The title pretty much says it all, I’m looking for a credit card that offers airline miles as a bonus for using their card. A low interest charge and no annual fee are a bonus. I’m asking Dopers for suggestions and or opinions of cards they have experience with.
USBank offers a Northwest Airlines FFMiles… try USBank.com…
On the same note fellow dopers… Any heard of people paying their mortgage payment with this card each month, and paying it off when each statement is sent and collecting an amazing amount of miles?
I’ve recently looked into both these questions.
I think I found a discover card which had no annual fee and the miles didn’t expire. However, free tickets started at around 35,000 miles.
I eventually settled on a CC from my credit union in which miles last 4 years and there is no annual fee. Free tickets start at 20,000 for trips within the contiguous 48.
I could not find any way to make my mortgage payments on my CC and have it count towards airline miles. If your bank (or whoever owns your mortgage) accepts a CC, you are all set. However, my bank would only accept one of those “credit card checks” and those did not accrue miles on any card I researched.
I pay off my CC each month so interest rates were of no concern to me. I can’t help with that.
So here is what I found:
The best deals seems to be with Capital One. However, if you frequently fly a particular airline, go for their card as you can easily offset the annual fee with the double miles you get by using the card to purchase miles. If you are an in-frequent flyer (like me), I would check around with local banks and credit unions.
We charge everything on our Mileage Plus Visa for United Airlines. And I mean everything (from a $1 coffee to all of our utilities on AutoPay).
They are great. You get 1 mile for each $ you spend, and there are promotions going on regularly that often double what you accrue for specific periods of time. Feel free to e-mail me if you have any other questions, and I just have one request: If you do decide to go with United, I’d like to be able to say I referred you (I get miles for doing that, too :)).
Addressing the OP: There is an annual fee ($45 or so, I think) on the United Mileage Plus Visa. Can’t speak for the interest rates because we pay everything off each month, too.
I agree that generally you should get the mileage card for the airline you’re most likely to fly. Most of these cards have an annual fee and you should calculate if it’s worth the fee, or if you’d be better off with a no-fee card.
The way I do this is to note that United Airlines, for example, sells miles in bulk to corporations for $0.02 per mile. Also, note that My Mileage Plus card has a $60 annual fee.
If I charge $250 each month or $3000 over the year, I earn 3000 miles. Had I purchased those miles, they would cost me $60. So if I charge exactly $3000 during the year, I’ve broken even on the cost of the miles earned. If I only charge $1500 during the year, I’m effectively buying the 1500 miles I earned for $0.04 each, which is expensive. But if I charge $6000 over the year, I’ve earned 6000 miles, costing me $0.01 each, much cheaper than the best rate at which miles are sold. So I figure the mileage card is worthwhile even with the annual fee as long as I charge at least $250 per month on average.
There are several assumptions here. One is that I’m paying off the credit card at the end of the month, so there is no finance charge. Another is that I actually use the miles earned. If they just sit unused, the miles have no value.
The other assumption is I’m being smart about redeeming the miles. It costs 25,000 miles for a Saver award ticket on United. Valuing the miles at $0.02 each means that a Saver award ticket costs the equivalent of $500. So it would be unwise to use a Saver award when you can buy a ticket for less than $500 cash. But using 25,000 miles to fly home at Christmas when the best cash fare is $800 or $1000 is a good deal.
Basically, when you earn miles, you’re buying them and when you redeem miles, you’re selling them. If you can buy them for less than $0.02 and sell them for more than that, you’re doing well.
I’ve got the Alaska Airlines card, because 1) Sea-Tac is the airport I fly out of most often, 2) their miles never expire, and 3) the miles work for American, Continental, and Northwest, too.
Reason 2 alone is sufficient to at least consider their card.
One of the best deals out there is the Frontier Mastercard. No annual fee, free trip at 15,000 miles. 2,500 miles for the first purchase, 5,000 miles for a balance transfer, open an account and transfre a balance and you have 1/2 a free trip.
http://www.frontierairlines.com/mastercard/
Plus the animal tails are way cool.
We have a family business and run damn near everything through cards that get us American Airlines AAdvantage miles. With the miles we rack up, 4 of us could go business class to Europe every year.
So we do.
The key is to pay it off every month. Miles-earning cards tend to have higher interest rates.
There are two types of Credit Cards. One offers actual airline miles and one offers free airline tickets. I found the ones offering free airline tickets too hard to get. At 25-30 thousand miles for a ticket it is very hard to charge that much.
For those offering ACTUAL airline miles those can be better. Airline miles should be valued at 1.5¢ to 1.8¢ per mile. So like with AA Citibank it is like 50.00 a year but you get 5000 miles for signing up. That is like getting $75 to $90.00 credit so since you pay $50.00/year you are really getting 75-50=25 or 90-50=40. So in effect you are getting bonus miles NOT 5,000 but 1,388 to 2,222 depending on your figures. So I can get 1,000 free just by booking online at AA so in effect you aren’t getting as much as it looks. I don’t know if you get anything if you renew.
One other thing to look at is hotel points which can be converted one to one. Starwood has an AMEX card which gives you SPG (Starwood Preferred Guest) Points. These can be converted one to one for virtually all airlines. That may be another way to go.
Also think if you don’t pay off your balance each month it is hard to get any benefit from these programs.
Decisions, decisions 
I guess one important thing would be the frequency of flights from some of the smaller airlines. SLC airport is pretty big now (rebuilt in anticipation of hordes for the Winter Olympics) and I DO mostly travel in the West… but man a free trip and I’d consider going out of my comfort zone to someplace like Philadelphia!
So still thinking…sigh… not that I can earn enough miles before Sept to fly to Dallas anyway… but I can TRY!
Yeah, me too. Everything you charge on the card collects miles.