Jet Co Brand Card vs Citi Premier Miles
 

Hi,

Need some advice regarding which credit card is better in terms of earning and burning miles for international tickets from India. Any of the Jet Co-Branded cards or Citi Premier Miles?

I suppose the Citi card has the flexibility of more airlines to choose from for award flights, is that true practically?
How is the general award availability on Premiermiles for international flights out of BOM?
Does conversion of Premier Miles to 9W/AI FFP Miles (if required) incur any charges, if yes are they nominal or exorbitant? Is the 2:1 conversion ratio a good value?
How does the miles earning rate on Citi compare to say the HDFC JetPrivilege World?
Is there any other aspect to look at?

Looking forward to your inputs.

Thanks in advance.

with one of the jet branded cards you are pretty much stuck with one airline....with premier miles you have a choice of a bunch of airlines....

have you considered the citi prestige card????in my opinion its the best travel card available in the market....

The best earning rate at the moment is on the HDFC Diners Black, which gives you a 33% return (with a cap of 25,000 points per statement cycle) in the form of points that can be transferred to BA, SQ, 9W, AI (and a couple of hotel programmes). Downside: it's a Diners card, so acceptance is sub-par.

That's a billion questions! Are you choosing only between the Jet co-branded & Citi PM cards? Depending on your salary etc. the best card for travel is the Diners Black (25L salary). It's not perfect but in my books overall it's the best. Prestige would be my #2 (40L salary).

IFF you are using the card to purchase a lot of airline tickets I'd prefer the PM over the Prestige cards. And unless you've sworn an blood oath to 9W - there is little reason to restrict yourself to a single airline esp. since your consideration is international travel. And BTW both AI and 9W are the worst for international redemption so use a different FFP.

Depends on how well you can use the accelerators of that particular card. Generally speaking PM is better at an overall level.

If you're comparing against a JP card - obviously.

With PM you can redeem in 2 ways: 1. Transfer the PM miles to an airlines' FFP (1:0.5 ratio) through which you can buy real awards tickets or 2. Use the PM miles to buy revenue tickets (1:0.45 ratio) through their own portal. As a strategy see if option 1 or 2 is working better for you and then transfer miles to the FFP if needed.

If you're directly using PM miles to buy tickets availability is based on available revenue tickets so 100%. If it's through an airlines' FFP it depends on their awards availability.

Don't think there are any charges or could be very very nominal ones. The ratio is quite good esp. if you factor in purchasing airline tickets using the PM card which gives you accelerated earnings.

Info will be available on Citi & HDFC websites. You can do the math yourself. Plenty of other aspects to look at like additional travel benefits like lounge access etc., accelerators, redemption partners etc. etc.

Wow, thanks for the comprehensive feedback @Piper.
I wasn't sure about using PM miles for revenue tickets, thanks for clearing that up....I guess that does make more sense than a Jet Co-Brand card. Though there would be a loss of value in converting PM to FFP miles (2:1) vs directly crediting FFP miles from a Co-brand, it seems the accelerated earnings and flexibility should make up for that.