NothingToSeeHere

Is either program better than the other one? The only benefit I see with going for ConnectMiles Visa Infinite line one of the benefit is being silver status without any additional fees. Meanwhile I dont see anything similar on the MileagePlus cards. Their is also the Lifemiles cards, but I have never try out Avianca before.

sermasri

This depend where you want flight and use your miles. The Visa ConnectMiles infinity get silver status and special second ticket in 99 + plus taxes.
In use the Visa Connectmiles Infinity for three years with BAC but never use the benefits of second ticket, when try use the don’t have availability or was more expensive that normal ticket on economy. (Copa Call center told me that availability for use this benefit is limited and I select buy popular route and recommend my that buy no popular routes).

YadiMolina

It depends on which airline you fly more. The Mileage Plus cards don't offer Silver status, but do offer boarding group 2 and a free bag, which is basically Silver minus the upgrade opportunity (which is virtually zero for UA Silver).

You can look on this forum for commentary about those supposed "benefit" tickets on CM. I had a Banco General Connect Miles card for 5+ years, and tried to use those companion tickets and other things, the fare class necessary to use the benefit was either unavailable or more expensive than just buying two regular tickets. (Which is the same thing the poster above is saying.) I was very unimpressed with the CM card, but maybe because I was attributing all my CM flying to MileagePlus.

NothingToSeeHere

From Panama to any other country I think it is usually cheaper for me to go United, but the ease of nonstop Copa flights is tempting. Do I get the same miles even if I use United with my ConnectMiles FF number?

NothingToSeeHere

So in theory their isn't much difference between the two of them? I should just take whichever has a lower Annual fee?

sermasri

Yes, can select the most cheaper credit card, because the miles that will earn can use in any Star Alliance partner

hoangb

I would say get the United card because the United Mileage Plus miles appear to have much more use whenever I tried to book an award ticket in the US, to Asia, or to South America. On the other hand, trying to use my connectmiles to book an US award ticket was twice as many miles required than what I could get on United miles, or no results were shown.

Case in point:

I was trying to book a trip from Asia to South America using miles. During the time I wanted, United wanted 55,000 miles one way plus taxes while no availability showed when I tried with my Copa Connect miles.

When I tried to book a one way ticket from US to Canada, United wanted 13,800 miles one way whereas Copa had it for 25,000.

On the other hand, having Silver with Copa is good in that I was upgraded more often than anticipated as Silver when flying on Copa's routes.

pmarrsouth

If you are getting the CC to accrue miles to redeem for award tickets, then you should be:

1) Getting the CC with which status program you are with and already accruing by flying
and then by
2) The CC with the program that offers the cheapest award tickets overall

If you are pretty much only looking to fly on UA and use mileage plus when flying, then get the UA CC. If you are not, and are open to a lot of different airlines, then maybe the CM card is better (award tickets are much cheaper in vast majority of cases on CM*, than on UA, however there are headaches which I will explain below)

*When *A saver space is available

Firstly, if you are only looking to book PTY-USA or PTY-South America then use the CM website. If you are looking to do anything in anyway more complicated, then you NEED to call CM. This can be a process and pray that you are connected with Dana or Brenda or Monica in the redemption team

Before calling, make sure that the legs you are looking for are available in I or X on Expertflyer. If they do NOT involve UA metal and you can build the itinerary on united.com (using miles) then 99% of the time the agents in Copa can recreate this for you. Again, the CM website is terrible and I would avoid using it for the majority of cases

Some math. We are flying from PTY to India, all in J. It was available to book for 99K miles on United.com, and obviously not available on CM's website. This prices at 85K miles according to the chart on CM's website and once the agents can build the reservation, they will get the same number. However, since you hold the CM CC, you will get an additional 10% off (ask for it if they do not realize, but they are pretty good with adding it normally) and so it will cost you 76.5K miles all in J (vs 99K on United for the exact same itinerary)

Now the headaches. You need time and patience to get through this as it can be tortuous trying to get the reservation booked with a CM agent. Not all of it is the agent's fault, as their SHARES system does not talk to a lot of the other systems in real time. You need to feed them exact flights, dates, etc, so have EVERYTHING noted down in front of you before you call them. Once they build the reservation, in most cases it will not ticket instantly, due to their system. This means that you need to wait for the airline(s) that you are flying on to confirm with CM that there is actual space available. This can take 2 - 20+ hours (and the held itinerary generally cancels around the 24 hour mark). You will need to call them back to see if the other airline has confirmed on their end. Then the agent will price the taxes (if they have not been able to already) and finally you can ticket it. Have a rough idea of what the taxes will be (info can be gotten from the UA site in general), as I had a couple of agents try to charge me a lot more than it should have cost, again, due to their system and not the agent trying to rip me off - they have to add up everything manually and I figure that they are looking at a huge chart with every tax listed

Airlines which seem to confirm instantly with CM without having to wait: CM, UA, AC, TK

Airlines which take a while to confirm but generally without issue: LH, LX, MS (Egyptair - if you have 1 leg per booking on MS, then it seems to work fine. But if you have 2+ legs then it may well fail)

Disaster to deal with and never worked for me: LO

TL;DR

If you have time and patience, CM is far cheaper. You can also get more creative (and legal) routing with a CM agent than what United.com will show
UA is more expensive but you can do pretty much everything on their website and it will either ticket instantly or confirm within a couple of hours without you needing to intervene