Chase, Capital One, Northwest Airlines, Barclay, American Express, I could go on, but I won’t about the credit cards that offer air miles.  Almost every credit card company is going to have at least one credit card in their cache that offers air miles.  The way the airline miles are going to be offered is where the real difference will lie.  So let’s look at a couple of the different card companies and their offers.

Chase is offering a Master Card through the Continental One Pass where you will receive up to 20,000 bonus miles on the credit card just by signing up.  Here is how it works; you sign up for the card and transfer your existing balance in the first 30 days of having the card.  Depending on the balance you transferred you can earn up to 20,000 bonus miles.  The more you transfer the more you will earn of course.  The next step in this credit card offering air miles is the purchases.  For the purchases you make you get 1 mile per dollar you spend.  So if you make a purchase of 20 dollars you have just earned 20 miles.  It can take a bit to earn the air miles with Chase if you don’t use the card that often or for big purchases. 

Barclay offers the Frontier Airlines credit cards which offer air miles. This card works much in the same way as the Chase card, but they offer 15,000 airline miles for balance transfers.  They also allow you to fly with 15,000 miles in the US to the lower 48.  You need more to fly international in some cases.  For places like Mexico you can use 15,000 miles depending on the deal at the moment.  It is also a bit difficult to earn these air miles if you don’t use the card very often.  The best way is through large purchases and balance transfers.

Discover has a card for air miles.  This company instead of offering bonus miles for a particular airline or for balance transfers offers you cash back rewards on purchases that earn you miles as well as other methods.  So the cash back rewards is a voucher you earn and not very helpful for earning miles, but their point program is the best.  In the point program you get 1 mile per dollar in a purchase.  You can also earn double points for travel expenditures and restaurants.  These double points are offered all of the time and this is their specific travel rewards card over the other rewards cards they have.

All of these credit cards offering air miles are going to have no blackout dates.  This means you can travel at any time on the airline evening during the Christmas holiday.  The other thing you should note is the type of card.  Some of the credit cards offering air miles will mean that you are paying an annual fee where as the others we have mentioned above have no annual fee.