The Three Different Types of Airline Miles

There are three different types of airline miles you can earn and each has its own strengths and weaknesses. By the end of this article, you’ll know exactly what miles to earn based on what kind of value you’re looking for out of them.

Let’s jump into them!

We’ll start with airline miles that come co-branded credit cards. A co-branded credit card is a credit card with an airline partner already on it.

So, for example, the Alaska Airlines Visa Credit Card, American Airlines AAdvantage Citi Credit Card, the Hawaiian Airlines Mastercard, Southwest Rapids Rewards Visa Card, you get the point.

These miles are best for flying the routes that are provided by that specific airline. You can get a little more range out of the potential routes you can fly by flying on partners within the Airline Alliance of the miles your earning.

But if you are opening up a specific co-branded credit card take a look at the route network within that airline so you know it can get you to a destination or two you’d like to see.

These are good first rewards card because you don’t typically need an excellent credit score or very established credit history to get approved.

The next type of rewards card is cash to point miles cards.

Two examples of this type of Card are the Capital One Venture Card and the Bank of America Travel Rewards Card.

A perk of this type of card is it’s by far the easiest to redeem miles. To redeem miles with this card you simply book flights and hotels as you normally would and this card will allow you to remove them from your statement. But this isn’t just flights and hotels, it’s all things that the company puts under the very wide bucket of “travel-related.” Which can include, bus tickets, Airbnb, hostel stays, bus rides, Ubers, Lyfts, international fees, they are very loose with what they consider travel which gives you a whole range of potential redemptions.

What’s also positive about this card is it’s very transparent on what your savings are. Because true to its name it’s cent per point. Meaning if you reimburse a flight that is $196.87 then you’ll be using 19,687 points.

If you use it for a hostel stay that’s $97.89 you’ll be using 9,780 points.

There’s no more confusion about the value you’re getting for your points.

But because of this, you don’t have any room to creatively using your miles to get a ton of value out of them. The best way to create a lot of value out of these miles is, for example, find cheap seats for a flight but with no award availability so you can’t use miles. You could break out a cash-to-point card

Another great use of these miles is to get out of travel-related fees you wouldn’t normally be able to get out of. Such as Airbnb’s, hostels and international fees on flights to name a few.

The final type of point that you can earn is transferable points.

The most popular transferable miles are Chase Ultimate Rewards and Amex Membership Points.

These points have the widest range of uses which makes them very interesting and you can get a ton of value out of them. For example, you can transfer them to their airline partners, hotel partners, or even redeem them for statement credits on your credit card.

Because of this you can get very creative with their uses and get a ton of value out of them.

These points are useful because say you have plans to fly to Hawaii. Instead of only being able to fly to Hawaii on Hawaiian Airlines (and their transfer partners) which would be the case if you only earned Hawaiian miles with the Hawaiian Airlines Mastercard.

If you have Chase Ultimate Rewards you’d have the option to fly to Hawaii on Hawaiian Airlines as well as all the other airlines that are transfer partners within Chase Ultimate Rewards.

This will guarantee that you’ll always be able to find the best award availability for your hard-earned points.

I hope that breakdown was clear if you’d like my personal opinion I would suggest you start with cards that offer Chase Ultimate Rewards because you will have the most possible options for your travel.

But picking a card that offers you any points what so ever is a huge step up from him if you’re using cash or a debit card! Here’s a quick article I wrote on why I never use cash or a debit card and am 100% you shouldn’t be either!

Looking forward to seeing where you go! Let me know if you have any questions.

Drop a clap if you learned something!

-Italo