Frequent Miler on the Air - Battle of the $350 airline cards: AA, Delta, United (and Alaska) | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep344 | 2-6-26

Episode Date: February 6, 2026

In this episode, we'll take Hyatt on a mattress run, we'll answer "Is Tyler crazy for liking the Bilt Paladium card?", and Nick disagrees with our entire main event!Giant Mailbag(01:07) - Tyler disagrees with all the negative feedback that the Bilt program is getting(06:01) - Read more about Greg's thoughts on Bilt changes hereCard News(08:18) - Atmos Ascent ($95 card) offerLearn more about the Atmos Ascent card here(10:24) - Southwest consumer card offers: Companion Pass + bonus pointsLearn more about the Southwest consumer card offers hereMattress Running the Numbers(13:08) - Hyatt's overlapping promosLearn more about the Hyatt Bonus Journeys hereLearn more about the Hyatt House / Hyatt Studios promo hereBonvoyed(21:00) - Chase makes it harder to track Ink Business Cash® 5x spendingLearn more about this hereAwards, Points, and More(22:09) - Capital One: 30% transfer bonus to Japan Airlines Mileage BankRead about Japan Airlines sweet spots here: https://frequentmiler.com/best-uses-of-japan-airlines-mileage-bank-miles/Learn more about the transfer bonus here: https://frequentmiler.com/30-transfer-bonus-from-capital-one-miles-to-japan-airlines-mileage-bank/See our podcast episode 325 "Sweet-spot awards courtesy of Japan Airlines" here: https://frequentmiler.com/sweet-spot-awards-courtesy-of-japan-airlines-frequent-miler-on-the-air-ep325-9-26-25/(25:26) - Citi is still allowing product changes between AAdvantage and ThankYou point cardsLearn more about Citi no longer allowing product changes between AAdvantage and ThankYou point cards here: https://frequentmiler.com/is-citi-no-longer-allowing-product-changes-between-aadvantage-and-thankyou-point-cards/(29:03) - Rove "Built Better" promoRead more about the Rove "Built Better" promo here: https://frequentmiler.com/rove-built-better-promo-7x-on-hotel-stays-bonus-earnings-free-miles/Main Event: Battle of the $350 airline cards: AA, Delta, United (and Alaska)(32:40:09) - Comparing $350 airline cards: AA, Delta, United (and Alaska)(35:33) - Earnings on spend(40:25) - All offer standard airline card perks such as free checked...

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. On today's show, we take Hyatt for a mattress run. We answer, is Tyler Crazy for liking the built palladium card? And I disagree with our entire main event. Frequent Miler on the air starts now. Today's main event, Battle of the $350 airline cards, American Airlines, Delta, and United, all have $350 annual fee airline cards.

And we're going to compare them head to head. But we're also going to throw in the Alaska Summit card because that one's $3.95. So it's sort of in that 350-ish, you know, ballpark. And that's what we'll be exploring on today's main event. And if you want to jump ahead to that or you want to come back to it later on to listen to parts of it again, remember you can always find the timestamps in the show notes. just expand the description box. If you're watching on YouTube, you've got to expand that. It's not intuitive as to where that is.

And if you're listening on a podcast platform, you should be able to find it in there. Wherever you're watching or listening, speaking of that, don't forget to like this video. Give us a thumbs up. Leave us some stars. And leave us your comments with which of these cards makes the most sense for you. All right. Let's drag out this week's Giant Mail back. All right.

Today's Giant Mail comes from Tyler. Tyler says, I disagree with all the negative feedback that the built program is getting. Here's my take. The built palladium card gives you 2x points on everything plus 4% built cash. If you plan to spend 50,000 per year on the card, it appears to yield the following. $50,000 times 2 equals 100,000 points. 4% built cash plus $200 automatic annual cash is $2,200 in built cash you have every year. That's not even including what you get with the sign-up bonus.

The 1,000 of that built cash can be used to add 25,000 points to spend if used in the right increments. So he's talking about one of the built cash options is to redeem $500 in built cash in order to get an extra point per dollar run up to $5,000 spend. And you could do that up to five times. And the final $1,000 of built cash can be used to earn points on your mortgage, earning 33,333 points per year. The setup yields 158,33 built points per year on $50,000 of non-category spend. That is 3.16 points per dollar. Those points transfer to Hyatt and Alaska and come with built platinum status. Just as an aside, it doesn't really come with built platinum status, but $50,000 spend gives you built platinum status.

He says, plus $600 of hotel credits more than offset the $1,000. the annual fee for the palladium card. Those outcomes do not seem achievable in any other points program on the market today. Am I crazy or is built actually providing value here? What do you think, Nick? Is Tyler crazy? No, I don't think Tyler's crazy. And I think that there are people out there who will say,

but Tyler, with $50,000 in spend, you could open 10 credit cards this year and earn far more points. And you're right. But I think that Tyler might also say that you're crazy. And which one of you is right? Who's crazy? you're both a little crazy in different ways. That's all it is. We can all embrace our own craziness and the different ways we want to play the game.

I think a lot of people look at that and say, but who's spending $50,000 on a credit card? The fact of the matter is there are some people who are. And people who are. Yeah. And well, you know, I think there's a lot of people on both sides, right? There's a lot of people that look at that and they're like, that's a median income where I live.

Like there's nobody that I know that's spending that much. But then there's a lot of people that are like, oh, well, I mean, most people I know are spending that much. And so you got to remember that there are people playing this game at very different ends of the spectrum and with different types of expenses and different ways they want to play the game and levels of complication. And I think for one card, for somebody who's going to spend $50,000 and only wants one card, I think you're hard pressed to find something better. Now, in the math here, Tyler mentioned you're spending $50,000 for the $158,000 built points, but you're also spending $33,000 on a mortgage. So we're making the assumption that you're doing that too in order to come to that quantity of points. But if you've got Tyler's situation, I think that's where this card is a pretty good fit, to be honest.

Yeah. You know, I actually, I don't think there's any question that the built cards and especially the plaitium card are extremely, can be extremely valuable for your spend. I mean, there's a huge amount of value to be had there. To me, the real question is more about, do you? want to invest in your time, effort, spend in the built ecosystem. So a lot of our negative press about built lately hasn't really been about whether the cards are rewarding or not. It actually hasn't been about that.

I think we all think they are. The issue is that they badly bungled a bunch of things about the built 2.0 rollout. And so really, and they made Built 2.0 very complicated. So it makes it very difficult for like average people to understand how to use it, how to maximize it. You know, taken together, that makes people question like, what's the long term viability of built? Will we be able to continue to earn at this rate going forward? Will we, will built points continue to be as valuable as they are today? And is there any risk of built just going kaput and, you know, dropping out of this world like Mesa did not so long ago and make all our points, you know, worthless?

