Now I'm even MORE curious. BofA AND Chase allow you to churn? Can someone point me to threads detailing these rules and procedures? I thought the T&Cs for both Chase and BofA limited each person to 1 card for eternity.

No, Chase does not let you churn (under most usual circumstances). They used to, it was really sad when that went away.

They currently seem to be limiting most people to opening 1 card every 6 months. You can still get the bonus miles for each type of card, e.g. United Visa Signature, Visa Signature Gold Class, Visa Signature Platinum Class, Visa Business... but they'll only give most people 1 card per 6 months.

Bank of America may say one bonus for eternity, but in my experience this hasn't been enforced.

Good point.
I thought about the citiforward cards, but at last I decided that doesn't worth the hard pulls.

The problem is that I don't know anything about the churnability of other bank's cards, like application period, max cards allowed, etc...

I heard about that rule. Is it 1 card/ 6months or 1 application/ 6 months?

Not to go too OT, but I'm finding the card a good deal. On top of the easy bonus TY points (6K for first purchase + 5K for paperless billing signup), you get 5 TYP for spending at restaurants -- incl cafes, fast food, etc -- bookstores, and movie theatres. (Suggested motto: "media and eat-ia.") With the TYP gift card redemption options, that's in the 4-5% rebate range. They also throw in 100 TYP for every cycle that you a) have a balance and b) make a timely payment of at least the minimum amt due.

Mrs B and I use this in the same way we use the Associated Bank (co-branded Citi) card that gives 5% cash back on gas/grocery/drugstore purchases: as a category-specific purchase method. It isn't going to make us rich, but a 5% discount is better value than we'd get on our primary card (Starwood Amex), and splitting the spending didn't get in the way of hitting the $30K plateau to make SPG Gold.

Airline partners? Very few, but they're slowly building, mostly smaller airlines in adjacent countries, WestJet for Canada, Volaris or something like that for Mexico.

It's irrelevant to this discussion anyway, because the "loopholes" for earning lots of Southwest awards fast through hotel partners (and most specifically, partners of those hotel partners, like Amtrak), and for doing three-way transfers, are long closed up. And Southwest itself uses Chase.

I only brought it up to point out that one such hotel partner, Choice, would have been churned left and right if BofA had allowed "heavy" churning of the Choice card. But we know (because someone tried) that they didn't. (The deals for transerring to Southwest at great rate only lasted a half year at most, so "slow" churning was of no use to people pursuing those deals, only "heavy" churning would have been.)

Given that churning appears to be over on the Citi AA cards, I was intrigued to read that the Bank of A Alaska cards can be converted to AA miles.

Can someone tell me:

1) Which card to take? How many Alaska Miles will the bonus be?

2) What is the conversion rate between Alaska and AA?

3) Is there an annual fee for this card?

Thanks so much.

Also, are there any other cards which I could take out for which the miles on this card could be coverted to American miles?

I've probably reached my card-approval limit on Amex and Chase. What other banks should I consider? I know about:

* Bank of America (have held a Royal Caribbean and a Choice Rewards card from them, but don't own any at the moment; not sure what if any airline-specific FF cards they offer)
* Barclays (I have a single US Airways card from them; thinking of trying for a US Airways Business card. Any others out there?)

Which am I missing? And should I be consulting a list of banks and which credit reporting agencies they use?


There's Discover, I recall. But they don't seem to have any airline-specific cards. Not sure if Discover's mile cards are any good for converting to other programs without a really lousy conversion rate.

Here's what FF cards Barclays offers to U.S. customers:

http://www.aboutbarclaycardus.com/pr...e_products.php

Didn't notice any great offers--with the exception of U.S. Airways (already know about them).

Bank of America offers Virgin Atlantic and Alaska Airlines among others. The Alaska Airlines card was the only reasonably good looking offer I saw.

I think you read wrong. Where did you read that?

Alaska miles can be used for awards on AA flights, but they cannot be converted to AA miles.

It's simply that Alaska is an AA partner, and you can earn Alaska miles and then use them for partner awards, which includes AA.

SImilarly, you could earn Cathay miles, or Iberia miles, or Mexicana miles, and redeem them for AA awards.

But there are very few airlines that let you transfer miles out, and even when they do you lose half the value or more doing so. It typically involves transferring from the airline to a hotel program and then back to another airline, or even more roundabout.

If you're still interested, go to www.alaskaair.com to learn about the program (and the credit card).

SPG Amex, arguably the best card overall. Points convert to most carriers (incl AA) 1:1, with a 5000 mile bonus if you transfer 20,000 points -- effectively earning 1.25mi/dollar spent.

For details, see spg.com or http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/starw...er-thread.html

Of course, as with other Amex cards, the SPG Amex is not churnable.

If you are willing to stay in cheap Choice Hotels, and they have one of their occasional huge bonus periods like summer 2009, you can still do halfway OK converting to WN (but they have since devalued).

I took my son to Disneyworld last summer and we Choice-hopped for 13 days, mostly along the dreaded Irlo Bronson. A pain, but depending how you look at it, we got almost free hotel stays, or the equivalent in WN credits. We only used the place to crash and shower.

Free airfare, annual passes to the World, almost free hotels, and Star Wars Weekends. Priceless.

This may only be useful to top off for a Companion Pass, where those last few credits are of immense value each. For just getting WN RR awards, there are probably better ways. Of course (as you well know, sdsearch), Choice has a history of hosing its point holders with little or no warning, so there is some risk.

And as far as I know, if you spend $200 in a calendar year on Amtrak, you can still use the old 1000 CO> 1000 Amtrak> 3000 Choice > .75 RR credit, with a limit of 25000/50000 out from Amtrak a year. That could be a timely dump into RR.

But the glory days are over.

This is technically true, but I've had the Starwood Personal card 4 times and the Business card 3 times and every time I got the 10k bonus. I just got the personal card bonus again last month. The secret is not giving Amex you SPG #. If they have to create a new SPG account for you, they must assume you haven't had the bonus before.

I had the same success with the old Platinum Hilton card using the same technique. I was also able to get the bonus the first time I applied for the new version, but I haven't tried to get that one again.

Isn't British Airways' card through Chase?

Is BA churning allowed, even though UA isn't?

How long does one have to wait before reopening a Delta Amex card in order to get the bonus again?