Use Your Rent to Earn Elite Benefits on Delta
Tl;dr: With an Air France-KLM credit card, you can pay your rent through Bilt and earn elite status with benefits on SkyTeam partners like Delta—but it comes at a price.
The LazyPoints newsletter highlights the best new credit card welcome offers each week, and a recent one deserves a slightly longer look: the Air France-KLM Visa Signature. The current welcome offer includes elite status with the airline group. That’s somewhat interesting on its own, but did you know you can use Bilt and your rent payment to keep that status indefinitely? Here’s how.
Flying Blue Elite Status
Elite status with Flying Blue is a little complicated, but at the most basic level, status is earned through “experience points” (XP), and 100 XP earns Flying Blue Silver status.
Silver status comes with benefits on Air France and KLM, and also offers SkyTeam Elite status. That, in turn, offers benefits on partner airlines, the big one in the U.S. being Delta. Those benefits include a free checked bag, priority check-in and boarding, and preferred seating, though it does not include lounge access or upgrades.
Earning Status with Bilt Rent Payments
If you have the Air France KLM card, you can use it to pay your rent via Bilt, earning 3x miles per dollar, but paying a 3% transaction fee. That card offers 20 XP each year on the account anniversary plus another 80 XP after spending $15,000 in an anniversary year.
So even if you put no other spending on the card, paying $1,250 or more in rent on the card per year would:
Cost $450(+) in transaction fees,
Earn 45,000(+) in redeemable miles, and
Earn 80 XP from spend
Altogether, the XP from the anniversary bonus and rent spending would add up to 100 XP and unlock Flying Blue Silver status, while the redeemable miles would be worth about $450 (according to NerdWallet).
Note: You can earn another 60 XP by spending $25,000 on the card. That will get you close to Flying Blue Gold, but actually reaching that threshold will probably require some flying with Flying Blue or partner airlines.
The Air-France KLM Card
Of course, you’ll want to consider whether the card itself makes sense for you. The annual fee is $89, while it offers only 5,000 miles (about $50 worth) on each account anniversary, so it will cost real money to keep it in your wallet. It earns 3x on dining and 1.5x on non-bonus purchases, both of which are competitive, but many cards earn the same or more, while offering Flying Blue transfers plus other redemption options.
Lazy Take 🦥
For schemes to get airline elite status, I’d just get two Delta premium cards or pay rent with an Atmos Summit. But as a way to earn modest benefits on Delta and Flying Blue at a fairly low cost or to supercharge a push towards SkyTeam Elite Plus status, this could be a solid option for the right person.