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Forgive me for being naive. I'm looking into a frequent flyer miles credit card. I was turned down by Delta Skymiles and Discover It. On Credit Karma it says I have good odds for a card with Southwest Airlines (I never seem to fly with them) and one with United (I refuse to fly with them). If I were to apply for either of them could I still get frequent flyer miles if I bought tickets with other airlines? I've never had a frequent flyer mile card.
Kinda of, if you used that credit card to purchase the tickets. I get miles for every dollar I spend using my United Mileage Plus Credit card (food, rental cars, hotels, whatever), for instance, if I buy a Southwest ticket or a Delta ticket with that United credit card, I will get the amount of miles for what the price was for those tickets purchased. Now most of these airline branded cards will usually give you 2 miles per every dollar you spend (basically to entice you to use their airline) when buying a ticket for that specific airline through the airline's website.
So for instance, say I spend $400 on a Southwest ticket using my United credit card, I will earn 400 miles. I use that same United credit card card and spend $400 on a United ticket, purchased through the United.com website, I will earn 800 miles.
There are some cards not tied to any airline like the Chase Sapphire Card and you accumulate points into your account whenever you use it and then you need to use a portal to redeem those or you can transfer those points into one of your frequently flyer accounts and then use them that way.
In recent years, with airlines making in harder and harder to redeem miles for FF tickets, many people are getting away from the airline branded cards and moving toward a general card that is not directly tied to any specific airline.
Since 2006, I have been able to use my miles to get FF tickets all from the US going to Australia (on United), Hong Kong (on United), New Zealand (American/One World), South Africa (United/Star Alliance), Hungary (United/Star Alliance) and one domestic one-way flight from Charlotte to Sitka, AK via Seattle and Juneau on American and Alaska Airlines.
If you go over to the Personal Finance subforum and search for frequent flyer credit cards or credit cards with bonus points, you will find several threads and some that go into great detail which cards are the best and why and how they work in accumulating and redeeming points/miles.
I seldom use CC accrued mileage, as award travel now has restrictions and co-pays, and very few seats.
Our one yr RTW, we only did (2) legs using points, booking regional was cheaper than using 'free' credits. (I save those points for 'funerals' / donating to medical / military needs.)
If you like Delta and it seems like the odds for card approval seem good, have a look at the AmEx Everyday that has no annual fee and let’s you convert Member Rewards points not only to Delta frequent flyer miles but also into the Air France/KLM Flying Blue and Virgin Atlantic Flying Club programs, which both allow you to redeem for Delta (and with FB other Sky Team alliance) award tickets, and often for few miles than Delta would charge you. (Though it can be slightly fussier to redeem) Example- Flying Blue’s most recent promotional awards sale had round trip coach tickets for 30k Flying Blue miles round trip between Atlanta and multiple places in Europe when a similar Delta ticket would run you 60-100k Sky Miles
I seldom use CC accrued mileage, as award travel now has restrictions and co-pays, and very few seats.
Our one yr RTW, we only did (2) legs using points, booking regional was cheaper than using 'free' credits. (I save those points for 'funerals' / donating to medical / military needs.)
I used that second link and was able to secure a card.
Forgive me for being naive. I'm looking into a frequent flyer miles credit card. I was turned down by Delta Skymiles and Discover It. On Credit Karma it says I have good odds for a card with Southwest Airlines (I never seem to fly with them) and one with United (I refuse to fly with them). If I were to apply for either of them could I still get frequent flyer miles if I bought tickets with other airlines? I've never had a frequent flyer mile card.
Too bad you were turned down for Delta, I've gotten a lot of mileage (literal, figurative) from something related: AmX Platinum.
AmX Plat is $500 or so per year, but you recoup all of that and waaay more if you travel often. I did, for work, and it was a really sweet deal on so many levels. I'm a Delta man and it gets me into the Delta lounges (one of many perqs) plus eased me on my way to Silver, Gold, and Platinum, whereby I'd compound points and receive upgrades to seats depending on the legs flown (I'd hunt for half-full legs where I could, and upgrades were easier). I think Hertz and Hilton were/are connected, too, so I stacked everything in.
Delta has or had one of the best programs. They have their own Delta Platinum AmX "I think" which if anything gives better deals, but that's maybe not for you.
Didn't know anyone was turned down for credit cards, sorry to hear that. Not schadenfreude, I just probably live in a little different world of business travel and such w/$10-12K/month in business spend all fully reimbursed obviously and no carry-over balances also obviously.
Good luck!
EDIT PS: many, many years ago went with a Barclaybank card that linked in with British Airways. Suffice to say I made fewer trips to England than expected, and the card kept screwing me and screwing me further, until I gave it up in disgust not many years later having if-anything lost lots of money and time on 'fees' and 'expiring points.' A LOT of these cards are screwjobs in-disguise. The Delta stuff seems to be the exception...at the moment anyway.
Just get a Capital One card that has cash as an option instead of miles. You'll do much better (especially since using those damn FF miles is become so difficult!)
Just get a Capital One card that has cash as an option instead of miles. You'll do much better (especially since using those damn FF miles is become so difficult!)
I seriously doubt that. In May of 2018 I signed up for an American Airlines branded Mastercard from Citi that waived its annual fee for the first year and gave me 65,000 miles for charging $2,000 in the first two or three months. I then used 50,000 of those miles for a business class ticket to Las Vegas that summer. What would I have gotten for charging $2000 on a Capital One card? Forty or fifty bucks, lol?
When my AA card came up for renewal in May, I cancelled it and then applied for and received a United Airlines branded VISA card through Chase. This time I'm receiving "only" 60,000 points and will add it to the points already in my UAL FF account to fly to Singapore in February.
BTW, when I signed up for that AA Mastercard in May 2018, I did so after cancelling a UAL branded VISA card that April, which I had first received in April 2017 and collected 50k or 60k points at that time. And since it had been more than 24 months from when I received that bonus, I was eligible to receive another 60k bonus when I reacquired the UAL VISA in May 2019!
Forgive me for being naive. I'm looking into a frequent flyer miles credit card. I was turned down by Delta Skymiles and Discover It. On Credit Karma it says I have good odds for a card with Southwest Airlines (I never seem to fly with them) and one with United (I refuse to fly with them). If I were to apply for either of them could I still get frequent flyer miles if I bought tickets with other airlines? I've never had a frequent flyer mile card.
The best way to choose is to figure out the locations you would like to visit & the primary airlines convenient to your home location & choose. OR you could check out which airline affiliated card is offering the biggest point bonus for sign up/minimum spend, you could always dump that card for something similar the next year.
FF programs are changing their rewards programs to reflect the costs of tickets now rather than the distance covered & its much trickier to figure out their worth. After years of primarily AA cards/flights plus others, I recently changed over to Chase which seems to have a better system with a network of various partners. But I still have a huge amount of AA points to use up & haven't tried to redeem the Chase points yet.
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