How to Cash Out $100 Penfed PathFinder Travel Credit

Does MPX work on Penfed PathFinder American Express card? Yes. This might as well be an unwritten rule – whenever you see American Express card issued by a different bank, try MPX. But can you do better? Definitely. Cash is better than $100 Amazon giftcard you could buy through MPX.

Whenever you see travel credit, the very first thing to do is thoroughly read through the T&Cs at least once. I have highlighted the important bits.

This offer is available to PenFed Pathfinder Rewards American Express® Cardmembers only. To receive statement credits of up to $100 per calendar year toward incidental air travel fees. Incidental air travel fees must be charged on the eligible Card account by select U.S. headquartered airlines. Currently, such U.S. headquartered airlines are: American Airlines, Alaska Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Frontier Airlines, JetBlue Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, Spirit Airlines, Southwest Airlines, United Airlines, Allegiant Air, and Virgin America. Incidental air travel fees charged by both the primary Cardmember and additional Cardmember on the eligible Card account are eligible for statement credits. However, each Card account is eligible for up to a total of $100 per calendar year in statement credits across all Cards on the account. Incidental air travel fees include charges from the airline such as baggage fees, flight-change fees, in-flight food and beverage purchases, airport lounge day-passes, pet-kennel fee, and phone reservation fees. Airline tickets, upgrades, mileage points purchases, mileage points transfer fees, gift cards, duty free purchases, and award tickets are not deemed to be incidental fees. Airlines must submit the incidental air travel fees separate from airline ticket charges and under the appropriate merchant code, industry code, or required service or product identifier for the charge to be recognized as an incidental air travel fee. Please allow 2-4 weeks after the qualifying incidental air travel fee is charged to your Card account for statement credit(s) to be posted to the account, and call the number on the back of the Card if statement credits have not posted after 4 weeks from the date of purchase. Cardmembers remain responsible for making all required payments as reflected on their monthly Card statements. To be eligible for this benefit, the Card account must be active and not in default at the time of statement credit fulfillment. For additional information about this benefit, Cardmembers should call the Pentagon Federal Credit Union Customer Service hotline at (800) 732-8268 (Toll Free).

T&C gives you an inside look into credit card issuers (or rather their lawyers) brain but it is important to note that not everything is coded out perfectly. According to T&C mentioned above, award ticket should not trigger travel credit but they do.

By this point a lot of people have successfully been reimbursed for domestic $5.60 award ticket on Southwest flights so why not try it for international award ticket? I did the same thing for BoA Premier Rewards and it worked so why not try it again? I should mention that just because it worked for BoA Premier does not meant it will work for Pathfinder…cards are in different network and issued by different issuers. My motivation for testing this was along the lines of “hey it’s free to test this with refundable southwest ticket”. This should also work with ‘wanna get away fares’ but be sure to cancel your ticket within 24 hours.

cash out penfed travel credit via southwest award ticket

As you can see in above screenshot, I paid $77.30 for international award ticket (from Mexico to Chicago), canceled the ticket to get a $77.30 refund, and later on received a $77.30 travel credit.