Our daughter is heading to HI for college in the fall and we plan to charge the tuition & dorm to a credit card, in order to gain miles. Unfortunately, the college does not accept AMX, but does MC/Visa.

We have Usairways MC, but have had a difficult time in the past getting award seats.

Has anyone else done this? What card would be best in regards to gaining FF miles. Our goal is to get enough points to fly her home occasionally. We anticipate charging roughly 12-14K annually and paying it off each month.

Any input would be appreciated.

Citi PremierPass Elite. You can match the 12-14K spend points with the flight miles for her trip(s) home.

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Which carrier provides the most service to your home airport? And slightly OT, but how are you getting her out there initially? With a one-way, or a round-trip? At www.skyauction.com, you may be able to find a decent deal on a round-trip with an extended date for the return. (Just be aware of all taxes, fees, and surcharges before bidding.)

Thanks for the replies.

We live in Phx, so US, SW/ATA and Hawaiian have the most flights. She already has about 12 RR on SW, and about 50K on US, but both are hard to get award tickets to HI. (Maybe they all are!)

As for her ticket out (and 2 for us...2 day parent/child orientation) we looked at US first and they were 900 and change. ATA/SW was around 500 and Delta had RT for 417 all in. Thats my dilema...do I take the cheaper fares w/o miles or seek miles for potential future use and spend more of our seemingly dwindling resources.

I'm starting to wonder about that AMX travelers check to points scheme. If I were to buy AMX travelers checks to use for tuition (assuming they would accept them), then pay off the AMX. Would it be easier to book awards via AMX? I've never accumulated enough points to doing anything with, so am unfamiliar with the program.

As she is our first to go to school, this is all new. I assume she would return for Christmas, Spring break and summer, so 3 RT per year.

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Conserve your dwindling resources, and book the cheapest flights, but make sure that your daughter enrols in the FF programs of all airlines she flies. With 3 round-trips a year for 4 years, she can amass miles in different programs if need be. I think that AA and UA offer the most seats from HNL to the mainland, although they may not be the most convenient ways to fly between HNL and PHX. If AA is a reasonable option, check out the AA forum here on FlyerTalk, where there are details of a promotion for the AA/Citibank credit card, which is offering waiver of the first year's annual fee, and a boatload of free miles. It may be the best credit card deal out there right now.

With that much charging, you would get 40K bonus miles on AA (20K signup, 10K for $10K spend first year, 10K for $10K spend second year). Add to that the amount you're charging ($24K over two years plus personal spend) and you could easily have 70K miles after two years _without any flying_. That's enough for two award tickets to Hawaii.

Watch for cheap tickets to HI from LAX, and then you can book a cheap ticket to get to LAX when you want to take a paid flight. That way you're not dependent on PHX fares.

If you go with the Citibank Premierpass Elite card, you'd earn somewhere around 48000 ThankYou points over that same two years, worth about $480 when booking a ticket via Expedia. I'd rather have 70K AA miles than 48K ThankYou points. Both of these would also have the revenue ticket flight miles added, so I ignored that as part of the comparison. Also, the AA card has no fee right now but the Citibank PremierPass card is $75.

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The AA card is only free for the FIRST year; after that, the annual fee ($60?) kicks in. But there is no reason why the OP and spouse can't EACH apply for the card and EACH get the bonus miles. Note: AA appears to have limited service from PHX to HNL. UA offers more service. The UA Visa card is currently offering the first year free, and 21000 bonus miles. Although the bonus is not as generous as AA's, UA may be a better choice because of the specific route to be flown. And periodically, UA offers a more generous sign-up bonus for their Visa card.

This seems like a really good case for Diners club. I would have said Starwood but since no AMX, the diners club seems like a perfect fit. you can choose from a variety of airline partners and sometimes get travel benies.

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But the Diners Club annual fee significantly dilutes the value of the card, given the OP's anticipated annual spend.

Again, thank you for replying. There are some really good ideas posted here that we are going to investigate.

I sincerely wish they accepted Amex. I overheard a conversation on a Hertz shuttle whereas one person said he paid 3 kids tuition & dorms on Amex and was set for years with miles. Big sigh....dreaming of a free ticket in my twilight years.

Significant annual fee only if you pay it....I haven't paid to renew my card for many years. Just threaten to close the account and they roll over on the fee, or in some years make you pay the fee but give you thousands of extra points in return.

But what about the Diners Club annual fee for the first year of membership? Is that waived? Or does one have to pony up $95 to play? It seems that with a variety of airline cards offering to waive the first-year annual fee, and to throw in a lot of bonus miles to boot, the airline cards may be a better choice (at least for now).

The Bank of America Hawaiian Airlines Visa gives you 2 miles for each dollar spent on the purchase of Hawaiian Airlines tickets. I use it for everything when I'm in Hawaii and from time to time, I get surprised by additional bonus miles from purchasing from various businesses in the islands.

Hawaiian Airmiles is also one of the few remaining airlines (at least that I'm aware of) that you can transfer points into (from Amex and Diners) and then transfer on to other programs without terrible exchange ratios. (E.g., 1000 Amex points = 1300 Hilton Honors. 1000 Amex points = 1000 Hawaiian miles = 2000 Hilton Honors points.)

True but be careful. Some of those partnerships are changing See this thread


To the OP, I find that the HA mileage program is great in regards to reward seats. Additionally, you can redeem miles for one-way tickets for as little as 15,000 miles one-way. This can be great if your daughter doesn't know her exact schedule at the end of semester when you're booking the trips to start the semester. The BofA HA Visa gives you a 10k bonus, which isn't spectacular in comparison to others. But even without putting tuition on it you're looking at 1 free one way after the 10k bonus and 2 segments between PHX and HNL. WITH tuition, I'd suspect you'd pay for only half the trips. The HNL-PHX route is generally pretty light on HA. As such, the fares are pretty cheap, We've booked HNL-PHX roundtrips on HA for between $320 and $380.

And there's a fairly decent Hawaiian Miles Mall for online shopping that gives 5 or so miles per dollar spent with the BofA HA cc, which can be helpful, at times as well. Also any BofA HAMiles cc holder may have HAMiles transferred into their account by any HAMiles member (with or without being a cardholder.)