Worth getting an airline credit card for one trip?

[lauriem7a]

We are a family of six and will be flying to Disney the last week of August. I don't usually fly & am not too familiar with the process of using airline miles. I was thinking if both me & my spouse signed up for a good airline rewards credit card, it could save us a few bucks on our trip. We are in NJ & a few different airlines could work (but leaning frontier)...

Would it be worth signing up for an airline credit card & then cancelling our membership once the trip is over? I tried reviewing a bit online, but the process for using rewards does not seem clear & I'm not sure how much we would actually save.

 

[plygph]

Check in to the air miles reward program with what ever airline you enjoy traveling with. Now the card if you are like me carry no balance pay off credit cards end of each month and they are offering enough bonus miles(Caveat: these usually require you to spend a certain $$ amount over a period of time) to sign up to cover the cost of the flights for you and your spouse for like a no or minimal annual fee then yes get the card. It is the reason I no longer use my Disney card as my preferred card(not enough return on my spending $1 per $100) and I use my Southwest card as they have covered our airfare a trip or two to WDW and the original DL
Also when purchasing non refundable tickets using points through SW they will put the points back into your account should you have to cancel and bags fly free. For some reason I leave with one checked bag return with two must be the souvenirs.

My 2 cents

 

[FireflyTrance]

Yes it's probably worth it if you get a big sign up bonus with a lot of free miles. Many credit cards will give a sign up bonus of 50K points. That's worth at least $500. If you each opened one that would be at least $1000 of free flights. Southwest is good if you can get a direct flight.

 

[Jimsig]

Also be sure to look at non-airline based credit cards that offer travel rewards to be used on a number of airline if you are unsure of the airline you could be flying. Just make sire any card you get can be used on the airlines you are looking at. Check out some different websites that explain what each card has for benefits, Nerd Wallet is one.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

I'd say it wasn't too long ago where that was more the case. I mean we signed up for Delta SkyMiles back in 2013 which gave us money off our tickets we used for our honeymoon. But we knew that we'd be willing to fly Delta again (and boy did the points we had earned by spending and my husband's work flight to Japan come in handy 3yrs later when we flew to Hawaii in 2016). In 2016 we got a SWA CC because with all the flying my husband was doing combined with the bonus points we could make Companion Pass that year and boy did we use that pass lol.

I think in terms of canceling you may want to check out the threads on churning. You're not technically churning but you may want to consider a ding to your Credit report by opening and closing the account. Those on those types of threads though would have better advice as they have more experience over that.

These days so many cards give rewards from cash back to other things that in the end may be better off rather than straight up airline card then cancel. NerdWallet and WalletHub are websites that help compare credit card offers and rewards.

 

[_19disnA]

If you don't intend to fly frequently on any one airline, the value of having their credit card is diminished. After the initial offer, you may not accumulate enough miles for additional trips. Miles with many of them expire after a certain amount of time and are lost. Also look at the annual fee they charge. Any credit card company makes money from the fees they charge merchants when you shop, that is why you get so many of these offers in the mail. Only you can determine which credit card best fits your needs and buying habits.

 

[OrangeBirdGirl]

I wouldn't. Everyone has their own opinion on signing up for credit cards, for us I don't sign up for a cc unless it will have a long term benefit for us. So I wouldn't sign up for something that'd be a one-time use benefit.

 

[abcboys]

Yes! I did this exact thing last year. We maybe fly once every 5 years if that. I wanted to go out west to Disneyland this past June. I opened up a Chase Sapphire preferred. Got a nice sign up bonus and put everything on that card for the next 9 months. Transferred my rewards to southwest and it paid for 4 of us to fly for FREE. Just had to pay the $12 pp tax or whatever it was. It saved us almost $1400 on tickets. Because that card had a $95 fee which was waived the first year, I canceled right before the year was up.

 

[PatMcDuck]

We use the JetBlue card that gives free checked luggage (for whole party). We find that more than justifies the yearly card fee. SW was my #1 go to, but they no longer use EWR. (We still use SW once in awhile out of PHL).

