To me the biggest question with recommendations for friends is: are they willing to put in the effort to understand airline award systems, or do they just want something simple that reduces travel cost? The Alaska card will probably yield better value on aspirational stuff (e.g. premium class flights) than BMO World Elite or CapOne Aspire, but the latter two are super simple to understand and obtain value from, especially given the recent changes to the Aspire redemption scheme.

Note on BMO World Elite -- from my experience the points are easy to use. Hotel and flight selection and prices are essentially the same as Expedia. Light years ahead of CIBC Aventura which had a very clumsy interface and very limited hotel selection and info, and sometimes pretty bad value.

That said, neither BMO World Elite or CapOne Aspire are currently FYF and neither have a GCR cash back for application, but CapOne has the better welcome bonus: $400 worth vs. $300 for BMO... after the annual fee it's still $250 of free travel money for the cost of two hard pulls (IIRC CapOne pulls both EQ and TU). Other similar MC rewards cards are MBNA World Elite (FYF, same earn rate, 60$ GCR cash back, but small 10k bonus) and National Bank World Elite (FYF, lower earn rate except for purchases in foreign currencies, no GCR cash back, 20k bonus + 10k on second year, some extra perks). There's also the TD First Class Travel Visa Infinite (why only MC and not Visa?), earn rate is lesser than the others (except National Bank) but has $50 GCR cash back and a bonus worth $200 in travel. I would pick the CapOne Aspire despite the annual fee.