Name: Airline Credit Cards: Know the Perks, the Points and the Pitfalls
Uploaded: 2023-07-14T11:27:00Z
Duration: 6 min 51 s
Description: Airline-branded credit cards typically offer numerous travel benefits like points and miles. WSJ travel reporter Jacob Passy tells host J.R. Whalen why some travelers might find it’s not worth it financially. Photo Illustration By Elena Scotti/WSJ

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Airline-branded credit cards typically offer numerous travel benefits like points and miles. WSJ travel reporter Jacob Passy tells host J.R. Whalen why some travelers might find it’s not worth it financially. Photo Illustration By Elena Scotti/WSJ

https://m.wsj.net/video/20230714/8f279647-ada9-4389-b4a0-b459cdbb1f38/1/hls/manifest-hd-wifi.m3u8

Airline Credit Cards: Know the Perks, the Points and the Pitfalls

J.R.: Here's "Your Money Briefing" for Friday, July 14th. I'm J.R. Whalen for the "Wall Street Journal." A lot of airlines promote a co-branded credit card that offers an assortment of benefits that can help cut your travel expenses. "Wall Street Journal" travel reporter Jacob Passy joins us to discuss pitfalls that consumers and travelers should watch for before signing up. So Jacob, airline cards offer different types of benefits, but what kinds of perks are typically standard across all airline cards?

Jacob: So most of these cards will give you perks like waiving fees on checked bags, giving you priority boarding when you're getting on the plane, and most of them come with a benefit of allowing you to accumulate either miles or points that you can then use to book reward travel later on.

J.R.: And that kind of accumulates as you spend money with a credit card?

Jacob: The exact rate it accumulates varies from card to card, and they all usually come with signup bonuses. So when you first open the card, there's gonna be that offer of like 60,000 miles or something like that if you spend a certain amount of money in the first few months.

J.R.: All right, so let's dig a little deeper into what someone should consider in an airline card. Let's say somebody has frequent flyer mile status with a particular airline. How could that affect their decision to sign up for a credit card tied to that airline?

Jacob: So if you have frequent flyer status with an airline, there are pros and cons to having a card. The pro would be that with most carriers, they now have it that you can earn qualifying points towards your status with the airline by spending on their credit card. Some airlines have it such that you could qualify to certain tiers of status without ever flying with them just by virtue of spending with their credit card alone. The flip side of that though is a lot of these benefits that come with the cards are things that you get from being a tiered member with a frequent flyer program anyway. So when you get to the higher levels of status with an airline, you generally get priority boarding. You generally get free checked bags. And so these perks that come with the card are kind of redundant. And when you think about, again, the fact that you're paying for an annual fee, if you're not getting any extra perks out of it, then what's the point?

J.R.: But what if somebody or a family only flies a few times a year?

Jacob: So that's where these cards can make a lot of sense actually. So let's say you're a family of four, you maybe go down to Florida to visit the grandparents once or twice a year, but you're otherwise not flying that often. It's gonna be hard for you to earn frequent flyer status, but having the card will give you some of those perks. So the free check bags alone for your family of four, by virtue of having the card could counteract that annual fee. You probably don't have enough status to get into the lounges if you wanna relax in the airport for that one or two vacations you take a year, but the card could get you access to the lounge. So those are the ways in which the benefits can make a lot of sense for a traveler.

J.R.: In your reporting, you mentioned people who might live near an airline's hub and how that might work into the way that they would select an airline credit card. How would it factor in there?

Jacob: So I spoke with one traveler in particular. She lives in Washington, DC, flies out of DCA pretty often, and that's a hub for American Airlines. And so chances are when she's wanting to fly somewhere, it's gonna end up being a flight with American. And so for her, it makes a lot of sense to have an American Airlines credit card, even if she's not gonna earn up to the levels of status to get the, like, super crazy benefits, still having that card will just make her life easier. It allows her to have free check bags so she doesn't have to worry about cramming everything into a carry on and fighting for overhead bin space. She usually gets priority boarding. So if you live near a hub, having that airlines credit card, you're gonna get more bang for your buck there.

J.R.: We've had people on from your reporting team before talking about how accumulated miles don't go as far as they used to. What exactly does that mean and how have those numbers and why are those numbers changed?

Jacob: So for starters, a lot of folks accumulated a glut of points or miles depending on the program during the pandemic. Everyone was still spending money with their credit cards, but they weren't traveling. Now, obviously during the past couple years we've seen a travel boom and so folks have worked through some of those points and miles, but there's still a lot out there. And so for that reason alone, airlines have opted to devalue how far a point or mile goes in many cases so that they are not losing revenue. And also because of the travel boom, they're not having to do a lot of work to get folks on their planes. And so if the choice is between someone booking with points or someone paying for a fare, they'll wanna skew in the latter direction. And so that's yet another reason to make it so that you have to spend more points or miles to book that transatlantic flight.

J.R.: And what kind of planning do people need to do with their travel budget if they wanna book a trip with points or miles?

Jacob: So given that they devalue over time, don't sit on them for too long. As much as a lot of us wanna hoard those points and miles for that bucket list trip to, I don't know, the Maldives with the luxury flights and the luxury accommodations, those points and miles aren't gonna be worth as much a year from now. So you're better off spending them now.

J.R.: Will they ever expire?

Jacob: They generally don't expire, so you don't need to worry about them going away. It's more of an opportunity cost.

J.R.: What's the biggest mistake that you see people make when managing their points or their miles?

Jacob: They forget to account for the extra fees. And so when you're booking with points and miles, it's easy to think of it as free travel, but in reality, you still have to pay taxes, you still have to pay fees. So when you're talking about, for instance, a transatlantic flight to London, if you're flying in business class 'cause you got all those points of miles and you're splurging, those fees can add up quite significantly. I've heard folks say they can add up to hundreds or thousands of dollars. So what you think might be a free trip could end up actually costing you.

J.R.: That's "Wall Street Journal" travel reporter Jacob Passy. And that's it for "Your Money Briefing" this week. Our producer is Ariana Aspuru. Our supervising producer is Melony Roy, and our executive producer is Chris Zinsli. I'm your host, J.R. Whalen. Thanks for listening and have a great weekend.

WSJ's Your Money Briefing podcast is your personal-finance and career checklist. Finance reporters and experts break down complicated money questions every weekday to help you make better decisions about managing your money. 

Airline Credit Cards: Know the Perks, the Points and the Pitfalls

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