I am debating getting the Frontier CC, I am flying them in February. (I was wondering if they offered a better CC deal on the plane, but it doesn't look like it). I will likely drop the SW card, since they left EWR.

Edited to add that last year I was thinking about dropping that JB card, but then they waived the yearly fee so I kept it.

 

[sluggozmom]

I've done this twice. I have very very good credit and adding/cancelling cards has no affect on my score
Free flights both times and money back in gift cards when I closed the Southwest card with the left over points.. equal to the annual fee I paid! SO that card paid me $10 and gave me free flights!
The Delta card came with free checked bags and no annual fee. I cancelled that before the year was up and still have more points in the bank.

 

[gottalovepluto]

“I love credit cards...” is the best place to start. It’s definitely overwhelming so don’t try to read beyond the first post. After that jump into the thread answering the questions posed to you in the first post. Even those just looking for one credit card are welcome! The knowledge base in that thread runs deep so they might propose cards you didn’t even know about!

 

[gottalovepluto]

Yes it's probably worth it if you get a big sign up bonus with a lot of free miles. Many credit cards will give a sign up bonus of 50K points. That's worth at least $500. If you each opened one that would be at least $1000 of free flights. Southwest is good if you can get a direct flight.

PLEASE don’t assume 50k “points” are worth $500. Given the variations in airline miles program valuations, where a person is hoping to go, and when, 50k “points” could be worth $200 or $800 or $500- you just don’t know without a lot more data. Airlines count on people not doing their research, not realizing:
-availability can be hard to find for points flights depending on the airline
-the cheapest points flights can be the flights from hell with 2 stopovers leaving you on a tour of the United States vs a 3 hour direct
-if points only cover a flight or 2 and you have to pay cash for the rest but your points airline is much higher cost than other airlines you could end up losing all your “savings”
-that there are rules about free bags on all cards that offer them that might not work for your traveling party

All of this can destroy a trip budget if you just assume you can knock out $1k of flight costs with two 50k point sign ups.

OP, props for starting the research before jumping in! That’s step one to your best credit card life

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

Yes! I did this exact thing last year. We maybe fly once every 5 years if that. I wanted to go out west to Disneyland this past June. I opened up a Chase Sapphire preferred. Got a nice sign up bonus and put everything on that card for the next 9 months. Transferred my rewards to southwest and it paid for 4 of us to fly for FREE. Just had to pay the $12 pp tax or whatever it was. It saved us almost $1400 on tickets. Because that card had a $95 fee which was waived the first year, I canceled right before the year was up.

This is the card we use now. I like it for its flexibility. I never thought I'd ever give up my SWA card but then I realized that we flew free so often that we rarely earned double points through any cc spending. (With the SWA card, only purchases made to SWA earn double points.)
With the Chase CSP card, all travel and dining earn double points. This isn't just flights, hotels, fancy restaurants, etc. It can be anything from pizza delivery to taxi/Uber or tickets for the train I take to work, even airport parking charges count as travel.

I like how flexible the points are. Sometimes you find cheap flights that you wouldn't mind just paying cash for so it's nice that I can then use points to book hotel or rental car in order to make the trip happen. It used to be possible to book Disney hotels with points but last time I tried, none were showing up, even during very off peak time. Also if I don't want to book travel through Chase (which is run by Expedia I think) I can transfer points to various airlines or hotel rewards programs.

Super flexible and we redeem way more than the $95/yr fee.

OP, I would do some research to see which airline flies non-stop (if possible) from your nearest airport and then compare the airline's bonus offers with non-airline travel reward cards such as CSP. See if any of the spending requirements are doable and which offers the best deal for the annual fee.

We are also in NJ but closer to PHL so our usual flight options are American, Southwest and Frontier. EWR is a hub for United and Frontier flies out of TTN also. Spirit flies out of AC and PHL but I've heard to many horror stories about their customer service.