Mallory

Interesting article about the Chase/BA card.

http://www.creditnet.com/credit-news...-800221186.php

Dan725

Thanks for posting - good news there I have that with my Capital One card, but good to see someone else doing it.

Britishbees

Having read through this entire thread, and tried all the links posted so far, I discover that none of them currently point to any even remotely good deals for BA miles...

So I have a couple of questions:

1 - Does signing up for an AA card enable me to add points to my BA stash, or am I starting again from scratch with AA?

2 - Does anybody know of any current deals on offer - AMEX or VISA/MC that are great for building travel rewards - ideally with BA?

Cheers

Harry

tonrob

Current Chase/BA offer is 50K points. The original 75K/100K Citi/AA offer ended October 31 but the good news is that they've created a new 75K offer that lasts until end January. For up-to-date details and discussions on these including how to get to the various spend thresholds easily etc. check out Flyertalk.

AA miles can now be used on all BA flights (and vice versa) but you can't move miles between the programs. Getting up to 300K AA miles per household (husband and wife, 2 cards each) via the Citi offer is hardly what I'd call starting from scratch though! (Plus there are a ton of other ways to earn AA miles without setting foot on an aircraft).

The other good card is the AMEX Starwood (mentioned that before) although sign-up offers vary. I wouldn't jump for less than 30K (but again it's possible to get more than one card per person: Personal and Business). 20K Starwood points can be transferred to 25K miles on a number of airlines, and they sometimes have special offers (e.g. until the end of the year there's a 20% transfer bonus to be earned which I shall be taking full advantage of).

These deals are great - just this morning I have booked to go from Boston to Frankfurt (via Heathrow) next August for Mrs tonrob and myself on BA Club World/Club Europe (business class) using the Chase BA 241 mileage voucher for just 100,000 miles and $880 in fees total.

Dan725

tonrob, I think you just like flying around in Club Class to random destinations in Europe for the hell of it!

It's funny, when I was traveling on business to Dallas a few weeks ago, I had a really good chat with a couple of flyertalk/mileage pro types in the hotel bar....they knew every little trick in the book as to how to max your miles/benefits They were big fans of the Starwood Amex.

tonrob

Flying to Frankfurt to spend Mrs tonrob's 40th with her parents who live nearby! My last European trip was to Nice which is closer to where my parents live these days. It's true I've been bitten by the Club World bug - so taking full advantage of every trick to ensure that I stave off flying economy on trans-Atlantic segments for as many years as possible!

Britishbees

Thanks tonrob - I presume to successfully apply for these requires a US credit history? We've only been here 3 days - though I do have now a US bank account, credit card and car financing in place...

Cheers

Harry
(still hijacking OH's session!)

coastieexpat

Same here. I go back to the UK about 3 times year, finally got silver status on BA and have been in Club World , ( business ) for at least four of my trips.

One day I would love to try First Class, I have enough miles but I don't want to dump them all on one trip.

It will be very difficult to go back to flying economy, especially long haul.

I assume you are a member of Flyertalk.com ?

MrsBriggo

I was about to ask the same thing, my husband and I have had BA/AMEX cards (UK) for years and we have to spend £10k to get a companion voucher which we both do in a few months due to travelling with work and not having company cards :-).

We have silver cards through travelling with work so get more miles everytime we fly but we have been to lots of places with the BA miles but club world LHR - SYD via SIN was the best but Mauritius club world was good too.

We can move our AMEX cards to the US via the global swap programme but we would lose this years companion vouchers and as they are now valid for 2 years we don't want to do it and also BA and AMEX don't have a deal (that I know of).

I have had a look into the chase card but as Harry said I guess you have to have a good credit history and as I don't start work until Jan in the US (hubby been there since march) I guess I have no chance. I presume they look at your anual income here when applying?

MrsBriggo

I flew first class a few months ago from EWR to LHR and it was nice, love the duvets but it was a short flight so probably didn't get the most benefit! Also the first class lounge (if you can call it that) is not a patch on the T5 one!!#

If money was no barrier I would fly first all of the time but I struggle to see how they can justify the price!

tonrob

Yes - you need to build up US credit history. There are a number of threads on here about that if you do a search.

tonrob

Are you absolutely 100% certain of that?

tonrob

I moved the intended dates of next year's Germany trip by a week in order to avoid having to fly First one way which would have entailed blowing an additional 25,000 miles. Took a lot of soul-searching before I did that!

And yes to FT.

coastieexpat

I thought you could only upgrade 1 class, I assume you bought a world traveller plus ticket.

That would be very tempting for me , it's a 10 hour plus flight from San Francisco.

snowbunny

I'm the OP and have yet to get any of these cards!

However, please keep posting if you see any really good deals.