MilesBuzz! - Which is best: a single airline CC or CC offering multipile airlines?

I fly 2-3 times a year and have accumulated over 170,000 miles with American using a platinum Citicard. Experience has taught me that using FF miles requires booking weeks in advance to assure nailing a seat open to FF members on both American and even more so on assosiated carriers, like BA. I now have an option to use a Merrill Lynch CC that offers points towards booking seats on numerous major carriers. But don't many of these carriers give preference to their own FF members? Would I be shooting myself in the foot to use up my American FF miles and switch to a multiple airline card that is based on a points system?

Wellcome to FT.
If I only fly 2 to 3 round trips per year, I would focus on a single airline (or airlines within an alliance) to accumulate my miles. By spreading out points or miles across several airlines (particularly if some or all of them are outside of the subject alliance group) would not serve the purpose (free award trips). In the days when airlines are raising redeemable miles (by reducing saver award as an example) for awards, it is more important to stay focus on one or possibly two carriers.
Having said that, this strategy depends on where you live and which airlines serve your city.

... a Merrill Lynch CC that offers points towards booking seats on numerous major carriers.
Welcome to FT!

I'm not familiar with the T&C of this card, but your statement "offers points towards booking seats" (or even if they call them "miles") makes me think that their "points" are not frequent flyer miles, nor can they be deposited into FFP for things like upgrades! What Merrill Lynch, like many other companies, may be doing is offer their own "points" - and once you get a certain number of "points", they buy you a ticket on whatever airline (but only up to a certain amount)! They may only spend (say) $350, but if the ticket they can purchase costs $380, they will say nothing is available! :(

Also you can not use these "points" to upgrade, unless you can get them to buy a First Class seat from "X" to "Y" for (using the above example) $350! :eek: (Just try to find a First Class seat from BOS to SAN for $350!)

Welcome to FT! I would get something that gives cash back instead of miles.

1. You can do whatever you want with cash
2. $$ can earn interest, while miles dont..
3. Miles go down in value as airlines try to cut costs.

Unless you know exactly you are trying to achieve with the miles you
earn, I think getting cash back is a very good bet.

I would stick with one airline so your miles accumulated faster toward free tickets or upgrades. It doesn't make sense to trade your AA credit card for a misc. points card.

Many folks like the Starwood Amex card because its points can be exchanged for miles on many airlines. The redemption rates vary, but for some airlines it can be 1 Starwood point gets you 1.25 miles. The points are also good for hotel stays at arguably the best hotel awards program around, though that has become more debatable since Starwood devalued the hotel redemptions earlier this year.

Received an email today from Capital One No Hassle Miles.

They are offering 2500 no hassle miles for opening an online money market account earning 4.25%. The minimum balance is $500.

This also includes 1 mile per $20 deposited on a monthly basis.

offering 2500 no hassle miles
Again, this is not airline FFP miles, but their own program "miles". Once you get so many "miles" with them, they buy you a ticket! :rolleyes:

Please take a look at my Credit Card > Bank and Other Travel Cards page on my website below to see why I don't like these types of cards.

I fly 2-3 times a year and have accumulated over 170,000 miles with American using a platinum Citicard. Experience has taught me that using FF miles requires booking weeks in advance to assure nailing a seat open to FF members on both American and even more so on assosiated carriers, like BA. I now have an option to use a Merrill Lynch CC that offers points towards booking seats on numerous major carriers. But don't many of these carriers give preference to their own FF members? Would I be shooting myself in the foot to use up my American FF miles and switch to a multiple airline card that is based on a points system?
1. There are tons of cards that are similar to the Merrill Lynch CC, in that they give you their own polints, which you can use at roughly a cashback value to buy airline tickets. Why? You could achieve the same thing with a simple cashback card? All of these points are not much better than getting 1% cashback, maybe a bit more but rarely up to 2%.

2. There are a few cards that let you earn real miles on a variety of airlines, but that's a separate beast. As mentioned, SPG Amex is one of them, and Diners Club MC is the other main one. Both of the support AA, and with Diners Club you routinely have promos where you can get a 50% for transferring to BA.

3. AA miles are more valuable to keep collecting than most, because if you ever accumulate 1 million from all sources (flying, credit card, hotels, rental cars, pudding, whatever), you'll be Lifetime Gold at AA. (2 million will make you Lifetime Plat.) At all other airlines, there's either no lifetime status, or it's only based on flying miles, or only a very limited number of partner miles qualify.

