Airline Card - To Own or Not to Own?

Summary: This article describes whether or not consumers should consider airline card offers.

Everyone's needs are different depending on their various lifestyles and living patterns. Therefore choosing an airline card from the various airline cards available will depend entirely on your personal circumstances and financial profile. Eventually, it's up to you as to how hard your airlines credit card will work for you. But by reading these simple tips, and asking these questions, you can definitely wedge out a few more benefits out of your airlines credit card. What is an Airlines Credit Card? On an airlines credit card, one can earn credits or points whenever one uses the airlines credit card. After a certain number of "points" have been accumulated from purchases made on the airlines credit card, cardholders can redeem points for airline travel, just the way one might utilize frequent flyer miles. Be sure to know how many points you need to accumulate on your airlines credit card so as to qualify for free air travel. It's also vital to know when these points will expire if not put to use within a certain amount of time. Since most of the top airlines credit card reward programs are quite expensive for credit card companies, any airlines credit card will usually come with an annual fee and will also have higher corresponding interest rates than other credit cards. How to Select the Best Airline Card for Yourself? The first step in determining which airline card to select is to know which airline you frequent the most. If you have an airline preference for most of your trips, find out if the same airline has an airline card. Another thing to analyze would be the frequency of your flying. If you fly once every few years or so, you are least likely to benefit from an airline card. If, however, you fly often, you might want to consider owning an airline card. However, there is a catch involved in this as well. Many airline cards place restrictions on the number of points that can be earned in a year. So, if you are not able to avail the benefit of redeeming these points in the year, owning an airline card would be futile. As we've already mentioned, most airlines credit card offers will have annual fees attached in addition to having higher corresponding interest rates than non-airline traditional credit cards, so watch out for that as well.