And I think those are all fair questions to ask. In fact, I just wrote a post questioning those things. And I wrote a post called, Can We Trust Built with Our Point? points because ultimately for me, like I know the program is going to change, the details of built cash and how many points per dollar you can earn doing this or that. All that stuff is going to change over time. What really matters to me is, is it worth me diving into it, doing all these things that we can do now, that we know we can do now to earn lots and lots of points, given that there might be some risk of those points devaluating, devaluing. And I believe that the risk

of the latter is very, very low, the points devaluing. I think a lot of things will change. That's very high risk. But the points themselves, I think is very low. So I think Tyler's on the right track. I think what he proposes makes a lot of sense. I think there's even better ways to optimize his spend than what he listed. But that's a kind of fun game to play because there's so many ways to use the built program now because it is so complicated that you can maximize it every which way. Yeah, and I will agree with Greg that like the messiness lately certainly gives I think all of us reason to question the the planning and the leadership going on right now. And so I think everybody is right to be like, wow, this is this is kind of crazy lately. I think there's a lot of people too that are like the new system isn't all that complicated. And it's not necessarily that it's complicated. It's that explaining it all to somebody who's unfamiliar with it requires too much effort. And and so that's where I think, when we say it's very complicated, it's hard to explain all that to somebody, but if you're willing

to play the game, great. The other thing for me is that I am prioritizing use of built points first at this point. And that's not necessarily because I think the built points are at risk. Like Greg said, I think things will change, but I think I'll probably see it coming. You know, probably have an idea that things are going to change and have an opportunity to transfer points or whatever the case may be. However, because it's a less established program, I am prioritizing the use of those points sooner rather than later ahead of other types of points. Now, If you're willing to deal with the complication and whatever else, you might hang on to them and hope for a transfer bonus or something. I can see both sides of it. And I think it's worth recognizing that there are multiple ways to play that.

All right. Let's talk next about card news. So in card news this week, we've got the Atmos Ascent card is out with an ascending offer. It has ascended to 85,000 feet. So now the card comes with 85,000 points and the $99 companion fare after $4,500 in purchases. the first 90 days. And every year, you can earn another one of those companion fares at $6,000 spend. Now, at the risk of getting confusing here, the Atmos Summit has an award companion thing that's totally different. This is a companion fair for a paid ticket. So you're buying a paid ticket, and you can bring a companion for $99 plus taxes. And so that's what this is. And it's a one-time use thing, unlike like a Southwest companion pass. But 85,000 miles and the companion for, for $4,500 spend?

I don't know. What do you think? Great offer, good offer, something people should consider. What's your opinion? It's very good for this $95 card. It's pretty much the best offer we've seen. We saw a very similar offer with just slightly less spend recently.

So there was a slightly better offer. But basically this is 85K is the high watermark that we've seen, I believe, for this card. And so if you're interested in getting a lot of, Alaska Atmos Miles, I think this is a good time to do it. And of course, if you can make use of that companion fare, that can be really valuable in itself. Yep, absolutely. For a $95 card, it's a solid offer. There are splashier offers on the market for the more premium cards, but for a $95 card, they're really useful miles. I made the point that if you're East Coast based and you can find some of those 45,000 point each way, business class opportunities to get two and

from Europe. After you've completed the required spend here, you're going to have basically enough 500 points short of enough for a round-trip business class ticket to Europe. That's really good for a $95 airline card. That's a good opening offer. So if you're able to do that, great. Speaking of new offers and mentioning companion passes there, the Southwest consumer cards are out with a new offer that awards a promotional companion pass and some bonus points. So all of the consumer cards right now offer a companion pass that's valid through February 28th of 2027 and points. The plus card comes with 2,000 points after $3,000 spend in the companion fair. 20,000 points. I'm sorry, did I say 2,000, 20,000 points. And the companion pass after 3,000 spend. The premiere is 30,000 points in the companion pass after

4,000 spent. And the priority is companion pass in 40,000 points after $5,000 in spent. So each one requires a little bit more spend. So if you're interested, in that one-year companion pass and some points. That can be a good deal. Of course, you can combine the power of the two. You could use those points to book a flight and add your companion for just the taxes. If you're not interested in the one-year companion pass, there is an alternate offer available on all three of those cards of 50,000 rapid rewards points after just $1,000 spend, no companion pass. Now, I probably wouldn't recommend that offer over these offers for most people, but if you already have a companion pass or you think you're going to earn one,

then maybe these wouldn't be appealing. I am of very mixed feelings about these offers. On the one hand, they're super exciting for somebody who only wants to get one card and get a companion pass and particularly somebody who doesn't want to apply for business cards, then this is certainly your easiest path to a companion pass. So if that's you, if you're like, I would love to have a companion pass, but I'm not going to open a business card, then this is your opportunity and you should jump on it, especially if you're able to make extensive use of it, if you know that over this next year,

between whenever you complete the spending and the end of February of next year, you're going to travel a lot and bring a companion, then this can be a slamming deal. It can be great. On the flip side, if you want an extended companion pass on a lot more points, the way to play that is usually to consider applying for Southwest cards near the end of a calendar year,

like October, November, December and completing this spend in January because if you earn the 135,000 points that you need, really 125 as a credit card holder, then you end up with a companion pass that's valid for the rest of that calendar year and all of the next calendar year. So it's a significantly longer period of time than these are. So if you're primarily interested in companion pass as long as you can, I would hold off and wait until the end of the year or still consider now applying for a business card and one of the 50K consumer card offers. But again, if you're the one card person only want a consumer card, then this is a pretty compelling offer in my opinion. Yeah, totally. Okay. Let's talk

about mattress running the numbers. For mattresses running the numbers this week, Hyatt got in the game. So let's talk about those overlapping promotions. What's up with Hyatt? Yeah. So Hyatt has a couple of promotions going right now that can be overlap to be pretty compelling for considering a mattress run. Now, Mattress Run is where you book hotel stays in order to earn points or elite credits so that you can get elite status with the hotel chain. And, you know, we've talked many times about how much we think Hyatt has the best elite program, at least at the high levels. Once you get to 40 nights with Hyatt and above, things get really, really valuable. And so, you know, when there are overlapping promotions that can sort of pay you back for booking a stay, sometimes it can be worth getting 10, 15, 20, however many nights to get to that next level that gets you to the valuable level of elite status you want. And this is a time where that may be happening.

And we'll let, we'll discuss the details and we'll see what everyone thinks. First up, we have the Hyatt bonus journeys, which is what they call their big promotion every single year. And this year's you must register and stay by April 15th of 2026. And the deal is that you earn 3,000 points for every three nights you stay. So basically an average of 1,000 points per night. But you have to stay in three night increments in order to make that work. they don't have to be consecutive nights, though. There's also an extra bonus for a thousand points more for every three nights if you stay at Hyatt

place and or Hyatt select properties. Cash and award stays count for this promo, stays at like partner programs like Mr. Mrs. Smith, Venetian resort and their home and hideaways by Hyatt. Those all count, but you do have to book through. Hyatt your stays in order for them to count. And the maximum points you can earn with this particular promo is 21,000 bonus points. The other promo that's happening at the same time is there's specifically Hyatt House and Hyatt Studios promotion, which lasts through the end of the year, which offers when you stay five or more consecutive nights, you'll earn 5,000 bonus points.

So again, a thousand points per night on average, as long as you stay in exactly five night increments, maximum 50,000 bonus points on that. And again, both cash and award stays count. So let's talk about how you can stack both of these. In order to stack both of them, your stays must be completed by April 15th, because that's what the first promo requires. And because one promo is based on three night stays and the other one's, based on five night, not three nights stays, but the first one's based on three nights of stays.

