SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2026 -- United Airlines issued a stunning decree on Wednesday: Loyalty to United is no longer enough. If you want the best that mess of an airline offers, you must also be loyal to Chase Bank.

Want the most points in United's endlessly devaluating MileagePlus plan when you fly? Take a Chase United MileagePlus card. Want the most status? Ditto. Want the lowest award prices? Again, bend the knee and do business with Chase as well as United. Don't want to give credit card business to Chase? You'll get less from United: fewer miles when you fly, a harder road to elite status and higher priced awards.

Want the gory details on United's new love-me-love-my-bank grift? Read it from the horse's mouth--or, you know, the horse's ass, depending on where you think airline pronouncements emanate. Want the righteous indignation of a MileagePlus elite trapped by his proximity to United's Newark hub? Read our friend David Danto's column this week. Want hard-headed, razor-sharp analysis? Visit Gary Leff's by-the-numbers blog post this week.

Want the historical view? I reached out to Steve Grosvald, who in 1986 helmed the first credit card deal between an airline frequent flyer program (Continental OnePass) and a bank (Marine Midland). "I'm not impressed," he said. "It's one thing to offer reasons to have [a United Chase] card. But totally different to reduce benefits for those who choose" not to take a MileagePlus Card.

Me? Here's my clear-eyed, fact-based counterpoint to David, Gary and Steve: I don't care anymore.

If United now says that you are only loyal to United if you are also loyal to Chase, okay by me. When Delta and Amex and American and Citi follow United and Chase down the double-or-nothing loyalty track, fine and dandy.

Why am I so sanguine? Because I'm no longer loyal to any airline or any hotel chain. If my loyalty lies anywhere these days, it's to banks.

I choose to look at this week's United announcement from the other end of the karmic kaleidoscope. What I heard was Chase saying to me: Hey, Joe, take one of our United cards and we'll get you some bonuses, perks and discounts when you fly that carrier instead of another.

Cool. Maybe I'll do business with Chase. Maybe I won't. But I simply do not care what United or any airline does anymore. Let me offer a bit of exquisite travel timing to prove my point.

After whiffing on five Italian holidays in recent months, my wife and I, on a whim, this week decided to go to Hawaii for Easter. It was easy to plan--and absolutely free. And it was all free thanks to credit card spend and the ever-escalating acquisition bonuses that banks dangle to get us to take specific cards.

Think I'm exaggerating? I am literally, completely, break-out-my-Aloha-shirts serious.

We are flying first class to Honolulu (lie-flat beds and club access included) on the Hawaiian Airlines nonstop from New York/Kennedy. The roundtrips cost a total of 480,000 Atmos Rewards points. We acquired every single one of those points via credit card spend and acquisition bonuses from Barclays and Bank of America. Not a single point--not one--came from flying Hawaiian or Alaska.

Our seven nights of Honolulu accommodations will be at Ka La'i, the newly renovated high-rise hotel once known as the Trump International Waikiki. Ka La'i joined Hilton Honors several years ago and offers rooms (400 square feet with balcony and kitchenette) for 100,000 Honors points a night. Seven nights cost 600,000 points--Honors awards come with a fifth night free--and, by now, you've guessed it: Every one of the 600,000 points came from credit card spend and acquisition bonuses offered by the American Express portfolio of Hilton cards. Mid-level Hilton Gold status is a perk bundled with my American Express Platinum Card, so I'll get a $50 daily F&B credit, too.

Let's do the math, shall we? If I paid cash for the first class Hawaiian Airlines nonstops on our chosen days, that'd be $11,996.30. A seven-night stay at a reward-level room at Ka La'i would total $5,561.53. Add the $350 Hilton Gold F&B credit. Subtract a $500 F&B credit that Hilton bundles into its cash rate and the $22.40 I paid Alaska/Hawaiian for air taxes.

Real-world cash value of our Hawaii vacation? $17,385.43! But I got it free thanks to credit card spend and savvy acquisition of welcome bonuses from the aforementioned Barclays, BofA and Amex.

You think I'm gonna worry about United forcing its best customers to take a United credit card in order to get the best awards and the most miles from Mileage Plus? Honestly, I am not.

The truth is that the airlines--and, increasingly, hotel chains--sold out to the credit card companies years ago. In fact, airlines and hotels aren't even travel companies anymore. They're the 21st-century equivalent of the toasters banks once gave you when you opened a checking or savings account.

I have no interest in being loyal to toasters. It's the credit card companies that got the holiday for me.

Look, you're very smart and a savvy traveler. You understand that I lucked out here. Those Hawaiian nonstops usually cost substantially more in points. My wife and I caught the Hawaiian-Alaska merger just as they were adding new cards and allowing points-pooling. Getting nearly a penny a point in value from Hilton surely won't happen again given how fast Honors devalues. And the travel gods smiled on us when they cleared the decks for exactly the days we wished to travel.

Yet the essential truth remains: Loyalty to airlines and hotels is a fool's errand now. The frequent travel loyalty programs that folks like Steve Grosvald unironically created in the 1980s long ago morphed into "frequent charger games."

As I've urged you for years, change your perspective: Ask not what airlines and hotel chains can do for you in exchange for your custom and loyalty. Never trust a toaster or the moral equivalent of same. Ask instead what bank credit cards will give you for your charge volume. It's the only way to win today.

And here, at the metaphoric bottom line, we must acknowledge one other reality: Airlines and hotels will rue the day they sold our loyalty to banks for a few credit card swipes.

In round numbers and broad generalities, payments banks make to airlines to acquire the miles they award to us account for substantially all of the carriers' profit. Airlines aren't transportation companies today. They are points-selling machines, modern-day toaster manufacturers. They exist not because we fly them, but because banks pay them to fly seats that the banks can give as awards. That simply is not sustainable. A hard rain is gonna fall on airlines when the banks move on from travel like they moved on from toasters.

But I don't care about airlines and hotels anymore. It's banks that are gifting me a free week in Hawaii for my spending. I don't forget that. Neither should you.