Question
Does anyone know of any credit cards, available to Irish residents, associated to airline frequent flyer or hotel frequent guest programs?
I'm looking for alternatives as I have the MBNA Delta card which gives 1 mile per 2 euro, crap in my opinion. I wouldn't even think about getting the Ryanair credit card.
Answer
Does anyone know of any credit cards, available to Irish residents, associated to airline frequent flyer or hotel frequent guest programs?
You're looking at a pretty hopeless situation. I have the AIB Executive Visa, which used to be the Aer Lingus Gold Circle card. Although not connected to any airline FF schemes, it gives you annual Priority Pass, RZGP Gold (for a year), and annual AA membership. All for EUR200 fee per year, plus the government blackmail (sorry stamp duty) of E40.
Outside of that, Ryanair and Delta are the only other genuine airline cards in the market. Both are operated by MBNA.
Bank of Ireland's AMEX relationship, using Centurion Card Services in Nassau Street, seems to have died, and AMEX in the UK are taking the accounts back. No idea what's happening to Membership Rewards, but I'm expecting some correspondence in the next few weeks. If the card gets re-connected to the UK, there may be points transfer back into BMI and Air France.
From a market perspective, the Irish issuers are making so much on the debt end of things, why would they want to give you anything back, or split some of the pot with an airline?
My E0.02c
Aidan