Pros

Lucrative Sign-Up Bonuses

One of the biggest pros of airline credit cards is the sign-up bonus you can earn. Many cards offer between 25,000 – 75,000 bonus miles if you meet a minimum spending requirement within the first few months. At the higher end, this could score you a free roundtrip domestic flight or discounted international ticket. Make sure to clear the full balance before the due date.

Free Checked Bags

Most airline credit cards provide at least one free checked bag for the primary cardholder and authorized users. With checked bag fees typically costing $30 per bag, this perk can add up to huge savings for families and frequent travelers. Some cards even reimburse for in-flight food and beverage purchases.

Priority Boarding

You’ll typically receive earlier boarding group access when flying with the affiliated airline if you hold their co-branded card. This allows you to settle in and find coveted overhead bin space. Some cards also give you priority access to upgrades and preferred seating.

No Foreign Transaction Fees

One of the most annoying credit card fees is the foreign transaction fee that’s around 3% of each international purchase. Thankfully, many airline cards do not charge foreign fees making them ideal for travel abroad. Just remember Visa and Mastercard still process the charge conversion.

Cons

High Annual Fees

Annual fees on airline credit cards generally start around $95 per year and can go up to $500+ for premium cards. If you don’t fly often, earn enough rewards, or use the card perks, they might not justify the cost. However, some cards waive the fee the first year or offer statement credits to offset it.

Expiration of Miles

While many airline cards offer generous sign-up bonuses, you do need to pay attention to mileage expiration policies. Most airlines will expire your hard-earned miles if there’s no account activity after 18-24 months. This means you need to earn or redeem miles periodically.

Complex Reward Redemption

Understanding airline reward charts and redemption options can be headache-inducing. Award seat availability is limited on certain routes and dates, and “fuel surcharges” can unexpectedly increase costs. Redeeming points for flights also doesn’t usually provide the best value compared to hotel stays, merchandise etc.

Balance Transfer Restrictions

If you have existing credit card debt, airline cards likely won’t help consolidate it onto a 0% APR balance transfer offer. Most co-branded cards prohibit balance transfers or charge very high fees like 3% per transaction. This diminishes their flexibility compared to general cash back cards.

Foreign Transaction Fees

While it’s becoming more common for airline credit cards to not charge this pesky fee, some still do. Foreign transaction fees apply to any international purchase processed outside the U.S. So if you frequently travel overseas, be sure the card waives foreign transaction fees.

Should You Get an Airline Credit Card?

Airline co-branded credit cards offer valuable perks and rewards for loyal customers of that brand. However, the costs and restrictions may outweigh the benefits depending on your travel habits and financial situation. Airline cards make most sense for frequent travelers on that airline who can maximize the free checked bags, miles earnings, and redemption opportunities. Infrequent and budget travelers often get better value from general cash back or fixed-value point credit cards. As always, be sure to compare cards thoroughly and only spend what you can afford to pay back each month. I sincerely hope you find this “The Pros and Cons of Airline Co-Branded Credit Cards” article helpful.

Purchase via Splender for an additional 2% cash back. Use a search term like “staples gift 85 100” to find the gift cards once you go through them to visit ebay.

If you don’t need the gift cards…

Sell them to SaveYa. They are currently paying 85.51% for Staples gift cards, which would leave you with a small profit. Go through Simply Best Coupons before you sell to them for another 2% cash back.

Note: To sell more than $300 in gift cards per week to SaveYa, a bulk seller account is required. (I have one because I do a lot of gift card deals like this.) If you don’t want to sign up as a bulk seller, you can either buy three gifts cards instead of five, or sell three gift cards now and the other two gift cards next week. However, it is possible that the payout could change during that time.

Net profit for selling to SaveYa should be close to $20 in cash, $8.50 in ebay bucks, and 2125 Chase UR points (or your points from a different credit card).

$100 Southwest Airlines Gift Card for $87
$100 American Airlines Gift Card for $87

Limit for each of these is 5 per person. To get the $5 discount multiple times, you must purchase each gift card individually.

Because the seller is PPDG, you can use the Chase Ink Plus card to receive 5x UR per dollar spent.

Direct Link

This promotion is pretty simple. Schedule six or more recurring rent/mortgage payments, as far in the future as you like, and pay with a MasterCard. You’ll see the 1.75% fee automatically. Offer ends (i.e. you must finish setting up your recurring payments by this date) September 30, 2016 at 11:59 PM PST.

Tip: You will get errors if you try to schedule payments that go beyond your credit card expiration date. Double-check this if you get a message telling you to call in.

This is potentially useful for meeting minimum spend on a MasterCard and a moneymaker if you have the Citi AT&T Access More card, which has been confirmed to earn 3x TYP on Plastiq transactions.

Here’s a referral link for Plastiq (we both get a few bucks out of it, nothing serious).

I’ve been on vacation for the past few weeks, so this post is a little late; however, the optimal time to do all of this will be in early 2017, so no harm done.

A few weeks back, Marriott and Starwood began allowing rewards members to link their accounts together and to transfer points between the two programs at a ratio of 3 Marriott Rewards points per 1 SPG Starpoint. This opened up the opportunity to purchase a Marriott Hotel + Air Package 3 (Category 1-5) with 90,000 SPG Starpoints instead of the normal cost of 270,000 Marriott Rewards points.