The second one's based on five night stays. I think the best way to maximize this is to stay exactly 15 nights or some increment of 15, like 30 nights. So I'm going to base all the math now on the assumption that you're going to do 15 nights with both promotions. And I think that's the most realistic anyway, because getting in more than getting in 30 nights by April 15th, you know, is possible. But that would be really tight. And any more than that, it's getting close to impossible, I think. So if you do 15 nights that what you'd want to do is book three, five-night stays at Hyatt House or Hyatt Studios properties.

And when you do that, the bonus journeys promotion, you'll earn five. of those 3K bonuses from doing that. So that's 15,000 points from bonus journeys. And you'll also earn three sets of 5K bonus points from the other promotion. So that's another 15K points. So total of 30,000 points for 15 nights and stays. Okay. So that sounds okay, I guess. 30,000 points, pretty good. High points are worth a lot. How could you play this as a mattress run? Well, I mean, one way is, of course, to find really cheap stays. But the way I looked at this is what if you want to use points? And if you could find Category 1 hotels that are Hyatt House or Hyatt Studios that are off-peak,

then you could book those for 3,500 points per night. And the 15 nights would come to 52,500 points total. But you'll get back 30,000 points because you're earning 30,000. bonus points. So the total cost to you in the end would be 22,500 Hyatt points, and that brings you to a cost per night of only 1,500 points per night to earn 15 elite nights from Hyatt. Wow. Wow. That's pretty compelling. And now I have a question. I hate to fall back into the weeds here on something that I probably should have caught sooner. But the first promotion offers $3,000 for every three nights plus a bonus thousand for every three nights at Hyatt Place and Hyatt Select. So if you're doing,

oh, but the second one is Hyatt House and Hyatt Studios. So they're not going to be high with it. I see. They were careful not to have those overlap, unfortunately. So you don't get that extra bonus from the bonus journeys. All right. Yeah. So, I mean, that looks like a pretty good promotion. And 22,500 points. I mean, that's a pretty good deal for 15 elite nights. You're going to do it? Andrews runworthy? Well, I mean, I think if someone has the rare situation of, you know, being able to find three, five nights in a row, off-peak stays at category one, and those hotels are somewhere close enough that you could easily check in each of those three times. Then sure, do it. I don't think it's very likely that too many people will be in that

situation. No, but if you are, if you are. And, you know, truth be told, that's, Greg's math was on maximizing it, but even if you didn't quite maximize, if you did one five-night, run. You'd still earn a good return and pay few points per dollar overall. You'd only trigger one of the the 3,000 points for three nights or maybe do six nights so that you get a second one of those. You could kind of massage the numbers and figure out what works best for you. But I think that there's a good return here. So if you think you're going to be a little short, it could be interesting. I think that the danger here is always mattress running this early in the year because you don't know what might happen throughout the rest of the year. And you know, you don't want a mattress run

and then not end up needing those nights. So that's where I hesitate to mattress run 15 nights, but I can consider doing five. What would be nice is if you were in a situation of getting one of those globalist challenges where spending 20 nights at Hyatt's would get you globalist status, if you could get in on one of those, which are often available through big companies. So if you work for a big company, it's worth checking. then, you know, if you're getting all these bonuses,

on top of earning global status, it could totally make match return. Whether you're paying for the stays with cash or points, it's a nice extra bonus on top. Yeah, very good. All right. Next up, Bonvoid. Chase Bonvoid us this week by making it harder to track your Inc.

Business Cash 5X spending. What's up with that? Yeah, so, you know, Chase, the Inc. business cash gives you 5x on several categories of spend up to $25,000 per membership year. And Chase used to make it pretty easy to see how you were doing, how much you've spent in those categories for your membership year. But recently they changed it. So the tracker now shows how much you've spent in those categories this calendar year, which, is not at all useful for tracking where you are with that spend for your particular membership year.

So unless your membership year begins January 1st, their tracker is no longer particularly helpful for that. Yeah, that's unfortunate. That's a pain because I often keep track of that that way. So big bummer that they have made that more difficult. And we have a link, of course, to the post with more information about that. Now, awards points and more. Let's talk about a little bit of that. So Capital One has a 30% transfer bonus going on right now to Japan Airlines Mileage Bank. That's available through February 28th of

2026. So usually the transfer ratio is 1,000 capital 1 miles to 750 Japan Airlines mileage bank miles. But with this transfer bonus, it becomes 1,000 to 975, Japan Airlines miles. So you're not going to quite get one mile out of every capital one mile you transfer, but it's close. It's almost one to one. So, I mean, almost one to one, everybody else, for the most part, is one to one. Is this interesting? Is it exciting to have a transfer bonus that only brings the ratio to one to one? It is exciting because Japan Airlines has some great sweet spot awards. You can use their miles to book not just Japan Airlines itself, but a lot of partners. And they have some amazing sweet spots that are available and we'll link in the show notes to a post Nick wrote where he explored some of those

great sweet spots and there's probably many more to be found. I'm just a little bit frustrated by the fact that Capital One makes it so close to one to one but not one to one that you're going to have to do some math, some figure in. Like if you need exactly, you know, 50,000 Japan Airlines miles, you've got to do some math to figure out, okay, how many capital one miles do I need to transfer to get there? But that's a minor inconvenience, really. And overall, I mean, I think that's good. I hope that they do this often because the only other way to transfer to Japan Airlines at near one-to-one is built, which has one-to-one transfers. And people don't tend to have as many, you might not have as many built points.

available as you have Capital One miles. So it's good to have both of those options. Yeah, very good. And to Greg's point about the odd transfer numbers, is absolutely right. That is frustrating. You have to take out a calculator to figure out what you need to transfer. However, the one nice thing here is that,

remember, Capital One does allow transfers and increments of 100 points. You need a minimum of 1,000. And then after that, you could transfer in increments of 100. So you don't need to worry about, oh, am I going to, like, strand a thousand miles? there, you should not have to strand very much at all because you could just take out the calculator and figure out exactly how much. And of course, they display with the transfer bonus how much it is. So you could just play with the numbers there if you don't want to break out a calculator. But yeah, I mean, things like 60,000 points one way for Air France business class to Europe with

no surcharges could be a great deal. Emirates business class to and from Milan with very reasonable charges. And it's what, 42, 500 one way, 60,000 miles round trip. I think it is. No, 80,000. 85,000. I can't remember. You have to take a look at it. But it's a reasonable, reasonable amount. That's what it is. It's 60,000 one way or 85,000 round trip. I misspoke there for, for Emirates business class for like JFK to Milan or Newark to Athens. So there's definitely some good sweet spots there that could make this worthwhile if you're sitting on a lot of capital one miles. Next up in card news or awards points and more rather. We have city now allowing product changes once again between some advantage cards, some American Airlines. advantage cards and some thank you cards. Now I said some because it's not necessarily all cards, right? Yeah, yeah. A while back we had posted that city seemed to have stopped allowing transfers

between their different points programs. And at some point following that, the ability to product change across came back, but selectively. And what I mean by that is when you ask city to, to product change, the computer gives the agent a list of options. And you're stuck with just that list. So because a lot of people are concerned about what's going to happen when their Barclays American Airlines cards change to city cards, we've recommended, hey, let that happen. And then you can product change to the Citibank card you really want,

which might be a city custom cash, for example, which is a thank you points earning card. But the problem is that that particular option probably won't be in the list of ones you can product change too. Anyway, I did a little experiment where I have a American Airlines mile up card, which is the fee-free city advantage card. And I chatted online with City to ask about could I product change to something else and what are my options. And so they gave me three American Airlines card options that I could product change to. But they also said I could change to the City Strata Elite card or the AT&T points plus card. You might not know the AT&T points plus card is a thank you rewards card.

