FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Credit Cards That Allow Points Conversion to Airline Miles (1 to 1 or better)
Old Dec 30, 2010, 6:33 pm
  #10  
sdsearch
FlyerTalk Evangelist
 
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: home = LAX
Posts: 25,934
Originally Posted by mia
They might be able to work with a foreign Skyteam carrier, but there is no obvious opening, and the carrier would know that the card would generate a high level of partner redemptions.
Also: Many/most of the continental Europe as well as Asian FF programs (as opposed to UK programs such as BA) have an "unavoidable" expiration of miles (ie, you can't stave off expiration just by having "activity"). So a card specific to that program would be of dubious use to US-based fliers who didn't either spend a lot (enough to earn an award and use it before the expiration) or add to that SkyTeam's partner's miles balance not just by using the card but by crediting all their Delta flying to that partner (which would reduce or eliminate their ability to earn status on Delta itself!).

Having the ability to transfer from Chase Sapphire Preferred would avoid this problem (since you could transfer only once you'd earned enough points for an award, and only right before you needed to use the award), but I doubt that Chase would make a SkyTeam airline a Sapphire Preferred partner if that SkyTeam partner didn't have a card of their own with Chase, which gets us back to the above paragraph.
sdsearch is offline