Hi,

Does anyone have an opinion regarding which VISA program offers the best frequent flyer miles? We keep getting offers in the mail but up until now have paid little attention.

With fuel costs what they are now might as well get something back.

D -

There are many considerations there: do you have an airline that you fly most often, are you aiming for domestic or international awards, how much of a bill do you run up, etc.? Some cards in my experience:

Diners Club: When I had it, it was nice to get 1 mile for each dollar charged, which could be converted to any airline's program. My frustration was with its limited acceptance, but that's changed now that it's taken the MasterCard brand. I dropped the card before this, when they raised the annual fee to $95 and charged to convert their points to miles.

Cards linked to one airline, 1 mile per dollar charged, with an annual fee: maybe good if you have big charges and use one airline a lot. Northwest, Continental, and Delta are all in the Skyteam alliance with KLM, Air France, Alitalia and others, so one of these gives you a relatively good range of choices for travel to Europe, but you would still want to put a lot of effort to finding available award seats.

Cards with no fee that give miles at a lower rate: I'm currently using the Choice Privileges card. For regular charges they give 2 Choice points per dollar charged; 5000 convert to 2 Southwest credits (1/8 of a domestic round trip) or 1000 miles with other airlines (1/25 of a domestic round trip). They've also given some good bonuses for stays at Choice hotels; you can usually find one with decent comfort and price.

There are also cards where the card issuer will buy a ticket for you, or credit a certain amount towards the purchase, once you've charged a certain amount; I'm not too familiar with them.

Also, you might see if you can build up miles for dining with the programs listed at www.rewardsnetwork.com . These have worked well for me.

I have the Chase One Pass card. To use the miles, you will need to start looking way in advance an be flexible with you plans. If you can do both, you can earn a ticket to Europe with just 50,000 miles. I earned 15,000 for signing up, charged a months worth of bills, charged our kids' tuition, and charged my wife's tuition. Along with the 30,000 miles I already had in my account, I have enough for me to go. Along with my wife's 25,000, we should have pleanty for our next trip to France.

I use an American Express card that offers a choice of frequent flyer plans to transfer your miles to. One mile per dollar- but this summer they have a promotion on where you can earn extra miles. There's an annual fee, but since the card has to be paid off every month, it saves me a lot on interest charges! I'm about to move my bill paying over to it- I can get a mile for every dollar on my power bill, my cable bill, etc.

I've have tried almost all of these, but when you go to cash the miles in there are so many stipulations it makes things very difficult...

We use our AMEX cards with Delta Skymiles mostly since our flights usually take us through ATL. I also have a Bank of America VISA which allows me to book flights directly on their website. I just did this, redeeming 25K miles for each domestic flight, with no problems at all. I have never had much luck booking a European flight with FF miles, so I just usually look for the best price for those trips and use my FF miles for other travel, hotels, or car rentals.

Jennifer

We use our Delta Skymiles AMEX card for everything (groceries, billpaying, etc.). Because we don't have regular jobs and can be flexible about dates, we've been very successful in using them for flights to Europe every year for the past several years.

We also use an airline/bank card (AA Visa) and use it for almost everything we buy. We also now have an Amex card that is linked to AA.

Thus we almost always fly AA. This has worked nicely for us over the years and has allowed us several Business class trips to Europe using FF miles.

What I like about this is that it's simple, and we don't juggle a lot of cards and different point systems. You need to find a system that works for you.

Marcia

I have gotten six FF trips in the past four years on USAirways. It took a bit of work juggling Visa and Mastercards, sometimes flipping $ from one account to the other, etc. It used to be you could find a FF trip on USAirwasys for 50k miles, my preference since it goes nonstop out of Philly. More recently the I have only been able to get flights with their Star Alliance partners at 50K. All in all a pain in my opinion.

I'm point crazy. I have a MC with Starwood that nets me incredible stays in their Italian castles! I've used the Danieli in Venice, Excelsior in Florence and Wesin in Rome...all upgraded rooms. They have a lot of Italian hotels now and if you have the points it's a cheap holiday.

Also have an Amex card - use it for my business and personal and collect about 200k points a year -- that can be exchanged for 200k Aeroplan (Air Canada) miles.

My Marriott card is the best, by far, although they don't have much in Italy. It's a free membership card, not a credit card. So if you use your Amex or any credit card you get their points as well as 10 pts per dollar spent in a Marriott stay. I travel on biz a lot, so earing 200,000 MR points isn't hard each year. Also, if you own a Marriott timeshare you bought direct from them (not resale) you can turn your week in for 120,000 MR points every other year. 540,000 points will get you 2 weeks in their top level hotels in Europe as well as 240,000 FF miles with any airline you choose! Fly business class and stay free.