It earns thank you points and has no annual fee. So if I were to do this, I'm not at the point where I actually want to change this card right at the moment. but if I wanted to convert this card to a custom cash, what I would do is I would change it to that AT&T card in the hopes that I could later product change it to the custom cash because by changing to AT&T, I'm now in the thank you points ecosystem and my guess is that when I asked a product change that,

they'll give me multiple options within the thank you points arena for product changing. I have no way of proving that. Until I actually do it, I won't be able to say, hey, this works, but that's my guess of what is likely to work if you want to follow that kind of path. Yeah. So there you go.

There you have it. You would want to go to the AT&T points plus card. And that's the one I think we would recommend out of those options, if that's what you're given, rather than product changing to the strata elite, probably. Because if you product change to the strata elite, then you may be locked into that for a year. You might think, oh, can I product change to that? And then product change to the customer. cash, for instance, but you may not be able to because that card has an annual fee and they may not

let your product change from that to a custom cash, for instance, without paying for the fee for a year and waiting until a year is up. And so you wouldn't necessarily want that outcome because you'd be paying the $595 annual fee for that card. And you might also be preventing yourself from getting a bonus on that card in the future for a while, anyway, based on the eligibility rules. So I'd go with the AT&T card, if that's one of the options that they give you and no other thank you point options. Okay, let's talk about Roeve. Rove is out with a built better promotion,

built better, more miles for you. So let's talk about this. This is a creatively named promotion. Yeah, they're clearly ribbing built and saying that they've got something better going on here. So it's kind of a fun, fun title for them. And there's several things going on with the Built Better promo, but I just wanted to highlight one here, which is that the Rove platform lets you earn Rove points, which are transferable points, by booking hotels, and you can choose to book points loyalty-eligible hotels. And so when you do that, Rove promises that you will be able to, you will earn hotel points for your stay.

So if you're booking like a Hyatt, for example, you'll earn Hyatt points for your stay. It should qualify for Hyatt promos. And even that when you pay for the hotel, it'll be paid for as if you're paying Hyatt. So if you have a card that earns a multiple on Hyatt stays, you should get that multiple from your credit card. And on top of that, the normal earning rate from Roeve is you get five points per dollar. And during this promo, you get 40% more. So you get seven rove points per dollar. If you book your stay during this promo.

So that's this Saturday, February 7th to Wednesday, February 11th. If you book during those times, and now I believe it could be for a stay further out. So you don't have to stay right away. But book during those times, you should be guaranteeing seven rove points per dollar on top of your high at earnings as an example. And one cool thing that the 7x is multiplies against the entire stay, including taxes and fees. Whereas when you're earning points from Hyatt itself, their 5x earnings are based on the base rate, not the total rate. So that's a little tiny advantage there.

So, yeah. So, you know, it's not like super huge bonus, but I think it's a good reminder that Rove has us out there as a way to, stack rewards on top of loyalty earning hotel bookings. Yeah, I mean, if you're going to be booking a hotel anyway, you could stack the two. And remember, Roves got some transfer partners that you probably already know, like Air France, KLM flying blue, Cathay Pacific Asia miles, Avios programs. So transfer to Finnair and Qatar, I think. And so then you could transfer on to the other Avios programs. There's a handful of others also. So you've got some options there that may be appealing. And then, of course, Air India has a few sweet spots that we've only briefly touched on on

this show. But you've got a few options there anyway for transferring. So why not pick up some additional transferable miles, I suppose. Though, of course, you want to compare against what you can get through other portals clicking through. I did see this morning in my Capital One shopping account this morning as we record this, I had 15% back for Hilton. And so then it becomes a, well, do I value 15% back in Capital One shopping rewards that can only be redeemed for gift cards or do I value seven transferable miles more? And you have to kind of do the math and run the numbers on that yourself. All right. We'll be right back with the battle of the $350 airline credit cards. And we're back. Main event time. Battle of the $350 airline cards, American Airlines, Delta, United,

and a little bit of Alaska as well. All three, four of these airline programs have $350-ish credit cards that I think for many people are going to be the sweet spot. If you're into flying that airline, you're interested in elite status. These cards have a lot going for them. But while there's a lot of similarities across them. They're not all equal. I think there's some big differences in how good these different cards are. So we are going to compare them head to head and see which is best over all of them. Real quickly, the four cards we're going to compare are the American Airlines Globe card, which is $350, Delta Sky Miles Platinum card, and it's the Platinum Business Card to win. Both are $350. United Quest card, $350 and the Alaska Atmos Rewards Summit card, which is $395.

Yeah, so let's quickly discuss some of the key details of each of those cards. First up, earnings on spend. So the American Airlines Globe card earns 6x on AA hotels, 3X on American Airlines, 2X on restaurants, and 1X everywhere else. So that's a decent return on AA hotels if you're going to book via AAA hotels anyway in order to get loyalty points, keep in mind booking through AA hotels, probably won't get you elite credit or elite benefits on something like Rove Miles.

It's a tradeoff here. You're taking the six-ax on the card, plus whatever earnings you get through AA hotels instead of those things. Yeah. And for each of these, we're going to point out another card that might be better for earning the same type of miles. So if you're interested in earning American Airlines miles, Another option for you is the city strata Premier, which is only a $95 card.

The Stratopremier's points can transfer to American Airlines or other programs. And that card earns 10x for hotels, book through city, and not just hotels, book through city, but car rentals and attractions as well. It earns 3x for groceries, 3x dining, so that beats the 2x of the globe card, 3x gas stations and EV charging, and 3x flights, hotel. and travel agencies. So that matches the 3x flights part of that matches the 3x American Airlines purchases, but is of course much broader. So you'd earn a lot more with a strata premier for the same purchases and for many other purchases. So just worth pointing out that

and we'll do that a little bit with each of these cards as we go, that there are alternatives. If your main concern is how many points you earn from spend, I'm going to say a write off the only one that's worth even considering in this ballpark is the Alaska card, which we'll get to in a moment. All right. So then we get the Delta Platinum cards, the Delta Skymiles platinum cards, the consumer card. It's 3X Delta, 3X purchases directly with hotels, 2X restaurants, 2X U.S. Supermarkets.

Business version is 3X Delta, 3X purchases made directly with hotels, and then 1.5x on transit, eligible U.S. shipping and purchases of $5,000. or more on up to $100,000 in purchases per year. Yeah. And if you want to earn Delta miles, an alternative is to earn miles in Amex membership rewards points because those transfer to Delta. Now, there is a small fee to transfer to Delta,

so do you keep that in mind. But if you're okay paying that little fee, you have alternatives like the Amex Green card for $150. You get $3 on travel and transit. and 3x dining. And there's also the Blue Business Plus, which has no annual fee, and you get 2X on everything up to $50,000 spend before it goes down to 1X. So, you know, with those two cards, you would do a lot better than either the Delta

cards for your earnings on spend. Very good. Next we have United. The United Quest card offers five points per dollar on renowned hotels and resorts for United card members. No, I don't have this card, but I guess that's a hand salonial. number of hotels or nicer hotels, I suppose. 3x on United purchases, 2X on restaurants, including eligible delivery services.