4. The real value in using real miles comes when you use them for either business/first travel (especially international), where they are worth way way way more than cash back, or at least use them for "expensive" domestic destinations (the ones that rarely/never go on sale). While this is not an AA example, I recently was able to use 25k UA miles for a $600ish flight LAX-JAC (Jackson, WY). There is very little competition LAX-JAC (AA can't fly me there same day, Alaska can only put me on code share turboprops, and that's it!) and thus prices are always high, but by booking a few months in advance I was able to get a 25k award on my preferred day (I just had to fly a couple hours ealier than my first preference). I consider that a reasonably good use of miles. I would not consider the same 25k for a LAX-JFK flight that's routinely on sale for under $300 to be a good deal at all (that puts it back into that "cash back" territory). On business class international it's even clearer: buying a business class ticket (with money "fake miles" like with the Merrill Lynch CC, Capital One, etc) can cost 5x to 10x advance economy prices, but getting a business class international award typically only costs takes about 2x the miles of the economy award (and is sometimes easier to book as an award!). That's why the value of real miles soars if you use them for business or first awards (or also upgrades to business in some cases), while the value of "fake miles" is fixed at the equivalent of cash back.

(Real miles are based on giving you [what is expected to be] unsold inventory, and thus the airlines can afford to book an award at "severe discount". Fake miles have to book flights through the same methods that you book flights when you pay for them, thus they cannot offer "severe discounts" on higher classes of service or high priced destinations.)

On business class international it's even clearer: buying a business class ticket (with money "fake miles" like with the Merrill Lynch CC, Capital One, etc) can cost 5x to 10x advance economy prices, but getting a business class international award typically only costs takes about 2x the miles of the economy award (and is sometimes easier to book as an award!). That's why the value of real miles soars if you use them for business or first awards (or also upgrades to business in some cases), while the value of "fake miles" is fixed at the equivalent of cash back.



Good advice, and accurate as far as it goes. But even on international travel, the value of miles isn't what it used to be. I recently priced a round-trip from Denver to Paris on UA in business class. To upgrade with 60,000 miles, the lowest coach fare was $1,400. To just buy a business class ticket was $2,800, meaning the miles saved me about 2.6 cents each. While the business class fare was somewhat limited and had restrictions, it was much more available than the upgrades. And I don't think that UA business fare is the cheapest around.

At 2.6 cents each, you might as well go for cash back and use the cash to have a better choice of flights, dates and airlines.

they buy you a ticket on whatever airline (but only up to a certain amount)!

Does that mean that you could earn real FF miles from tickets purchased through the rewards program?

Does that mean that you could earn real FF miles from tickets purchased through the rewards program?

That depends on the rewards program. Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

Though I've been very pleased with my Bank of America US Airways Platinum Visa - I have a hard time finding the right flight for the price that I'm looking for with US Airways. I haven't taken advantage of it nearly as much as I should be.

Good advice, and accurate as far as it goes. But even on international travel, the value of miles isn't what it used to be. I recently priced a round-trip from Denver to Paris on UA in business class. To upgrade with 60,000 miles, the lowest coach fare was $1,400. To just buy a business class ticket was $2,800, meaning the miles saved me about 2.6 cents each. While the business class fare was somewhat limited and had restrictions, it was much more available than the upgrades. And I don't think that UA business fare is the cheapest around.
It's much more complicated than that. The ways you can upgrade with miles (what fares it's valid from, whether you need a co-pay) varies a lot from airline to airline, and in the case of a co-pay (AA) rather than a minimum fare (UA), the miles for the upgrade pay off more if you can buy on an economy-only sale fare, and in turn since those are easier to find in off-season, the value of miles upgrades tends to be higher in off-season (at least at co-pay but "upgrade from most any discount fare" airlines like AA). (There are just a couple AA economy fares you can't upgrade with miles on int'l, O and Q.)

And the upgrade cost varies. So I might typically, on a sale (not using O or Q fares) in spring or fall find a $700ish all-in to continental Europe, and pay $600 in co-pay (thus $1300 total) and 50k miles if I upgrade both ways on AA Or AA partner Iberia (who is the cheapest) can fly me in business for also around $2800 (but that requires 2 connections rather than 1 on AA). 2800-1300=1500/50000 miles = 3.0 cents a mile. But if I want to fly one-stop, it costs about $3200, so 3200-1300=1900/50000 = 3.8 cents a mile. (And while I earn a bit more miles on a paid business class ticket, it's only 25% more than for a discount economy class ticket, so that's only about 3000 miles in this case. So it doesn't affect the outcome greatly.)

However, the cost of business class does not go up in summer the way economy prices do. So the worth of using miles this way in summer is signficantly less, with all the other variables kept the same!

