Originally Posted by swag
One big advantage of the airline cards for the less frequent spender, is that the points get combined with your frequent flyer account.
True...it can be a long, slow grind to 25k or 50k on a home-grown points card if you aren't a big CC user. Plus there typically aren't big sign-up bonuses (although I'm starting to see some modest sign-up bonuses in some of the junk mail I'm getting for these cards).
By comparison, even a smalltimer can quickly earn enough points for free hotel nights at quite a few decent Sheratons and Westins, or use smaller amounts of points to augment any number of existing FF accounts.