BONUS MILES...
 

Can anyone recommend a credit card which offers bonus travel miles? I know that there will probably be an annual fee, how much?

Most of the sirlines have an 'affinity Card". Anyone on this board would gladly refer you to get extra miles. Also, I've seen add by Capitol One and Wells Fargo that gives miles for several different airlines (usually they need more miles for a free flight). My credit union also offers a miles charge card and so do our grocery store. The affinity cards seem to cost about $60. a year. Some offer a signup bonus of a free companion ticket. And I think the other cards mentioned cost about $35. a year

I know Citibank offers a card for American Airlines miles, I think it is around $50 a year. FirstUSA offers one for United, however I could never recommend FirstUSA. I had an experience of a $2000 payment never being credited to my account and fought a year long battle with them. I learned the hard way of their incompetencies. However, according to Mileage Plus (United), that is the only card that officially gives United miles.

There's also the American Express Membership Rewards program. It costs $40 over your membership fee. The advantage is that you can transfer the miles to a variety of airline frequent flyer plans, both domestic and international, as well as to hotel programs.

I have a First Usa card and you can use the miles on any airline they call it <BR>valuemiles. You get a mile per dollar <BR>charged works well if you charge everything and pay your card off monthly. 10,000 miles you get $100 off any ticket 15,000 free airfare if the <BR>departing airport and distination airport is the same side of the Mississippi otherwise it takes 24,000 miles if they are not.They did have my miles messed up and it took many calls to fix but they finally did fix it. I think the yearly fee for the card is $25 no additional costs to be in valuemiles.

I have a FirstUSA Visa card. I used some free miles to go somewhere once. I was pleasantly surprised to find that they had many, many flights to choose from (D.C. to Phoenix), and I got frequent flier miles for taking my free flight. <BR> <BR>United has a deal going through FirstCard where you get a $25 coupon good on airfare when you sign up, as well as a two-for-one coupon to use on United. The annual fee is about $60, but the perks are worth maybe $350, so it's a good deal.

You may do the best of all with Diners club (but not accepted nearly as many places) or American Express Membership Rewards program (transferable to something like 13 other airlines).

SC <BR>We have Continental Visa through Chase Manhattan. We decided for standard card with annual fee $45.00 or we could get platinum with $65.00 fee. We get 1 mile for each dollar spend. We also got bonus of 4000 miles after paying our annual fee and if we renew it next year we will get another 1000 miles bonus. I think with platinum card you will get 6000 miles bonus. There is also an advantage in getting Visa card, it is accepted everywhere. We traveled to Ecuador, Peru, Portugal, Belize, Costa Rica, Kenya, Tanzania, St. Lucia, T & T, Madagascar, France, and Poland and our Visa had been accepted even in small establishements. Last November when our Visa was stolen in Lisbon we had some problems paying our bill with Mastr Card. Anyway, there are probably more details on Continental website. It seems as a good deal, but how easy it is to get your free flight on Continental I do not know.