I think that subsidizing your operations which lose money by profiting off of consumers who use your credit card with the promise of being able to 1) receive loyalty benefits; 2) use miles for various travel is not a sustainable long run profitability strategy. As loyalty benefits from spend become more difficult to use and (heaven forbid) AA ever massively devalues awards a la UA and DL, the value proposition of using the card to consumers on the margin also declines until the opportunity cost of switching to non-airline CCs is low enough that they forego airline CC utilization.