Open jaws flights & credit cards?
 

Hi,

This is my first posting. I would love to find a credit card that offers travel/airfare for an open jaws trip. Do any exist?

We have 56000 travel miles on our CC but are having a tough time trying to figure out how to use them, since out trip is midwest to PDX, then home from LAX. My best guess is to fly into Sacramento or San Fran, drive to the PDX area, drive down the coast, then to drive back to Sac to fly home. That would be considered a round trip.

Or --- we could use the points/miles for a rental car, IF they don't care about drop off in a different city.

Havin' a hard time spending my miles here!



Thanks,
janbo

Welcome to FT!

What specific program do you have your points in?

The problem might be that you don't actually have airline miles, but, rather, credit card 'miles' that function differently--on the whim of the credit card company.

If you want to earn points to use on open jaw trips, you are probably better off with a credit card that lets you earn--directly or through transfers--miles in an airline program. The two most popular such programs are offered by American Express--one being the Starwood hotel chain card and the other any of the Amex cards that offer the full Membership Rewards program.

thanks
 

for the advice.... we have a Chase card that earns 1p/$, or if I shop through Chase, I receive more p/$, depending on the merchant. I take it the AmEX cards are expensive, though. Maybe worth it?

j

The Starwood Amex is available fee free for one year, with a $45 annual fee after that. As a signup bonus, you can get 10K Starpoints, which more than makes up for the hassle.

The card is almost uniformly recommended here on FT--it's worth a look.

By way of clarification, Starwood is a hotel company and Starpoints can be redeemed for award stays at their hotels brands including Westin and Sheraton. In this context, however, the idea is that you would accumulate Starpoints and transfer them to an airline frequent flyer program because most airline programs allow open-jaw redemptions.

Other hotel chains offer airline transfers, but Starwood offers the most favorable exchange rate. 20,000 Starpoints = 25,000 airline miles (on most carriers, notable exceptions are Continental Airlines and United Airlines.) While it is not necessary to stay at Starwood hotels to use the program you would accumulate points faster if you did.

It sounds like what you are looking for ideally is a "triangle" trip (A to B to C and then back to A), not an "open jaw." (If you preferred to travel from PDX to LAX by car or train, then you would be looking for an open jaw.)

Although I can't offer any help to you with using your current credit-card miles, I would ask: Is this a one-time-only itinerary, or one that you plan to repeat in the future (to visit friends, family, etc.)? If this is a trip you plan to make more than once, I would suggest that you see if any airline would permit you to fly your desired "triangle" itinerary on a round-trip award, making an en route stopover (i.e., midwest-LAX with a stopover in PDX, and then LAX to midwest; or midwest to PDX, and then PDX-midwest with a stopover in LAX).

Unless the rules have recently changed, American Airlines permits one open jaw and one en route stopover on domestic award tickets. (Other carriers sometimes permit on or the other, but not both.) AA has been known to be pretty liberal about allowing stopovers on their domestic award tickets. I was once able to fly NYC-LAS; then LAS-RNO (connecting in LAX); and then RNO-NYC on a single award ticket, staying over in both LAS and RNO. Whether your particular itinerary would qualify I do not know. If you identify any carrier that would be good for your future travel plans, concentrate on that carrier. Citibank is currently offering a variety of AA credit cards fee-free for the first year, with 25,000 bonus miles if one charges $750 to the card within the first four months of card membership.

Hope this is helpful.

Actually, guv,
 

This IS an open jaws trip that we plan on taking several times in the coming years. Cousins in PDX area and cousins in the LAX area, mixed in with our love of wine (Napa) and food & museums & sight-seeing (San Francisco) turn this into the trip of choice for us for the next few years while we finish paying for daughter's college. Not a bad thing!

I'll look into Citibank as well as the Starwood CC's. I thought about looking into the AmEx Blue, too.

Thanks so much for all of the helpful tips. I have a lot to learn here!

janbo

OK, then. It sounds like you would be best served by a domestic frequent-flyer program that permits a single open jaw on a roundtrip award ticket. So check out those carriers that either by themselves, or with their frequent-flyer airline partners, offer service from your home base to both PDX and LAX (or one of the other airports in the Southern California area), and see which of them permit single open-jaw travel on an award ticket. As I say, I believe that AA does so; you would have to check the award ticketing rules on the other carriers, unless other FTers who see this thread can post the answers. (It might be helpful if you would identify your home airport.)

The Amex Starwood card is probably a good bet if you expect to charge enough every year to make up for the annual fee. If not, then assuming that you have good credit, you might be better served by just taking advantage of the bonus offers that are offered periodically (but with some frequency) by the airline frequent flyer credit cards (like Citibank's AAdvantage cards, Chase's UA Mileage Plus cards, etc.) Currently, if you take both the Citi AAdvantage MasterCard and AAdvantage American Express Card fee free for the first year, and spend a total of $1500 in the first four months ($750 on each card), you will end up with 51,500 AAdvantage miles, enough for two tickets on your next PDX/LAX sojourn, if award seats are available on your itinerary for your dates of choice (that can be a big "if"). At the end of the first year, cancel the cards, and look for an attractive offer from another issuer.

janbo19 welcome to FT.

Thanks, guv & fan
 

I will look into AA cards. I know for a fact that Frontier serves both places & I will check into them, too.

You're most helpful!

janbo