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Credit Cards that earn Mileage

sunzt

sunzt

Diamond Member
I've been looking into new credit cards and saw the Chase TravelPlus Platinum Visa Card which lets me earn 1 mile for every dollar I spend.

My question is, how many miles does it usually take to book a domestic round trip ticket? Is it like twice the actual miles between two cities?
 
Well United as an example...

25K or more.

25K is usually the limited seats, subject to blackouts, etc.

50K for unrestricted I think.

Airline miles cards really aren't that great in terms of reward value (the possible exception being that you purchase a lot of airline tickets using the card & get bonus miles that way).

Viper GTS
 
A mile is supposed to be worth 2 cents (according to most airlines). Thus, a general formula is to take the price of the trip and divide it by $0.02 and you'll get the approximate number of miles. Unfortunately, in many cases a mile is really worth just 1 cent. Thus, you'll need about double the number of miles.

Essentially your CC is a 1% money back card but the money is tied up and earmarked with so many restrictions. Thus if you instead had a real 1% cash back card (cash that you could spend on anything you wanted) you probably would have been better off.
 
If you're in an area covered by Alaska Air, take a look at the card they offer through BofA. The higher-end versions of the card include some nice features beyond just earning mileage. Also, Alaska miles transfer to British Air and Hawaiian Air, among others.
 
Without knowing this card specifically, I'd say it's better to pick an airline that covers your city well and apply for their mileage card. You can get 15-20,000 miles just for signing up plus 1 mile per dollar spent. If you cancel after 6 months and reapply you can rack up 30-40k miles a year without spending any money. The mileage requirements typically are:

Domstic Coach - 25k saver / 40-50k standard
Domestic First - 45k saver / 80-90k standard
International Coach - 50,000 saver / 80-90k standard
International Business - 90,000 saver / 150k standard
International First - 120,000 saver / 200k standard

Standard awards are much easier to come by. In my experience American has pretty good domestic saver availability.
 
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