The Hotel + Air packages, in exchange for 270,000 Marriott Rewards points, provide you with a 7-night stay at any Category 1-5 Marriott hotel and 120,000 airline miles of your choice. Package 3 specifically designates the selection of 120,000 Southwest Rapid Rewards points. While you could choose another of Marriott’s partner airlines, the main point of this post is to highlight that transfers from Marriott do count toward the 110,000 miles you need to earn to be awarded a Southwest Airlines Companion Pass, so simply purchasing this package is enough. Do keep in mind that because the companion pass is valid through December 31st of the year after you earn it, the ideal time for this redemption is on or after January 1, 2017, which gives you an expiration date of December 31, 2018.

In any case, I merely wanted to point out that this option exists and is worth considering for folks who travel a lot domestically. If you’d like to book a Marriott Hotel + Air package, the number to call is (800) 321-7396.

Schedule six or more recurring rent/mortgage payments, as far in the future as you like, and pay with a MasterCard for a 1.75% fee or an American Express for a 2.25% fee. Both of these fees reflect a 0.25% discount off of the regular rate. Offer ends (i.e. you must finish setting up your recurring payments by this date) October 31, 2016 at 11:59 PM PST.

Tip: You will get errors if you try to schedule payments that go beyond your credit card expiration date. Double-check this if you get a message telling you to call in.

This is potentially useful for meeting minimum spend on a MasterCard or American Express and a moneymaker if you have the Citi AT&T Access More card, which earns 3x TYP on Plastiq transactions.

Here’s a referral link for Plastiq (we both get a few bucks out of it, nothing serious).

Quick Summary

• Signup bonus of 40,000 miles after $1,000 spend in 3 months
• Additional bonus of 25,000 miles after $15,000 total spend in 12 months (i.e. $14,000 additional spend after earning the main bonus)
• 2x miles on Southwest and Rapid Rewards hotel and car rental partner purchases
• 7,500 anniversary points each year
• $75 annual Southwest travel credit
• Four Upgraded Boardings per year when available
• 20% back on in-flight drinks, WiFi, messaging, and movies
• $149 annual fee

First of all, you can’t get this card if you’re a cardholder of any other Southwest personal cards (business cards are okay), or if you’ve received the signup bonus from any Southwest personal cards within the past 24 months.

Assuming you can get approved, though, the signup bonus is not that great. 40,000 miles after $1,000 spend is decent, but we’ve seen higher bonuses in the past with other Southwest cards. Spending $15,000 in a year to get another 25,000 miles is something I technically consider to be worth doing; however, there are plenty of other credit cards that provide similar value without having to do so much spend. So while this bonus is decent on the surface, I don’t really recommend applying for this card because much of the competition is simply better.

For a frequent Southwest flyer, the 7,500 anniversary points + $75 annual Southwest travel credit are worth more than the $149 annual fee, but only by about $20 or so. Combine that with the four upgraded boardings per year, and this card does provide some ongoing value for people who fly Southwest regularly. With that said, you would only be considering this card’s ongoing value if you were a cardholder in the first place, and, as mentioned above, I don’t really think this card is worth getting right now. Let’s wait and see if a better bonus comes along.

P.S. Note that the 2x miles on hotel and car rental purchases requires that you book through Southwest’s website, and 2x miles isn’t that much anyway. If I had this card, I would put zero spend on it after earning the bonus.

To purchase, open the app, click Gift Cards, Add, and Buy Gift Cards.

“I could not find the terms and conditions, but the typical restrictions are no more than two gift cards per 24 hours and no more than $500 in face value purchased during a promotion.”

“Other gift cards on sale include Applebee’s, Domino’s, Famous Footwear, Gymboree, Miguel’s Restaurants, Overstock.com, Regal Entertainment Group, rue21, and Toys R Us.”

“Wait 5 minutes between purchases if you’d like to earn Samsung Rewards on both orders.”

GroundLink Visa Signature
GroundLink Visa Infinite

Once you enter your Visa Signature/Infinite card details into the corresponding link above, you then log into your GroundLink account, and the respective credit ($20 or $30 depending on card type) will be added to your balance. What I figured out but did not expect is that you can do this for every Visa Signature/Infinite card you have and load them all into the same account. I was able to do this 25 times before I ran out of credit cards and now have over $500 of GroundLink credit. All of my personal Visa Signature and Infinite cards worked (i.e. not business). All authorized user cards worked as long as they had unique card numbers. It did not matter that their cardholder names did not match the name on my GroundLink account.

GroundLink does have a referral program by which both the referrer and referee receive a $25 credit, so you will want to do this too.

GroundLink Referral Link

You can of course choose to use someone else’s referral if you don’t want to use mine.

The terms for these credits seem to indicate various restrictions such as not being to combine credits, having to use the specific credit card that the credit came from, etc., but as far as I can tell, none of this is actually enforced, and I have a single combined GroundLink credit in my account. I tried a test booking of over $100 on the website, and it allowed me to pay for my entire reservation with my credit balance.

For completeness’ sake, here is the full list of credit cards that I was able to confirm do work, but I’d be fairly surprised if anyone finds a personal Visa Signature/Infinite card that doesn’t:

• Alliant Cashback
• Bank of America Premium Rewards
• Bank of America Travel Rewards
• CapitalOne VentureOne Rewards
• Chase Freedom
• Chase Freedom Unlimited
• Chase Hyatt
• Chase Sapphire Preferred
• Chase Sapphire Reserve
• Chase Southwest Rapid Rewards Premier
• Chase United MileagePlus Explorer
• Citi Costco Anywhere
• City National Crystal
• Club Carlson Premier Rewards
• Fidelity Rewards
• Merrill+
• Priceline.com Rewards
• U.S. Bank Cash+

I tried three business cards that did not work: Chase Ink Cash, Chase Ink Plus, and Club Carlson Business Rewards.