There are two types of airline reward credit cards – one for a specific airline, where each dollar spent gets you x amt of miles, and non-affiliated cards which earn points you can use as cash towards flights on any airline.
I’m trying to figure out the best approach for my next credit card. Aside from flexibility of which airline to fly on, is one type significantly better than the other when it comes to earning free flights and/or flight upgrades?
I had used the SkyMiles card for a number of years for my personal expenses, but this year switched to the Alec Baldwin card (Cap One Venture), due to the 2x on pretty much every single purchase, and the simple way it works. Whether it will work out better in practice I don’t know yet.
I never had any problems finding 25,000-mile seats with Delta, which represents $25,000 in spending with that card. With Venture, the same spending gets me $500 in travel buying power, so the real, yet-to-be-determined question is: can my theoretical future flight, one which I could get for 25,000 miles on Delta, cost me more than $500?
I don’t recommend that you get an airline mileage credit card, certainly not the sort that’s tied to a particular airline. The reason is that it’s too difficult to use the miles on the airlines. Partly this is because the flights are so full that few seats are available for free travel. Also, there are simply too many miles being accumulated by too many passengers, to the point where the airlines can’t possibly give away enough seats to use up those miles. The Wikipedia article on frequent flyer programs references an Economist article from 2005 stating that by the end of 2004, there were more than 14 trillion miles accumulated worldwide.
Another problem with the frequent flyer programs is that the airlines impose fees even when flyers use FF miles, so the tickets aren’t even free.
I think a cash rewards card or perhaps a hotel rewards card would be better. (I need to get rid of my United mileage card, as I’m never going to use the 150,000 miles I’ve accumulated and would prefer to get Amazon credit.)
Not totally true. If you are open about when you can travel, and especially if only 1 or 2 of you are traveling, I am able to find lots of seats to use my AA points on.
I just booked 4 tickets to Hawaii, using frequent flyer/credit card point. The good news was, our itinerary was “I want to go between September and November”. For 4 people, in first class, there were only a couple of dates in that range that worked. For 2 people, I had lots of choices. For economy class, I had lots of choices. If I was willing to use the unlimited points tickets (double the number of points) I could take just about as many people I wanted on any day I wanted
Now for the economics of it. I accumulated 300k points in about 10 years. At $50/year to have a points card, that cost me $500. Buying first class tickets would have cost me about $7k total. Economy tickets would be half the points or 2/3 of the cost in dollars.
So it depends on how much you spend in the card (if you only spend $1k/year, it’s not worth the $50 annual fee) and how you travel.
I don’t even worry about how much they award for spending. I just get the most miles I can for signing up and there are some good ones out there. I got a Citibank AAdvantage card with 40,000 free miles and no annual fee last year. That was good enough for a round-trip ticket from Boston to Hawaii (coach) a couple of months ago. I spent a lot on the card anyway so they gave me an American Express with 30,000 bonus miles and I have enough for another free ticket even to Hawaii if I want.
Southwest Airlines just did a promotion with Chase for 50,000 bonus miles. That is good for at least two round trip tickets anywhere or possibly as many as four if I just wanted to go to Florida a few times. I got one of those cards as well.
That is 4 free tickets (Ok, you have to pay a $10 processing fee when you redeem the points) and 120,000 bonus miles for doing nothing except signing up. That beats spending $60,000 or much more on top mileage earning cards in my book. Those deals still exist. My coworker is even better at it than I am and always has free tickets. You just sign up, take the miles and cancel before they charge you an annual fee the next year. Repeat as necessary.
The latter type of card isn’t an airline rewards card; it’s just a cash-back card where the credit card company is restricting your use of the reward cash to purchase of airline tickets. Why bother with that? Just get a REAL cash-back card and use the cash reward for anything you like (which might include airline tickets, as well as other things).
The first question you should ask yourself is whether you should bother with an airline rewards card at all. How many times a year do you fly? Are those flights domestic, or do you fly internationally as well? Do you need/want to fly business class, or is coach class fine? What’s your hub airport, and which airlines fly out of it?
Airline rewards cards work best for people who either fly enough miles per year with one airline to earn status with that airline, or who fly less frequently but who can rack up tens of thousands of dollars in credit card purchases every year so they accumulate significant frequent flyer points quickly. They also work best if you can be very flexible in your travel options, and especially if you fly internationally (as being able to upgrade to business class is most important on very long flights). If you’re only doing the occasional domestic flight (and especially if you’re generally flying over the holidays), they’re not worth it. Look at a cash back card or a hotel rewards card instead.
But if you DO fly a lot or use your credit card a lot, airline rewards cards can be nice. My AAdvantage card snagged me enough miles in one year of use to fly round trip from Omaha to Brussels this April (outbound in business class, return flight in coach) for a whopping $66 in fees. Can’t complain about that!
If you do decide you are interested in a true airline rewards card, you might want to look at the FlyerTalk forums to get more information on the various airlines’ frequent flyer programs before you make your decision. Some programs are easier to use than others.
Thanks for the thoughts.
I usually use points for upgrading. Occasionally for free flights. Been great with wife and myself. Now we’ve got two kids. 4 tix via points eats up mileage rapidly. Yikes.
Fly 2-3 times per year. Lots of charges on the credit card so we usually have plenty of miles. Been doing AA for years (fly out of lax direct to almost anywhere I need to go), but considering switching to virgin america. TV’s in the seats = easier with kids.
/rant What I REALLY want is a decent airline with just 2-3 inches more leg room in coach! I’m just over 6 feet tall and can’t even fly in exit rows anymore as I’ve got two younger kids on the plane. Even if wife sits with them, I can’t be solo in exit row. Flights suck more and more each year. /end rant
So since AA is as bad as the other airlines in coach, looking at using up my remaining miles and switching to another airline. Aka, another credit card. So trying to find best option.
I checked Virgin America’s website, and it doesn’t look like they’re participating in any of the three big airline alliances (Star Alliance, Oneworld, and SkyTeam). That would give me pause about switching completely away from American Airlines. Being able to use miles on partner airlines can be really, really handy.
One card you might want to consider is American Express’s Starwood Preferred Guest card. It’s technically a hotel rewards card, but Starwood points can be transferred directly into many airlines’ frequent flyer programs. That would be one way to earn points that would be usable with more than one airline’s program, as well as with hotels.
And I highly recommend doing some reading on both the various airline programs and credit card programs over on the FlyerTalk forums. Those folks know their stuff!
(And I am SO with you on the misery of flying coach class these days, although it’s slightly wider seats rather than more legroom that I pine for.)
I have a Starwood Amex card – I own a Starwood timeshare so made sense. But doesn’t xfer to American airlines for some reason.
I will definitely check out the flyer forums, too!
Self hijack – trying to figure the math. 3 inches of legroom. 30 rows of seats. How many seats would they lose per flight?
Wider is hard without making body of plane wider or already narrow aisle narrower. Sorry. :-/
One weird behavior of the Cap1 card that I have is its use of bracketing airline ticket prices. I recently purchased a ticket to San Francisco (a very expensive destination for some reason) for my wife. I could redeem 60,000 points for $300 or use the same number of points to buy any airline ticket that cost between $300 and $600 IIRC. So, since I was buying a $550 ticket, it was much more cost effective to use the points.