xmlsoa

Any cards that give MILES POINTS at signup for AWARD travel use, before a person INITIATES any transactions/ spend ?

Kay_nyc

Check out the Barclay's US Air card. Most cards have min spend. Anything $1000 or less is low min spend nowadays.

cardinalkid1891

The Alaska Air card gives 20,000+ points upon approval depending on the offer. The points often post before you even get the card in the mail. Like Kay_nyc said, there's lots of cards out there that give points on first purchase such as the US Air card

Kay_nyc

Au contraire - the bonus after first purchase is a dying breed IMO.

Does the Alaska card usually require an annual fee in the first year? I'm thinking of getting it myself. But I try to avoid annual fees.

SquarePeg

Yes. AS card is $75 not waived. You also get $99 companion certificate on approval.

x712xdamx

Correct, AS card miles literally will be in your account before you receive or activate the card! Have to pay ann fee though, HOWEVER:

There's a version of the card (offer in FT and if you google) that gives you a $100 statement credit for spending $1k in 3 months... so it more than covers the $75 annual fee.

xmlsoa

The reason I ask is I have 100k mile on me and was doing a 60k Business Saver in C one way.

Since it is a one way award, open-jaw and stop-overs are blocked.

Is there any way to boost myself by 20k miles using a Credit Card or some scheme ASAP.. without waiting?

Could I do the return/ open jaw (SPREAD OUT by few months) in Economy and then bump it up to Business / FC later (after half my journey has finished) ?

Typically 60k + 60k in C for round trip.

x712xdamx

...... we'd need to know what airline you have 100k miles in.

xmlsoa

Sorry, in my mind I thought I had already communicated that but I did not as I am not in the UA forum so here goes..

CO > UA: 100k

sdsearch

The SPG Amex gives 10k right away, and then an additional 15k (or sometimes 20k) for $5k spend in the first 6 months.

HOWEDVER: Even if you are going to transfer to airline miles, it's not good to transfer the 10k first and then the 15k later, because you only end up with 25k that way. If you transfer all 25k at the same time, you end up with 30k. (It's actually 30k becoming slightly over 35k, if you also factor in the "normal spend" 5000 points you get for spending $4k.)

Still, even 35k miles for one card (that required $5k of spend) is not great, and 10k miles for getting it instantly is rather poor. So while technically this falls into the category you described, it's recommend against using it that way.

KennyBSAT

There is an Alaska Air card with 25K miles and a $100 statement credit after spending $1000 in 3 months. https://www.applyonlinenow.com/USCCa...2240008-513864

xmlsoa

Thank you. You are the best.

- Can I book award BC (C) for 60k and the return in Economy for 40k (few months gap between both)?
AND
Later allowed to make following changes after having flown the One-way:
.. Change Return DATES and FLIGHT SEGMENT LENGTHS/ ROUTING?
.. Change / up the RETURN to BC/ FC with miles gathered?

And thereby circumvent the One-way restriction I am facing right now.

sdsearch

That is a bunch of questions, and some are airline-dependent. The simple part is that if you book two one-way totally separately, you can make changes to one without affecting the other (which you couldn't necessarily do if you booked it all as one round-trip). For a drastic example: I book my cross-country AA award trips for Christmas week travel as two separate one-ways. Last winter, I was returning, and AA cancelled my late afternoon flight HSV-DFW(-LAX) early that morning because of a connection in DFW where there were weather issues. It couldn't rebook me until a day later, which meant I would miss work. I also have Southwest points, so I went to the Southwest website and found a decent points fare for BNA-LAX nonstop that evening. I booked that, changed my rental return from HSV to BNA (about 2ish hours apart by car), and cancelled by AA one-way and get the miles back. But if that had been a round-trip in progress, I doubt that I could have cancelled the remaining half of the round-trip and gotten half my miles back. (I didn't get charged any cancellation fees either, but I have to mention that I was AA EXP status at the time and I don't know if that had anything to do with it. And/or it could also have been a factor that AA had cancelled and rebooked me and in those cases some fees are waived that might not be if you made the change totally for your own reasons.)

But as to changing return and flight segments/routing and class of travel, whether you can do that and what the fees are involved can depend on the airline whose miles you're using and the airline you're actually flying, how "close in" to the travel date you're making the change, and the status level (if any) that you have with the airline whose miles you're using.

So you should go to the forum for the airlines you're interested in doing this with and research those things. (I have no experiecne with any of them, and I'm sure if anyone who has is going to pop into this thread in the credit cards forum. These questions are getting sort of "off topic" for this forum.)

Happy

Go to UA forum to ask your specific questions on the rules of the program.

Do you know that changes are not free except for 1K?

You should also check the fees on UA website on the changes you intend to do. UA charges fee on virtually all types of changes, including changing class, changing routes, changing carriers. No idea whether they charge each separately. If so, you may be better off to just cancel your return portion, pay the $200 redeposit fee and then rebook because if those fees are separately charged, you are looking at close to $300 fees.

xmlsoa

Thank you. I just did that.

I realized this is not the place to get award rules and information. I appreciate the insights on the Credit Card programs.

Any more insights on bumping a quick set of miles on UA would be welcome.

Its been a long time since I've been doing frequent flying and leveraging miles and awards.