I think that's usually the case with restaurant bonuses in general. 2x on all other travel and 2X on select streaming. So it's got a few there, but of course you have some alternatives there too, right? Yeah. So the Sapphire preferred is probably just alone, hands down, better on almost all those categories. So you get 3x dining, you get 3X select streaming services, you know, versus the 2X with United. You get 3X online grocery, which we've talked about before can actually be used in person if you use your grocery stores app. 2X for all travel, book directly with card, and 5x for travel book through Chase.

So, again, you can definitely do better points, you know, points earn per dollar. Of course, cards are points earned with a separate preferred card can be optionally transferred one to one to United. Or of course, all of Chase's other transfer partners. Right. And then last but not least, you've got the Alaska card, the Alaska Summit card. Now, this is the one that's a little bit more expensive than the others. It's $3.95 instead of $350 is the annual fee on this one. It earns three Alaska miles per dollar on Alaska Airlines, on dining, and on foreign purchases.

So foreign transactions also are a 3x bonus category on this, but then 1X everywhere else. So that's potentially kind of interesting. Yeah, it really is. There's not a good alternative that I'm aware of where you could be getting 3x on foreign transactions. So if that's your jam, we're not going to beat that. For the other categories, though, I think the built obsidian card, that's the $95 card, is worth considering because that'll give you three X points on dining or grocery on up to

$25,000 spend on the grocery category and two X points on travel. That's, you know, almost all types of travel. And then one X everywhere else. Plus, you can earn points for rent and mortgage. So it's not as complete of a alternative as the others that we mentioned before, but built is the only transfer world points program that allows transfers one to one to Alaska Airlines. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a good comparison point. So, you know, and when we said with the Alaska Summit card here, the 3x on foreign purchases,

if that's your jam, you know, we're not going to probably beat that for foreign transactions. And that's true for unbonished transactions. But of course, some of the cards that we've talked about offer a category bonus on dining, for instance, that is worldwide. And so there are certain types of transactions. You can certainly be earning three X on. in terms of foreign transactions, but for your average everyday stuff, this is a good return for foreign transactions. All right. So all of those cards have, you know, arguably other options

that might be better for spend, yet we're still talking about these $350 cards. So they must have some other stuff. Yeah. So we're going to talk about a bunch of different categories. We're going to compare each card for what kind of lounge access it is, what kind of elite status it offers things like that. First, I want to say, though, that they're all pretty similar with the basic airline card stuff. And what I mean by that is they all offer free check bags, party boarding. They even offer, like, a rebate on global entry or TSA precheck when you sign up for that. So for all those kind of standard things, you know, we're not going to dive into details.

but the one place on that list where they really differ is around free check bags. So each program will allow you not just the card holder to get a free check bag on the airline, but also one or more guests who are on the same reservation. And they vary widely based on how many additional people on the same reservation you can get in. So I'd recommend checking that out in a post we'll link to in the show notes. It's called Free Check Bags via Credit Card Complete Guide. And that has all that information. The other piece of that that varies a lot is whether you have to pay with the card for your airfare in order to get free check bags.

And that'll also be in the guide, but I'll tell you right now, the United card and the last card require it, American Airlines, Delta do not. Very good. All right. Let's talk about lounge access then because some of these provide some opportunity for that. The American Airlines Globe card gives you four Admirals Club passes, lounge passes per year. And each pass gets you entry for one adult and up to three children under 18. So that's decent for a family in terms of getting into the lounge. So you got four passes there. The Alaska card gives you two full day lounge passes each calendar quarter. And I think each one of those is good for up to two children or is it one child? Yeah, each one is good for up to two children. So again, you get the whole family in. That's interesting. So two

passes per quarter. So you could get up to eight per year with the Alaska card. That's right. That's right. So Alaska has an edge there. Of course, which one you prefer is going to have a lot more to do with which lounges you tend to be at. And there's not that many Alaska lounges around the country. So for most people, chances are the American Airlines option would be a better fit. All right. Then, of course, there's the elite statusy stuff. We often say that these cards kind of come with elite status light. And so let's talk about what that means and what's different between each of the cards. Yeah. So we've grouped together sort of two different things here. One is a lot of these cards offer a way to earn elite status by using the card. So we'll talk about that. But they also sometimes offer perks that are like having elite status. status. So we'll also include those here. So the Globe card for American Airlines, it earns one loyalty point per dollar you spend. And also, you get up to 15,000 additional loyalty points per year through flights. So you earn 5,000 bonus loyalty points after every four qualifying American

Airlines flights. And that's up to 15,000 bonus altogether. So that's what American Airlines gives you. Worth mentioning, by the way, that all the American Airlines cards give you one loyalty point per dollar spent no matter how many redeemable miles you get. So I think that's probably an easy area of confusion. If you're getting six X on AAA hotels, that's redeemable miles when you're using the card to pay at AAA hotels. You're still only earning one loyalty point per dollar spent. Now, AAA hotels is a horrible example because you're also going to earn loyalty points from AAA hotel. So that was probably the worst example I could give you. But in general, when it comes to spending on the card, you're just going to earn one for every dollar you spend no matter the category bonus.

That's right. That's right. Now, the Delta Platinum cards, they give you just for having the card. You get 2,500 medallion qualifying dollars each year just for having the card. So if you had both the Delta Platinum consumer and business card, that's 5,000 MQDs automatically. That's silver status, just boom, just because you have those two cards. That's probably the highlight of towards earning status, because a low light is that you do earn MQDs from spend, but only one MQD for every $20 a spend. That's very poor earning rate for that. So I do not recommend those cards for spending your way towards status.

And a really interesting feature is they give you something like Delta Elite status, short of silver status. So basically, just by being a card holder, you get on Delta's complementary upgrade. list. So you can upgrade for free potentially to Comfort Plus or even first class, but you're going to be on the list after Delta Elite members and after Delta Reserve card holders who would Delta Reserve is a more expensive card. Still, I know people who do get upgraded having this card. It does happen. It just depends on what route you fly, what time of day and things as to how many other people are competing for those same upgrades, but it can happen. So I find that very

interesting. Yeah, very good. All right. United gives you a thousand bonus premier qualifying points PQPs each year. So you earn that just as a straight bonus of having the card, a thousand points towards status. And then you're in one PQP for every $20 of spend up to $18,000 PQPs. So you do the math on how many dollars you would have to spend. A lot of dollars you'd have to spend to max that one out. And so, you know, it's not just like the, the Delta card, this is not a good card if your primary goal is elite status, or at least spending on it is not a terribly good deal to an elite status. Right. Let's put it that way. And then you'll also earn two global economy plus seat upgrades after $40,000 in purchases in a calendar year. So if you're really excited about spending

