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I have excellent credit, and pay off my balances in full every month. I also do a lot of international traveling (5 to 6 times a year) but always fly different airlines (I look for the best value).
Is it worth it to get an airline mileage card? If so, which ones are pretty decent?
As a longtime hoarder of frequent flier miles and owner of one such card, I am increasingly thinking they are NOT worth it. I've started to shift over to a card that does cash-back into my investment account.
My reasoning:
The airlines are still scrapping for ways to stay profitable. Tweaking FF mile programs is an easy way for them to pull back benefits in non-obvious ways. For example over the last few years I've seen airlines erode the value of FF miles in the following ways.
It just makes sense to go with a program that gives you cash back. They can't monkey with the value of x% of your purchases without it being obvious, and the flexibility of money makes it much more valuable than FF miles. That is, you can buy a ticket with your awards cash on any airline, or spend it on something completely different. Plus you can get interest on cash in a bank account, but not for FF miles in your account.
Counterpoint:
If you fly a lot, the perks like VIP lounges, free upgrades, priority boarding, etc. may make it worth it. However, most of these perks have some caveat that you earn them through FLYING and not random credit card purchases. So you can probably get these just in the course of flying anyway.
Also, even though I still feel ripped off. It is pretty much insanely expensive to pay for an upgrade on a transatlantic flight. Miles are pretty much the only way to make it only slightly overpriced.
One other thing:
Paying an annual fee (which many of these cards carry) really makes these cards not worth it unless you are charging a ton of stuff on them and redeeming the rewards. Keep that in mind.
I have a Capital One "No Hassle" rewards card. It earns points that never expire, which I can redeem for cash, gift cards & plane tickets. Redemption works out roughly to:
In this case, I currently get the most bang for my buck by redeeming airline tickets. Any time I consider redeeming my points, I search around for the best point-to-dollar ratio.
They're worth it if you do a lot of flying and a lot of buying. Otherwise, no.
You may get bonus miles for signing up for the card. Beyond that, it boils down to two things:
As for which one, I'd start with cards for the airline you like the most.
IMO, airline cards suck. Hotel cards, on the other hand are awesome. Why?
If you travel a lot and value the airport club thing, AMEX Platinum Card is the way to go.
I think they are worth it. For years i thought it was just a scam but now start using airline credit cards. Here are my reasons:
This is the blog that i read to find out how to get the most out of airline miles and hear about the latest promotions. People find ways to get sometimes up to 4 miles per dollar. Which means you only have to spend $6K on your card to get round trip ticket (normally $60 in cash back cards) http://millionmilesecrets.com/
But if you take this route you have to be consistent to follow those strategies, otherwise stick to cash back.
So my approach right now is the following, if i have a card that gives more than 1% in cash for some purchases (gas, groceries, etc) i use the cash back card, for everything else i collect miles.
Some travel cards are definitely worth it. In particular, in the last 4 years I have had the following sequence of cards
Chase United Airlines -> Chase Southwest Airlines -> Chase Sapphire -> Chase United Airlines
and I was extremely happy with them. If you act at the right time (most recently december 2018) you can get a 60K -65K mile signup bonus, and 50K is easier to get. The chase cards give you one mile/dollar on everything, and 2 miles/dollar on dining & travel (the particulars depend on which card). You can dodge the annual fee by switching each year. You get more miles with Chase Sapphire Reserve instead of Preferred, but then you have to pay the card.
The Sapphire card gives you many airlines to choose from, in the USA there are southwest and united but there are more international ones to choose from too (Singapore, British airways,...) .
My flights from Sydney Australia to Boston Massachusetts cost 40K united miles one-way, which worked out to a bit more than 2 cents/mile in value after factor in the fees. If you have the Chase united card (as opposed to Sapphire) then the fees are less as well.
As far as miles from Southwest go, there are simply NO FEES to bother with. You get two free bags, no award booking fees, and you can cancel for free right up until 15 minutes before. Flights booked with miles you don't even have to warn them, just don't show up and they recredit your miles. (Flights booked with cash you get a credit to be used in a year, but with miles you just get the miles back.)
I favor cash-back credit cards. Easy to see how much you get back and compare that with the annual fee and interest charges (if any), and I can spend the cash anywhere.
However, if you do multiple airlines and do want an airline-mile-reward card, see whether American Express has a credit card (or charge card) that meets your needs: they have a reputation for having good relationships with many airlines, and the quality of this relationship is something they rely upon to drive customers to their business and maintain customer loyalty.
Last I checked, Blue Sky had no annual fees. They also have BlueSky Preferred and their regular series of cards (starting with the green card) that do have annual fees, as well as many airline-branded cards (which I assume offer airline-specific benefits that are of limited interest to you). Anyway, I'm not going to play salesman for them; you'll have to figure out what you want specifically yourself and figure out if it's worth whatever fees.
(Disclosure. I have an AmEx Blue Cash card. I own some shares or fractional shares of AmEx, as well as other credit card providers, as part of one or more ETFs or mutual funds. I have no other relationship with American Express and I anticipate no reward for advertising their products.)
It really depends on what you want to do. The initial promo deals are great, like 30,000 miles. It equals a free domestic ticket and they waive the fee for the first year. You also get the perks like priority check-in and free checked bags, even airport club access from time to time.
I fly overseas and I've gotten one free ticket so far (about a $1,200 value) and I have another one waiting for me, so I've saved about $2,400, minimum. I also used the miles for a one-way ticket once and that saved me a ton. Only 25,000 miles for Tokyo to LA instead of the head scratching "round trip price for one-way" that airlines do.
One big selling point is the specials you can sometimes get. If you sign up for Direct TV you get 25,000 miles, or a free ticket. I rented a car from two rental car companies for 15 days and got 15,000 miles. You can end up getting 40,000 miles for things you were planning on doing anyway. I don't have any point cards so maybe others can make better comments about these situations, but for me the extra perks really made it worth the time.
The bad news is that for American Airlines the routing options are quite horrible unless you book well in advance. Like LA-New York-Tokyo instead of one of the many LA-Tokyo direct flights they offer. United seems to have better options.
