Cruise Line/Airline Credit Cards ... Why?

[zqvol]

IMO you have to look at what you plan to gain from the CC. I don't fly a lot - 6 - 8 times a year - but my CC gets me free checked baggage and priority boarding so to me the CC fee is worth it. I am not really concerned with the miles, but I do stockpile them so that we can fly first or business class to Europe or AK or HI.

[TMLAalum]

Our United Explorer card is going by the wayside since flight miles are now based on fare paid vs. mileage flown. It's going to take longer to amass miles because I look for low fares domestically and UA is often more expensive than most carriers.

 

We are now using AAdvantage Citicard and AAdvantage Barclay Aviator cards and getting more bang for our bucks. For example, our Business class flights home from SYD using UA miles were 80k apiece at the saver level vs. only 62.5 Business apiece over to AKL using AA saver miles.

 

We used to use our Capitol One card for our European travels- the 20k points I'd collected with them bought me one r/t to/from Baltimore:rolleyes:! As I see it 80k points with Cap1 wouldn't even get me one way coach from down under to home. We are keeping that card since it will be accepted at Costco next year.

 

We've been very fortunate to have been able to use combined flight/cc miles for every cruise listed in my signature (+ many domestic trips) including upcoming cruises except for our Norway cruise when we used Icelandair.

 

The important thing is for each person to research and determine what methodology gets them the benefits they value most.

Edited September 28, 2015 by TMLAalum

[jewopaho]

IMO you have to look at what you plan to gain from the CC. I don't fly a lot - 6 - 8 times a year - but my CC gets me free checked baggage and priority boarding so to me the CC fee is worth it. I am not really concerned with the miles, but I do stockpile them so that we can fly first or business class to Europe or AK or HI.

That's what we like about Capital One Venture ... we can apply accumulated mileage dollar-for-dollar for any vacation-related expense incurred within 90 days of the statement date. That includes baggage fees, insurance, and other such "intangibles." One click, and the amount is deducted from our credit card balance. As noted in a previous post, we figure that we're about $12,000 to the good over a period of about five years ... tough to beat.

 

Al