I read about these in another post- how exactly do these work? Approx. how much do you have to have charged before you can actually earn a decent trip? Do you have to use them only on certain flights or certain carriers? Any recommendations for one I can apply to that people have used and like? I want to start traveling again, but ticket prices really bug me.
i have the citibank aadvantage one, for american airlines. lately i have been spending too much money, so getting a fair amount of miles. for that particular card, it's 1 mile for each $1 you spend, plus and annual fee of (i think) $50 or $60.
i tend to travel a fair amount anyway, so the miles add up quickly--you get WAY more miles for traveling than you do just for spending, but every little bit adds up. sometimes they have specials where you get extra bonus miles for booking flights through their website.
you need 25,000 for a round-trip ticket, or to upgrade to first class on a coach ticket that you pay for. some destinations are 35,000, mostly international ones. american has some blackout dates, but they're pretty good about letting you travel most of the time, and i've found their customer service people at the aadvantage desk to be very helpful and nice. i'm pretty loyal to american for this reason.
if you book a flight using miles and have to change it, it costs you $100, but you can change the destination or the time/date.
I have the same card as bumblebee, and she explained how it works very well. For me, though, I get many more miles by my spending than travelling. For ex, when I travel from Dc to Dallas, it's just a few hundred miles that are added to my card if I buy the ticket (you don't get miles if you use a ticket paid for by miles). Me and my hubby put bills, utilities, groceries, just about everything on that one cc, and so we spend thousands of dollars a month, which adds up pretty fast. We pay it off in full with one check every month, so we don't have to worry about the interest rate (b/c it's not very low). Also, if you sign up for the idine program, you get like 10 miles for every dollar spent at various restaurants that belong to the program, and that adds up quickly (i.e. 500 miles for a $50 dinner, etc.). You can also get more than 1 mile per dollar at certain hotels and car rental agencies. HTH some!