Originally Posted by
JGfromOC
I'm flying about every other week. Would use SC each time, but mostly in 45 min or so increment, unless I am facing a delay or something. Just hard for me to justify spending $450/year for the AMEX Platinum too. Most my miles were earned last year due to business travel that was expensed, so cost me nothing - so more or less the miles were free.
Actually you can reduce the $450 AmEx platinum annual fee to $50 within the first year.
Each calendar year you get a $200 airline fee credit. So you would get $200 this year and $200 next year. That is $400 of the $450 fee credited. If you don't have incidental charges with DL (in-flight food, checked luggage, award ticket fees, etc), you can buy small denomination gift cards.
You also get the $100 Global Entry fee reimbursed when you apply and charge the application fee to the AmEx platinum.
So the first 12 months will give you $500 of benefits for your $450 annual fee without even considering anything else like lounge access, etc.