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Travel Rewards & Airline Credit Cards
Beneficial to those who enjoy going on vacation or have large families where ticketing can be cost prohibitive to go anywhere, travel rewards and airline credit cards allow you to earn miles or points toward either a specific airline or to be used as payment for tickets, cruises, and in some cases rental cars and hotel stays. Keep in mind that many times airline specific cards, meaning those where the points may only be used on a specific airline, come laden with annual fees. Though these may be a deterrant, and many people do, they still can be worth it if there is either a bonus for opening the account or if you travel frequently on a particular airline. The second happens frequently with those who travel regularly for work internationally and enjoy the benefit of purchasing their own tickets with reimbursement afterwards.
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- Earn 10,000 Bonus Miles with every $2,000 in purchases within the first 6 months - up to 20,000 Bonus Miles
- 1 Mile on every $1 you spend - Plus flexible redemption options like travel credits, merchandise, gift cards or cash
- 0% intro APR on balance transfers for 12 months, then the variable purchase APR of 10.99% - 15.99%*
- No restrictions on travel--fly on any airline, book any hotel or car, with no blackout dates
- Travel benefits include secondary collision damage insurance when you rent a car with your Miles by Discover card
- Discover is ranked #1 in customer loyalty--16 years in a row! (2012 Brand Keys Customer Loyalty Engagement Index report)
- Great rewards with no annual fee, no rewards redemption fee, and no additional card fee
- *Click apply to view rates, fees, rewards, limitations and other important information.
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Intro APR
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Intro APR Period
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APR
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Annual Fee
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Balance Transfer
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Minimum Credit Required
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0%
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12 months on Balance Transfers
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10.99%-15.99% (Variable)*
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$0*
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Yes*
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Excellent
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Best Travel Rewards Cards
The best travel rewards cards or general miles cards as they are commonly referred as are the ones that allow you to use the points for othr things other than airline tickets. For example, the ability to use them for hotels or rental cars. In general, here at CardBeacon.com we are not in love with travel rewards credit cards (with the exception of the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card www.chasesapphire.com ), which we will outline fourther in the next section where we talk about the best airline credit cards. The problem with miles cards is that most points based rewards programs give you the ability to use your earnings toward things other than flights, like gift certificates, merchandise, etc. In our opinion, the general points based rewards program is a more sophisticated extension of a travel rewards card thatr encompasses everything and more that a miles card does, only better. The exception to this rule is when there is a huge disparity in the APR or the length of an intro 0% term. Obviously whether or not there is an annual fee or not plays a role as well. Our rule of thumb is that if a consumer is deciding between two cards that are almiost identical in nature in terms of the pricing structure and one is a general points card while the other is a travel rewards card, they should go with the points card more often than not. Therefore, the best travel rewards card is defined by our standards as a card with a more attractive pricing structure than a points based rewards card.
Best Airline Credit Cards
We personally don't like these at CardBeacon.com. This may be because we live in an area where we need to travel on various airlines because no airline uses our home airport as its hub. The concept of the airline card is somewhat antiquated in our opinion. With the emergence of very powerful consumer-friendly travel comparison websites where people can compare fares side by side and get a better deal than if they were to deal with an airline directly, the airline credit card miles system just doesn't seem to make sense. If you could use miles accrued on these websites it wqould be an entirely different story, but the likelihood of that happening in the near future if ever is grim, considering the fact that these portals themselves are beginning to partner with issuers to create their own travel rewards credit cards. The other thing that can be problematic is that airline specific credit cards in many cases come with higher annual fees, are more likely to have blackout dates for travel, and sometimes mandate that you forfeit your miles if not used in a set time period. If you are contemplating one of these offers, make sure you read the fine print in the terms to insure that this doesn't happen to you unexpectedly. Don't get us wrong, there are advantages to some of these, but everything must line up correctly. An example of this would be if you were a resident of Pittsburgh and you used USAIR almost exclusively for your traveling needs (USAIR's hub is Pittsburgh). In this case, the best airline credit card would be one issued by an insititution with a partnership with this airline.
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