Question
Our family (six) flies to vacation destinations at least twice a year. For the next couple of years at least, we'll most likely limit our travel to the continental US. We don't stay in hotels, so it seems that the biggest bang for our miles/rewards would be airline tickets. Additionally, we purchase tickets on occasion for family to fly and visit us. Given the scant information above, what is the best credit card to use for getting airline tickets?
We typically fly Southwest because they usually have the lowest fares [I may learn otherwise after reading post on this site for awhile].
Thanks is advance and I would be happy to provide additional information if that will solicit more or better answers.
Charles
PS - I hope I posted this in the right forum.
Answer
earn Southwest rewards >
card (card points needed for 1 rapid reward)
-Southwest Visa $59 (19,200)
-AMEX charge card $95 (20,000)
-Diners Club $95 (16,700)
diners club also allows transfers to marriott rewards at 1:1.2 ratio.
and so that 50K you got from amex transfers to 2.5 southwest tickets.
i presume you are a marriott vacation club owner?
Answer
I think the Premier Pass or Premier Pass Elite might be another good choice depending on spending. They would give you flight points for the miles purchased on the card. Plenty of good info in this forum on the cc.
Answer
it would require ~$12,500 spending and ~12,500 flown miles to redeem a ticket, NOT necessarily on Southwest.
Diners Club only requires $16,700 spending, and can also be transferred into Marriott.
not knowing more about the OP, PPE might be good, but it seems based on current info that Diners Club is really the best.
Answer
Without knowing more, it's hard to give a universal answer, but here's mine anyway.
In the past, I've used AMEX and southwest to earn rapid rewards and it worked out ok.
But I've since moved to an area that sw doesn't service and I find my job requires some flying. The problem is, while I may accumulate enough pts/miles to redeem 1 or 2 tix a year, it's not enough for the whole family.
So I decided to get the PPE card since we get the pts for miles flown for the entire family. so while the upcoming family trip isn't free, perhaps after another family trip, we'll have enough pts to redeem the following family trip for free.
Of course this deal requires you to spend the equivalent in $$ as in miles, so the spending has to be somewhat proportional to the flying. So that would require us to spend about $20-30k if we took 2 family trips which is within reason for us. and the other point is that I recently signed up when there was no annual fee for the card- I think that deal is now gone (I think the fee is $75)
There's probably a better way, but until I can decipher all this flyertalk code, I'll just stick with this one.
Answer
My wife and I probably put [conservatively] $35 to $40K on our cards every year. We don't fly frequently enough to accumulate SWA rapid reward points [2.5 times a year if I had to guess an average]. It is my understanding that we need 16 flights to get a SW ticket.
Charles
Answer
then you could earn ~2-3 southwest tix a year with diners club spending alone, any points earned from flying might boost that, and you should be able to transfer into each family member's account
and you would also have the option of transferring to marriott as well, at a good ratio 1:1.2 (20% bonus)