And the availability of sale fares in business varied tremendously based on your home city's relationship to both your airline and to competing airlines (in the case of price-matching sales).
At 2.6 cents each, you might as well go for cash back and use the cash to have a better choice of flights, dates and airlines.
Ok, please tell me where you get an average of 2.6% (or even close to that) cash back? (Yes, I do know there may be cards that give you 5% back at grocery and drug stores and gas stations, but most people can't put most of their spending through just those establishment. In my case, it's a small fraction of my total spend that goes to such establsihments, but of course YMMV.) 2.6% is around (maybe above?) the amount that the credit card company gets from the merchant fees, so I'm not sure why anyone would give you that much cash back! :confused:

1. There are tons of cards that are similar to the Merrill Lynch CC, in that they give you their own polints, which you can use at roughly a cashback value to buy airline tickets. Why? You could achieve the same thing with a simple cashback card? All of these points are not much better than getting 1% cashback, maybe a bit more but rarely up to 2%.

For my usage, the best I've been able to find is the Citiback PremierPass (not Elite). With no annual fee, and with a reasonable amount of flying (3,000 miles for every $1,000 charged on the card which is not a challenge for me) then you get the equivalent of 2% back as "thank you points" (TYP). While the TYP are redeemable for gift certificates and travel through Expedia (generally at 1 cent per point), they are also available for the fixed flights option which can be worth more than 1 cent per point. (You have to read the terms to learn more about that.) If you charge enough you can actually get 2% rebate without flying at all by buying tickets for other people and accumulating their points.

You cannot just get a bunch of points by buying a few high mileage airline tickets and accumulating those points -- you have to charge with it as well. Make sure you read and understand their terms (as well as other postings here) if you want to use that card.

There are a lot of varying ways to do it, but by accumulating enough points there and then using them to buy a ticket, I'll also get EQM and RDM on that "award" ticket. The challenge then becomes the same one I always have, which is to find tickets with good value for their price and redeem the points against that. On the positive side, you get a 2% rebate and can buy any ticket you want without having to get 25K points, or if you choose not to travel you can redeem the points at one cent each for a variety of gift cards (make sure you get higher value ones to get a full one cent each). On the negative, you basically have to buy through Expedia, so if the airline you want or routing you want isn't showing as available or the right price, you're stuck.

Um, just keep in mind merrill lynch points (M+ or signature rewards) can be converted to BA Executive Club points at a 1:1 basis (with occasional bonuses- the last one was 30%, 6500 BA miles for evers 5000 M+ miles). so it's better (IMO) than most CC mile programs, and no fee like the chase BA card does.

...using FF miles requires booking weeks in advance to assure nailing a seat open to FF members on both American and even more so on assosiated carriers, like BA. I now have an option to use a Merrill Lynch CC that offers points towards booking seats on numerous major carriers. But don't many of these carriers give preference to their own FF members?

The Merrill+ program is different than other generic credit card systems. Merrill+ earns one point per dollar. Spend $25,000 to earn 25,000 points, sufficient for a ticket cost up to $500 on AA, BA, CO or DL. These are purchased tickets, you choose the exact flights and do not compete for scarce award inventory. You will earn miles for the flight. Redeem an additional 2,500 points if you prefer a different carrier, plus there is an option to redeem additional points for more expensive tickets.

As a fallback, Merrill+ points can be converted to BA miles in blocks of 5,000.

I'm a big fan of TY and have the PP elite level card. I'm going to use it this summer to fly NYC - TLV. The cheapest non stop ticket is $1400. Although I have CO Plat status there is 0 availability for the whole summer (until 9/11.) For 80K TY points (I ocnfirmed that they will pretty much get me any ticket that I want) I will save almost $1400 (-some tax) plus get around 12,000 EQMs. To me that's a ratio of about 2:1 (since I value EQMs more than standard miles.) I do not have to compromise on dates and I have full flexibility. For those of us who are not willing to pay for business class, the savings from a standard points program is rarely above 1.2:1. (I've never paid for a domestic filght more than $400. With FF you pay the taxes as well, not to mention that you often have to compromise on dates etc.)

Welcome to FT! I would get something that gives cash back instead of miles.

1. You can do whatever you want with cash
2. $$ can earn interest, while miles dont..
3. Miles go down in value as airlines try to cut costs.

Unless you know exactly you are trying to achieve with the miles you
earn, I think getting cash back is a very good bet.

A fourth important advantage of a cash card is that you can

a. BUY a ticket without the hassle of reward availability, AND
b. you get more miles when you fly (which you do not get on an award ticket.

The only reason to have a cc that gives miles in one airline is to reach million mile thresholds faster.