that much on it, maybe you're spending that much on United flights for work and getting reimbursed or something. If you're spending $40,000 on the card, then you do get those two global economy plus seed upgrades. And that could be a good deal for a trip where you're going to be in the plane for a long time and you want one of those economy plus upgrades. I think that could be interesting. Yeah. And that's where that's one of those perks that's like sort of like having elite status, but not really. So you get upgraded because you have that perk. All right, let's talk about the Alaska Summit card. Now that one gives you 10,000 status. points each card member anniversary just for having the card and it gives you one status

point per two dollars spent so that's much better than Delta United but not as good as American Airlines in terms of status based on spend it also gives you elite like perks like free same-day changes on your Alaska flights and a really interesting one which is a fifty dollar credit for delays or cancellations of over two hours Yeah, so if your flight gets delayed for a long time, you get a credit. And I think it's just like an automatic thing, right? You get this automatic credit when they track and realize you're going to be late. I think you can just, you'll get some kind of alert or something, I believe,

but I think you can just use your credit card and buy dinner at the airport or whatever, and it should get rebated automatically. Yeah, you don't need to like file for it after the fact. It's not like a trip delay kind of a thing. It's automatic, as I understand it. So that's kind of interesting. Yep, yep. All right. Next category is companion tickets and flight discounts. Three out of these four cards offer some sort of companion certificate, and the other one has discounts that apply to even just a single person.

So we'll cover all of those. American Airlines. You get a $99 companion certificate at renewal, which is valid for a single rounder. trip, domestic economy trip each year. So $99 means you have to pay for the companion $999 plus the taxes and fees for that for that round trip. Delta gives you an economy companion ticket each year upon renewal. And that has no $99 or anything. The companion is free except for taxes and fees. And it's not just domestic economy. It's all of the U.S., including Hawaii and Alaska. You can fly Caribbean or Central America with this ticket. Delta also gives you a sort of award flight discount just for having the card. You get 15% off when using miles to book an award flight. And now that's something that the cheaper Delta gold card also offers, but it's good to know that this card

has that too. And important to know that it's only valid when you're flying on Delta metal. It's for awards on Delta flights, not their partners. But still, nonetheless, good benefit to have. United offers a few benefits on the Quest card that are worth noting here in this regard. So you get $200 in United Travel Bank cash per membership year. So that's not strictly a companion ticket, but it is a flight discount. So that's how it gets into this section here. You also get a 10,000 point award flight discount per calendar member year. So if you're booking an award flight in the calendar year, you'll get 10,000 points off. So card member year. Card member year. Thank you. I apologize there. Card member year. So 10, so if you're booking a

a 15,000 point award, you're going to get 10,000 points off and only pay 5,000, right? So that's a potentially decent little discount. And then you can earn an additional one of those, an additional 10,000 mile flight discount after $20,000 in purchases in a calendar year. So, I mean, that's pretty decent. And you get card member award pricing, which gives you access to more saver seats, essentially, and sometimes a slightly better price on award flights. And that's something that's true with all of the United Cards, potentially anyway, that gave you. great card, it gets a little complicated. But all of the United Cards of an annual fee give you access to card member award pricing. I will say sometimes it's drastically better at pricing. So for example,

I was looking at flights to Australia and United wanted, I think it was like 200,000 points for business class one way. But when I was logged in with my card member discount, it was 100,000 points. And so, of course, that's a huge discount, sort of, if you want to think of it. that way. I mean, but Nick was right in that it's given what it what was really happening is it was giving me access to saver level pricing for that flight is what what was really happening under the covers. But it doesn't matter for some big difference on in that situation versus the difference on a domestic economy flight. Yes. Yes. Yeah, it can be huge. Okay. That was United. And then the Alaska Summit card gives you automatically a 25,000 point companion fair.

certificate each card member year. And that is different from the other companion tickets we've talked about because it's not for paid fares. This is for award booking. And it's really a up to 25,000 point discount off your companion's award can be used for awards flying Alaska or flying any of their partners or a combination of airline. So any award you book, as long as you have at least one on your ticket, you should be able to apply your certificate and get up to 25,000 points off. And then if you spend $60,000 on the card in your card member year, you'll get a 100K Global Companion Award certificate as well. So same rules of that one. Yeah. So they each give you some sort of an opportunity for either discounts or companions or in some cases both. And that kind of

gives you a comparison there. And then, of course, everything has been couponified these days. So they all come with different coupons and other stuff like that. So starting with the American Airlines Globe card, you get up to $100 splurge credit per calendar year. So that's up to $100 in statement credits for purchases with a select number of merchants, the most interesting of which for most people are probably going to be advantage hotels and maybe Live Nation for tickets to various events. You get $100 in-flight or $100 in-statement credit for in-flight purchases each calendar year. So if you're buying snacks and drinks in flight with American Airlines, you can get up to $100 back on that. And up to $240 in annual Toro credits, that's doled out as $30 in statement credits for each eligible completed trip on Toro up to $240 a year.

So you can get $30 basically back each time you book a Toro rental. Turo, of course, is sort of like the Airbnb for cars. people rent out their personal vehicles on Toro. So that's an alternative to a major car rental outfit. Yeah. And the Delta Platinum cards, the consumer card offers up to $150 each year back for hotels or vacation rentals book through Delta stays. So you have to book a prepaid stay, but it can be fully refundable, most of them are. And you'll get $150 back.

If you have the Delta Platinum business card, though, it's $200 back each year. So that's a very easy way to get some significant cash back each year. They also have other coupons like $10 per month back on ride shares, like Lyft or Uber or whatever, and $10 per month on Rezi restaurants. So a bunch of, you know, coupons there. Yep, yep. United has coupons as well. So on the Quest card, you've got the $100.

$150 credit for renowned hotels and resorts bookings per membership year. $80 on Avis or budget car rentals. So $80 up to $80 back on Avis or budget car rentals per membership year. And an $8 per month ride share credit are $12 in December. So similar to the Delta ride share thing except $8 a month, most months, and 12 in December, which I mean, hey, I would rather not have to walk in December as somebody who lives in the cold weather. So I'll cheer them on for that. All right, United, sure.

I find it hilarious that they decided. They wanted to save the potential savings of $20 per year by not just copying Delta exactly with the $10 per month. $10 a month. Yeah. Ridiculous. What sense. All right. Yeah.

So thank you for that. United. And then Alaska has some coupons as well. But I think the Alaska coupons are potentially more interesting. First of all, you have waived partner award. booking fees. So with Alaska, when you book a partner award, you get charged $12.50 per ticket. And that's something that's non-refundable. If you cancel the award, you don't get that $12 and 50 cents back. However, if you've got the summit card, you don't pay that $12.50. That gets waived.

So that's a nice benefit that has some real value if you book a lot of partner awards. You get a 10% bonus on earned miles. If you have an eligible Bank of America accounts, so I think you need a checking your savings account in order to get that 10% bonus on earned miles. and two free signature cocktails per lounge visit. And I've seen some people posting pictures on social media of some of those signature cocktails. And if you're into that type of thing, then that could be kind of a fun benefit too, I think. Yeah.

All right. So those are the contenders for which is the best $350-ish airline card. Now we're going to discuss which is best in different categories. So first up, which of these cards does the best job of paying for its. itself so that, you know, it has coupons or other perks that basically make the card, you know, worth the $350 before you even factor in things like getting priority boarding and free check bags. So what do you think? Yeah.

