Help me help my parents

[Anonymous]

Hey all...my parents approached me today to give them some advice on a good travel rewards card.

They are willing to pay an annual fee, and they are fine with either charge or credit card.  They want straight milage.  They want to start running money thru a card(not sure of an exact total, but as much as they can) and want in return to be able to buy flights.

Question is;  What is the best card for earning flights?

[Revelate]

Depends what their favorite airline is honestly.  If they fly one religiously, consider stacking the deck with the airline's co-branded card, though some of them are admittedly pretty poor and as such probably Chase/Amex/others need to be considered as well... someone with more experience will be able to chime in on specifics which I'm unfamiliar with on travel cards.

[Anonymous]

They aren't attached and really don't care.  They just want a flight.  I was thinking either us bank flexperks travel rewards or chase sapphire?

[CreditScholar]

A few questions:

1. Are they flying domestically or internationally?

2. Do they want coach or business/first class redemptions?

3. How much money do they spend per year through the card? This is key.

[Anonymous]

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@CreditScholar wrote:

A few questions:

1. Are they flying domestically or internationally?

2. Do they want coach or business/first class redemptions?

3. How much money do they spend per year through the card? This is key.

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1. Domestic

2. Coach is fine

3. This is up for debate.  My guess is somewhere in the ballpark of 2-3k a month.  They are going to add me as an AU and I'm going to run all my bills thru their card to help them out.

They also have 800+ credit on all their CR's and util of under 5% so they will get approved for whatever they want

[nada9188]

I personally recommend Amex spg for airline or hotels. The points are transferable to many different airline flyer programs and when you transfer 20,000 pts you get a 5,000 pt bonus every time. I feel that this makes the points very flexible if you are not going to fly one particular airline.

[Anonymous]

I guess right now Chase Southwest card is one of the best, also consider the Citi AA as a choice.

[noobody]

US bank cash+ Visa signature card. 

No AF, select airline and hotel as your two 5% cash back categories. You would get 6.25% back if you redeem them at $100 increment, try to beat that!

If they both have excellent credit, get one for each, so you can add bill pay & restaurant to them too!

[Creditaddict]

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@noobody wrote:

US bank cash+ Visa signature card. 

No AF, select airline and hotel as your two 5% cash back categories. You would get 6.25% back if you redeem them at $100 increment, try to beat that!

If they both have excellent credit, get one for each, so you can add bill pay & restaurant to them too!

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NICE!!!

Before this post I was going to say Chase Southwest but that has even gone down hill a bit as flights start to fill up they will no longer offer the regular 16 flgihts for free ticket, it may offer them to pay double segment to get the same ticket... that is a HUGE difference in your trade in value... Checking Bags is really one of the biggest things to consider I feel... especially if it's 2 of them always flying and they want to each take a suitecase that requires checking... you could take a great ticket price and not even think about the $40-$60 EACH BAG!

The new United Card seems to be great optioon but again if they are traveling the same places all the time it should be pretty easy to review the last year of where they went and what airlines they used....

[rtw]

I like Citibank AAdvantage Mastercard. They just made some changes to their program. First bag free for you and up to 4 traveling cmpanions, Priority Boarding, Priority access through security.