anyone wanna recommend a good airlines credit card? living around detroit, I fly Northwest the most but also use spirit, southwest, etc once a while. Obviously Northwest Visa would be one choice, but it's got shitty $7500 limit, high APR, and $60 annual fee..

i've heard good things about Chase TravelPlus platinum also. let me know..

 

i pay my cards off every month so high APR doesn't mean anything. i live in Indy now so NW is the only plentiful way out of town, and i have the NW Visa Signature - no limit. Annual fee is no more than what Citibank AAdvantage Mastercard was when i had that for a few years and racked up somewhere around 300K miles (work expenses that were reimbursed!)

i prefer cash rebate cards now - miles don't mean much since i fly like crazy - 125K miles in 6 months.

it all depends on who your preferred air carrier is. if you have none, then i think the savings from a cash rebate card is much more attractive. think about it this way: how many miles does it take for you to get a free ticket? let's say it's 60K miles for a round trip, that means $60K spent! a 1% cash rebate card will give you $600 - enough for at least 2 cross country trips on the right airline.

just my 2 cents.

 

AMEX gets you Continental. That's who we use.

 

Is there really that big a benefit of getting miles?

I have 2 cards (citi div plat select and amex through costco) and I just get cash back instead.

Miles > cash?

 

I use Amex for almost everything. The Membership Rewards card gives you double miles when used for daily purchases and points can be transferred to almost any airline. My favorite way to fly is on Frontier, where you get a roundtrip ticket to anywhere they fly in the US for 15k points. Canada and Mexico, 25k points.

the way I calculate it, AMEX points work like this: 1 point = $0.01 redemption value. So, if you wanna use them to buy a $100 product you have to use 10,000 points. These days, flying somewhere (anywhere Frontier flys in US) for 15,000 points... equiv. to $150... is a bargain.

 

Look at the Well Fargo card. They let you amass points 1 point = 1$ spent. You can always move points from your account to off set charges. 30,000 = $300. This is a nice feature as you can buy what you want and pay with points as a credit to your card.

 

Chase Continental. Double points at specified retailers(almost all the majors are on it).

 

crap.. I just found out that I maxed out the rewards on my card... now I'm shopping for a new one.