I have this card. Like others said above, it is not really 5%, more like 4.2% back. That is still pretty good.
Some things to consider:
- the 5 points is only earned on purchases directly from airlines. It is not earned on purchases made on expedia, kayak, orbitz etc and thus you cannot go through a cashback portal. This is important. For example shop through chase was offering an additional 1 point on expedia purchases when I checked yesterday. If you have a csp card, that is 3 points per dollar, and you can stack that with expedia rewards. 3 csp points is worth significantly more than 4.2% for me, although you may think otherwise. One airline for which it might make sense to use this card is southwest, for which you cannot go through a portal. However when I need to fly southwest I usually just buy some some SW gift cards on staples.com using my Ink Plus to net 5 UR points per dollar.
- you would be getting this really only to buy plane tickets. On everything else the rewards are less than 1%. It is up to you whether you want to take a HP for this. Think about it this way. A top of the line card might come with a $500 sign up bonus. With the PenFed you get ~$170. To make up for the other ~320 you would need to spend ~$7500. Now for me this is no problem since I frequently buy tickets in the thousands. Will probably put that much on it before I have had it for a year. But for you it may not be the same.
- It has no FOREX fee but it's an Amex so not very useful abroad due to the quite limited rate of acceptance.
- PenFed is very hard to get in with according to some. For me it was pretty easy. I applied when I had only one inquiry on EQ and got approved for a $5000 limit. Immediately put in for a cli (needed to buy a ticket that was slightly over that) and they bumped it up to $6000. Joining PenFed, applying for the card and the cli were all one HP.
