter, but on the other hand, we’ve gotten pretty used to our Amex credit being split into installments.

To me, this is one of the benefits that justifies the card’s $550 annual fee. In my view, the Hilton resort credits and flight credits help offset most of the annual fee, while the annual free night award and Hilton Honors Diamond status are what really make this card special and provide exceptional value.

It’s easy to use your $50 credit every quarter

Conclusion

Among the many valuable benefits the Hilton Aspire Card offers is a $200 annual flight credit, which is a quarterly credit, meaning you earn up to $50 in statement credit every three months to apply toward eligible flight purchases.

I end up buying a cheap flight on this card about once a quarter. Ideally it’s a ticket I actually fly, but if not, I can buy a flexible ticket (most airline tickets are flexible these days) and always apply the credit to another ticket.

What was your experience using the $200 flight credit from your Hilton Aspire Card?