JetBlue 25 for 25 Promo

JetBlue Airways marked its 25th year of service with a promotion designed for frequent flyers: “25 for 25.” Through this offer, members of the TrueBlue loyalty program can earn up to 350,000 bonus points and 25 years of elite status by flying to a certain number of JetBlue destinations by Dec. 31, 2026. The more places you visit, the more you can earn.

As an avid award traveler, this promotion caught my eye even though I live in Seattle and JetBlue is based on the East Coast. Intrigued by the prospect of both earning a huge chunk of points and exploring new destinations, I plotted a course over JetBlue’s route map to see what completing the promotion would look like.

Ultimately, I decided not to take advantage of this promotion. But while the 25 for 25 promo may be impractical for many travelers (including myself), it could be a lucrative adventure in the right circumstances.

The 25 for 25 promo offers three tiers of rewards based on how many unique JetBlue destinations you visit before the end of the year.

• Fly to 15 JetBlue destinations, earn 150,000 TrueBlue points

• Fly to 20 JetBlue destinations, earn an additional 200,000 TrueBlue points

The rewards are cumulative, so completing all three tiers earns you 350,000 TrueBlue points and 25 years of Mosaic 1 status.

Only flights operated by JetBlue are eligible, and qualifying travel must be completed by the end of 2025. Some of the promotion’s other conditions are surprisingly helpful:

• Each destination can only be counted once.

• Both arrivals and connections count as destinations, but departure cities do not.

• Award fares count, so long as they aren’t Blue Basic.

• Your TrueBlue member number must be attached to the reservation.

Apart from those restrictions, any JetBlue flight and destination is fair game. You can even count multiple airports in the same metro area — JFK, LaGuardia and Newark all count as unique “destinations,” as do Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach.

Because of how the promotion is structured, visiting only 15 destinations wouldn’t make sense to me when adding another 5 would more than double my rewards. I decided to aim for at least 20 destinations, but I was on the fence about going beyond that.

Living in Seattle, I don’t fly with JetBlue often enough to get much value from even a quarter century of most Mosaic elite status benefits, so the third tier of the promotion is less compelling to me. However, Mosaic 1 members can choose to earn 15,000 points annually from among the “Mosaic Perks You Pick.” I can always find a use for more points, so while reaching 25 destinations wasn’t my goal, I remained open to it.

I targeted dates from late September through mid-November. That meant potentially missing out on JetBlue’s seasonal service to smaller destinations like Martha’s Vineyard or Asheville, North Carolina, but left me enough of a window to complete the promotion by year’s end.

The other scheduling consideration was how long the trip would take. I’d rather not spend all my time on planes and in airports, so I planned to average no more than one destination per day. That could mean visiting one novel destination each day, or hitting two destinations on one day and then relaxing and exploring on the next. In either case, I’d need to budget at least 20 days of travel, and since other obligations preclude me from being away for that long in one stretch, I’d have to break the trip into two parts.

As for choosing destinations, I knew I would likely visit or transit through JetBlue’s hubs in New York (JFK), Boston and Fort Lauderdale. I would also fly to Seattle (where I live), and figured one of my return trips could go by way of Las Vegas (where I could fly home on another airline) or Portland (where I could get home by bus or train). That left 15 destinations unaccounted for, so I began charting my way across JetBlue’s route map, balancing cost and convenience against where I most wanted to spend my non-travel days.

One option for booking flights would be to use TrueBlue points I already have, supplemented by Chase Ultimate Rewards® points that I could transfer to JetBlue if needed. Thanks to the 10% points rebate on the JetBlue Plus Card, I could book awards at a discount. If JetBlue award rates were too high, I could book through Chase Travel and get at least 1.5 cents per point thanks to my Chase Sapphire Reserve®.

The other option would be to pay out-of-pocket for flights. Spending on airfare could help me earn a new credit card bonus, and I could save a few hundred dollars by redeeming several card-linked offers for JetBlue from Citi and Amex. I’d also earn rewards for cash fares, which wouldn’t be the case for flights booked with TrueBlue points.

Rather than commit to booking entirely with points or cash, I compared the two options as I laid out my itinerary. I chose awards when the return was close to my valuation for TrueBlue points, and I chose cash fares when booking awards would have been inefficient.

JetBlue’s website shows two months of cash and award fares right in the search window, making it easy to compare prices and piece together an itinerary one flight at a time.

The table below shows routing for each flight I chose, where destinations that count toward my 25 for 25 promotion total are written in bold. The table also lists the cost of each flight in dollars or TrueBlue points (excluding taxes and fees paid on awards), and a running tally of unique destinations.

The first part of my itinerary bounces between the Northeast and Southeast, hitting all three JetBlue hubs and a few Caribbean destinations I’ve never been to before. Five of the nine flights involve a layover in New York or Boston, where I could spend my time on the ground in one of the Chase Sapphire lounges.

While I hit 12 destinations in the first leg of my journey, I used up all the “free” destinations I could visit on layovers. However, JetBlue offers nonstop service on a variety of routes between the Northeast and Southern Florida, so I was able to make up the bulk of the remaining destinations by flying back and forth between the two regions.

Altogether, this itinerary totals 26 flight segments (excluding my trip home from Las Vegas), and over 104 hours of scheduled travel time (including layovers).

JetBlue flights for this itinerary would cost me 138,800 points and $872 ($794 in airfare plus $78 in award taxes and fees). After the 10% points rebate from the JetBlue Plus Card and $200 in credits from card-linked offers, the net cost of flights drops to 124,920 points and $672. I’d also earn TrueBlue points on the flights I booked with cash and Ultimate Rewards® points from paying with my Chase Sapphire Reserve®, but for simplicity I left those elements out of my calculation.

If JetBlue flights were the only cost, completing the 25 for 25 promotion on this itinerary would net me around 225,000 points for $672. That would be like buying TrueBlue points for 0.3 cent apiece (well below NerdWallet’s valuation of 1.4 cents), plus I’d get to see old friends and explore some new destinations. Unfortunately, flights aren’t the only relevant travel costs.

While I could stay with friends and family on 12 nights of the trip, I’d need to pay for hotels on the other 14 nights. Estimating an average cost of $100 per night (in cash or points value), that adds $1,400 to the total. I’d also have to cover ground transportation, several rental cars, and a flight home from Las Vegas, all of which I estimate would add another $1,000. Accounting for those expenses, the trip would cost me over $3,000, which would be like buying TrueBlue points I’d earn for 1.33 cents apiece.

In terms of value alone, completing the first two tiers of the 25 for 25 promotion on this itinerary would yield a positive return, but not by much. That makes deciding whether to pursue it a question of fun more than of profitability.

While I was interested in the 25 for 25 promotion as much for the adventure as for the potential windfall of TrueBlue points, I decided the itinerary I planned was too expensive and too much of a time commitment for me to proceed. Having to cross the continent to reach JetBlue territory limited how long I could spend in each destination, and it felt like too much of the trip would be spent on planes and in airports.

That said, mapping out my itinerary was a fun exercise, and I encourage anyone curious about 25 for 25 to try it for themselves. If you live near a JetBlue hub and can be more selective about how and when you travel to qualifying destinations, completing the promotion should be both more fun and less costly. If another carrier were to offer a similar opportunity around the West Coast, I’d jump on it.