So I've ranked them the way, I think, from best to worse on this particular category. I think Delta comes in best on paying for itself because it's got that companion ticket, which again can be used for things like flights to Hawaii. I mean, can be really valuable. You don't, and there's no $99 component to that. There's no spend required to get it. There's the $150 or $200 hotel credit, which I've found really easy to use. The $10 per month ride share in Resi, I've learned how to make it easy to use those over time, depending on your situation, may or may not be.

But those are good. And then the 15% Sky Miles discount is a really nice perk if you're going to be spending miles. I think that combination of things pretty easily more than pays back your $350 if you make use of even just the companion ticket and the hotel credit of all those. I mean, you make a good argument there. I think as somebody who's an award travel enthusiast, I would probably rank the Alaska card at the top, to be honest, because the 25,000 companion ticket, 25K companion ticket is potentially also really valuable. I mean, you talked about the ability to go to Hawaii with your Delta campaign. So you can go anywhere you want with the Alaska one and get 25,000 miles off.

So if you value those miles at one and a half cents a mile, that's essentially like a, like a $400-ish benefit right there, with $375, something like that. That benefit alone can almost pay for the card. And then the waived partner award fees, if you book any significant number of award tickets, particularly if somebody likes to book speculatively and say, oh, maybe we'll take this trip. Maybe we won't. Getting that waived can really add up quickly, too. So I don't even care as much about the lounge visits or the signature cocktails or the $50 credit when you're late. I think that those two things for somebody who is an award travel enthusiast, I think they

can make it easily pay for itself. But the Delta card, I think is also. Yeah. Yeah. And you know what? I think a frequent United flyer can easily make a case for the United card as well because the $200 travel bank and the $10K award discount alone, you know, that's a lot of value right there.

and then if you could use any of the other coupons, you can come out ahead. And I'm saying that more like just because those would be so easy for someone who flies United a lot to take full advantage of those. But I think we both can agree that the American Airlines card doesn't really pay for itself, right? Yeah, you know, because the companion ticket requiring the extra $99, you know, and it's much more restrictive than the other companion tickets,

the $100 splurge credit. It's not even as good as like what options I give you with the Stred Elite card for what that card calls splurge credit. So anyway, yeah, I don't think the American Airlines card pays for itself for most people. Nope, nope. And that's not to say we don't think it's a good card or it might not be worth having if you're into American Airlines elites. I mean, there's plenty of reasons to have it.

It just doesn't easily pencil out the way some of these others can. Exactly, exactly. All right. Next up, which offers the best elite excellence? accelerator. So you want to get to elite status and you want one of these cards to help you. I think the best is the Delta card because as I mentioned before, you could get two of these, one consumer one business and you've got Delta Silver status, boom, without doing anything else. Yeah, I mean, I don't think anybody can argue with that. That's definitely the best elite status

accelerator. What about the best was spent? Yeah. So the two contenders are the American Airlines and Alaska, because United and Delta are really bad for that, you know, you could definitely make the argument that the American Airlines cards better because it offers one loyalty point per dollar versus the Alaska one, which only earns one loyalty point per $2. But Alaska also gives you the 10K starting, you know, loyalty points. So it's, to me, it's kind of a toss-up, like it really depends on your situation, which one's better for you. Yeah. And, of course, the elite tiers are a little bit different too. So yeah, there's a lot of considerations than the big spend bonuses on the cards also are different. So there's so many factors there that I can see a strong argument for the Alaska

card, but I could also see somebody preferring American. So yeah, very, very close. What about the best companion ticket? Speaking of companions, who's got the best of that? To me, there's no, there's no argument. Alaska's, you know, word companion ticket is, is the best because it's so easy to use and you don't even have to fly Alaska ever in order to get good value from it. Boom. As far as the ones that are paid, it's just between Delta and American Airlines and Delta's is, I think, far superior than Americans. Agreed.

Agreed there. All right, what's the best for solo flyers? If you don't have a companion, so you don't care about these companion benefits, which card is best for that? Again, no, there's no competition there because United's the only one that offers significant benefits for the solo traveler, you know, with United giving the $200 in travel bank cash each membership year, the 10K award flight discount, the other 10K award flight discount you can earn with spend. Those are all great for solo flyers. You know, the other three all offer,

have significant perks that require a companion to make use of them. Agreed. Yeah, that's pretty interesting that that that's the way that it's structured that the other three all do really, If you don't have a companion, then the perks that seem most valuable to us are not valuable at all for you. So the United Card is certainly the answer there. What about the best earnings on spend? If you just want to earn a decent return on your spend with the card, if you're going to get this card and spend on it a bunch, which ones is the best option there? Yeah. You know, at the outset, we talked about how there are better cards for spend for almost all of these cards.

If that's your goal is to earn airline miles, you're better off usually with transferable points. The one exception is how Alaska card earns 3x for foreign transactions. I could totally see someone who spends a lot of time and money outside of the United States doing really well with that card. The one other thing that I think is worth considering is if you're into American Airlines elite status, then one way of getting there is by booking American Airlines stays, their hotel program, which gives you a big bonus of points. points and loyalty points for your stay. And the fact that the Globe card earns 6x on that, now it's not 6x loyalty points, but it's 6x redeemable miles.

So you're getting additional value from those booking. So if that's your avenue for earning lots of American Airlines points and status points, then the Globe card has that very narrow edge on the others. Yeah. Then, of course, you could get complicated with it and say, okay, well, what if you're going to spend $20,000 and which one's best? Because then you're getting other benefits and how much do you value those other benefits? And so you've got to then do some math and

say, oh, well, I'm going to earn this and that and which one of those, that things is more valuable to me. So, so there's, I think there's some more complexity there potentially, but without that complexity, if you're just spending less than 20K, then that's probably. Yeah, that, you know, that's a really good point. That's not something I took an account when I came up with who I One that, although I do think Alaska's got, you know, that with $60,000 spend, you get a big thing. But United has some, you know, like the extra 10K award thing at 20K spend, you know, so it maybe wouldn't be as cut and dry, depending on what amount of spend you're talking about. Right. And how much the ability for that spend to also account towards your elite status.

It gets really complicated, I think, depending on which airline is your airline. So, after all of that, and comparing the best for A and B and C and D, which one's the best, Greg? Which is the best of the $350 airline fee cards? Yeah. So I struggle between, I think the best ones on this list are the Alaska Summit and the Delta Platinum. And the Alaska Summit, I think, is best for people who book a lot of award flights or fly Alaska a lot. either one you could do really well with that card the delta one if you fly delta you know even a medium amount it has a lot going for it and and since i think that probably i'm making guess here

but probably more listeners are going to get more value would potentially get more value out of the Delta card, even though the sort of the upper end value you could get is lower than with the Alaska card, I think that, you know, on average, more people would get good value from the Delta card than from the last card. So I'm going to sort of say, you know, it's not going to be the right answer for everybody, but I'm going to give Delta Platinum card the edge there. Okay, all right, I see where you're going there. And I agree that Delta platinum card, as somebody who doesn't fly Delta like ever, I mean, once or twice a year, max. And of course they say that, I just booked a Delta flight the other day, but I rarely ever fly Delta. And so I've never had any of the Delta

credit cards. But I look at that platinum card and I say that that's an easy card to justify. If you're going to fly Delta twice a year and you've got a companion, it's a pretty easy card to justify. So I would agree with that. But I'm going to say out of these, though, the best of them is none of them. I'm going to say that we missed the boat and we left out the Southwest credit cards. So I think the Southwest priority card and the performance business card are another consideration. If what you heard about there, you were like, I don't know, none of that really appeals to me. What I really want is extra leg room seating. Then I think you should consider a Southwest card.

And so my rationale on that is the priority card has a $229 annual fee. Performance business has a $300 annual fee. There's a slight difference in how many anniversary points you get with each of them. The anniversary points don't quite mitigate the annual fee on either of those. They just like kind of take some of the sting away, not even half necessarily, but they, they do something anyway. And there's no complicated coupons beyond that. So you don't have to worry about any of the other stuff.

So if you don't want the coupon-ish stuff, then I think they appeal for that reason. But the real reason I think that those cards are interesting is because of the sort of elite status light benefits that they offer you. So they offer priority boarding and, of course, the check bag. And that includes when you're booking basic economy. So you get those benefits then. But more important to me is that they offer either standard or preferred seating at the time of booking. So you get your seat selection at the time of booking.

Again, even if you book a basic fare, you get to pick your seat. And 48 hours prior to departure, you can pick an extra leg room seat if it's available. And that, to me, I think, is a really standout benefit of those Southwest cards. it's if you're somebody who really primarily cares about extra legroom seating. Now, you might say, well, but aren't there going to be a lot of people in front of me in line? And the thing is, no, only A-list prefer the top-tier elites with Southwest, they can choose extra-legroom at the time of booking. But apart from that, you've got the same window, the same 48-hour window that even A-list

members have. That's the only other tier of Southwest Elite status. So you're competing with a lower window of people who are going to be ahead of you. There are very few people that are going to be ahead of you. comes down to are people paying for the extra legroom seats on Southwest? And my sample size is small because I haven't booked tons and tons of flights. But so far, I have not seen very many of those extra legroom seats that weren't available for selection, at least of the time I'm booking a few weeks in advance.

And so I'm assuming that probably there will be a fair number of them left still 48 hours prior to departure. And you can get that extra legroom seating for up to eight people on the same reservations. So that, to me, is like having elite status with an airline. in a meaningful way. That's something that I think matters to me about elite status is the ability to pick those extra legroom seats.

So I think the Southwest card. That's my answer. Stick into it. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's a compelling argument. You know, because the United one, I guess, unless you have elite status,

I think you'd have to spend the, what, $40,000 to get the upgrades. Yeah. To extra legroom seating. Delta, you would be on the upgrade list for it, but there's no guarantee. You wouldn't be able to secure your seats in advance, right? Again, unless you have a high enough level elite status. And then Alaska, again, it's, you know, it helps you get to the level of elite status where you could pick it, but it doesn't automatically give you that ability at all. Yeah, well, and it really

takes away the sting of basic economy with Southwest. You can book the basic and still pick your preferred seat near the front of the plane and potentially get extra leg room, 48 hours. in advance. And the downside, of course, of basic is that if you cancel it, if you cancel a paid basic fare, you get a credit that's only valid for six months from the date when you booked. However, we talked last week about schedule changes and how they result in a longer credit. But then I published an update this week to our Southwest Rapid Rewards Complete Guide, because somebody wrote in to let us know about a trick that was published by Katie's Travel Tricks, where if you book a flight using a combination of a Southwest gift card, even like a $5 Southwest

gift card and one of your expiring flight credits and then you cancel using a gift card to pay for part of it okay let me back that up if you book a choice preferred fair or higher and you use a gift card to pay for at least part of it and then you cancel you get a credit that never expires and it's transferable to anybody so even if you had booked a basic fair and you cancel that and it's about to expire use a gift card in that basic fair travel credit to book a choice preferred again you got to use a gift card, and it's partial payment on that. So you need to get yourself a Southwest gift card to do it. But that, again, takes away the disadvantage of booking basic, at least as long as

you're doing it within the next six months anyway. So I think the combination of having the priority card and knowing that trick, as long as that trick works, is a pretty good combination for $229 with the priority card. So that's my take. Nice. Nice. That's a good trick. So, you know, ultimately, the real answer is going to really depend on what airline

you tend to fly a lot. And, you know, some people are open to flying whatever, but some people are pretty stuck in a hub like me where Delta is most of the flights. So that's going to matter a lot, too. But there you go. We have our picks for the best $350 cards and next pick is none of the above. There we go. All right. That brings us to this week's question of the week. So this week's question of the week came in as a comment on a coffee break that we did about the Barclays AAA cards transiting, transferring, transitioning, there we go, that's the word I was looking for, to city. They're going to become city cars soon. And so, let's see, Rich it was. Rodin said, my biggest question, I have the Advantage Aviator business card. Now, side note, we didn't really

talk much about that business card at all. And a couple of people wrote in to ask about that. But anyway, he has the business version of the card. We figured not a lot of people have that card. So that was one of the ones we didn't talk extensively about. So Rich says one of the reasons I have this card over the city card is that my business is small. It's just me. The city card requires you to join advantage business, which Rich thinks, then requires you to have five employees before you can redeem your miles. Will we be forced into that situation?

If so, that would render this card useless for me. So, Greg, what do you think? Does Rich have reason to be worried? Should he get rid of his aviator business card before it becomes a city business card? No, he should not. So, yes, if you look at the city business website, you'll see that it says what Rich said, that in order to use points earned in there, you have to have at least five employees. but there's also a paragraph in there that says having the city business advantage card

exempts you from that rule. So as long as you have the city business card, city business advantage card, you don't need to have any employees. You'll be able to earn points into that business advantage account. And the cool thing is the points that you earn there then can be transferred to either your own personal American Airlines account or to the American Airlines account for any of your employees. And now you can have, like, this is not like a legal, you know, government thing. You can add your spouse, your cousin, whoever, as a employee in the, in the business, in the advantage

business setup. And then you can move your points that you've earned on the business card to them if you want to. So it's kind of like a cool secret trick because American doesn't make it easy otherwise to move points for free from one person to another. But here's a way you can potentially do that if you have a reason to move points to somebody else. So Rich, don't worry. You're all set. You're going to be fine. Having that city business card when it converts over is going to exempt you from the five employee requirement. You'd be able to redeem your miles. So I hope that alleviates that question for you. And if you want to get more of this stuff in your email inbox each day or each week, you want to go to frequent myler.com slash subscribe to join our email

list, follow us on all the various social media, join our frequent miler insiders Facebook group, where you can ask and answer questions like this all the time. And if you have a question that you'd like to be considered for a future question of the week or a piece of feedback that you'd like to send to our giant mailbag. You can send that to mailbag at frequentmiler.com. Bye everybody. Travel Tales with me, Mike Siegel, is full of funny, inspiring and wild adventures. Listen now at voyescape.com. If you love travel, you'll love winging it travel podcast.

Every Monday, I share stories from 75 countries, from backpacking tips, epic adventures, and plenty of travel inspiration. Alongside that, I host guest interviews every two weeks. Check it out at voyscape.com.