Welcome back to my vocal fry! We’re continuing the one woman show of $100ish airline cards and the value you can get from them! Enhance the perks of spending money for flights by listening in on the benefits of these bad boys!

1. Jet Blue Plus Card
2. American Airlines Aviator Red MC
3. American Airlines Platinum Select MC
4. Alaska Airlines Visa Signature
5. Conclusion
6. Links

Jet Blue Plus Card

The Plus Card is $99 a year. It is their only annual fee card for non-business owners and there are some decent benefits if you fly them a lot.

The card offers both a redemption bonus and a card anniversary bonus! The redemption bonus is a unique feature. Basically, you get 10% of your points back as a bonus after you redeem points for a JetBlue-operated Award Flight. The anniversary bonus is 5,000 bonus points each year. I looked into award flights for JetBlue and the cheapest flight I could find on a random search was 5100 points for a one-way flight, so that’s pretty interesting!

This card also offers the first checked bag free and you also get that for another person on your reservation.

When using the card, you get a 50% savings on eligible inflight food and drink purchases on JetBlue-operated flights.

The nice thing about JetBlue is that they offer free WiFi on their planes, so you won’t need to worry about that expense!

This card offers an interesting Vacation Packages Benefit, where you earn a $100 statement credit after purchasing a JetBlue Vacations package of $100 or more. You know, us musicians and our vacations (lol), but this may be useful if you want to get away and can wait out a decent deal.

Don’t forget the sign-up bonus! As of the writing of this podcast, it’s 50,000 points if you spend $1000 in the first 90 days. Pretty decent deal considering you’d only need to spend $333.33(4) a month to get it! Don’t forget that these offers change, and make sure to ask a friend for their referral link to see if they have an even better offer for you

Don’t use the “Points Payback” feature where you can redeem points for a statement credit on purchases of $25 or more, up to a maximum of $1,000 annually. Generally speaking, this is always a terrible idea if you want to get the most value from your points, so the only reason I’m mentioning it is to say: DON’T DO IT.

Points Earning Structure:
6X points per $1 spent on eligible JetBlue purchases
2X points per $1 spent at restaurants and eligible grocery stores
1X for everything else

I could see this being a decent card for a person starting out with credit cards that flies a lot on this airline.

American Airlines Aviator Red MC

This card is issued by Barclays, and it’s going away soon, so get it while it’s hot! I believe this is the better of the two AA cards, so let’s get into why.

The wild thing about the sign up bonus is that as long as you pay the $99 annual fee and make one purchase of any amount in 90 days, you’ll earn the bonus. That’s insane. As of the day I’m writing this, the bonus is 60,000 miles. Definitely the easiest and lowest sign up bonus requirement in the game, folks.

Your first checked bag is free. Yippee! They’d be $35-40 a bag otherwise!

You get Preferred boarding on AA operated flights. This works a lot like the United Explorer card we discussed in the first half of this bonus episode.

It’s worth noting that on American Airlines, a basic economy ticket comes with a personal item and carry on, you just don’t get to select your seat or check a bag. This is way different than any of the other airlines, so it’s a great value!!!

 Instead of a discount on WiFi, you’ll get up to $25 in statement credits annually for inflight Wi-Fi purchases. That’s nice if you know you’re only taking a handful of flights and it’ll cover them all.

You can receive a 25% discount for inflight food and beverage purchases as a statement credit. Fuel up in the sky!

A nice thing this card offers is Travel Protection — You’ll receive travel accident insurance, an auto rental collision damage waiver, baggage delay insurance and trip cancellation and interruption coverage. As we discussed in the rental car episode, the collision waiver can be helpful, just make sure to look at what it does and doesn’t cover. 

Anniversary companion certificate — Each year, you can earn a companion certificate ($99 fare plus taxes and fees) after you spend at least $20,000 on your card and keep it open for 45 days after your cardmember anniversary. So you and a special someone can fly for your fare plus $100ish dollars. Not bad. 

Earning Structure:
2 miles per dollar on American Airlines purchases
1x on everything else

Not as great with additional points-earning opportunities but pretty standard for earning airline miles.

American Airlines Platinum Select MC

This card is issued by Citi and they will be AA’s only credit card issuer in the near future.

The card is free the first year and then $99 a year. A nice perk to get benefits without paying immediately. Just know you have to keep the card for the full two years to not piss off the credit card company and ruin your future chances of getting cards from that issuer!!!!

The sign up bonus for this one is pretty standard. Spend a few thousand dollars in 3 months, get thousands of points. Definitely not as unique as the Barclays equivalent in that regard. 

The earning structure is slightly better than the Barclays card:
2 AAdvantage miles per dollar spent with American Airlines
2 AAdvantage miles per dollar spent at restaurants and gas stations
1 mile per dollar on everything else

Those two extra 2X earning categories are nice because they’re categories you’ll probably use often. 

Your first checked bag is free.

You board early on AA operated flights.

You get 25% savings on in-flight food and beverage purchases.

Instead of the companion certificate, you get a $125 flight discount after $20,000 in purchases within a year. Shell out that cash, lol.

This card doesn’t come with the car insurance benefit if that’s the deciding factor for you. 

Overall, this card stacks up pretty decently with the Aviator Red card, but the ease of the sign up bonus on the Barclays card, the inclusion of that travel protection, and many of the same benefits, makes me think that the Barclays is of greater use for us traveling musicians. 

Alaska Airlines Visa Signature

Let me first say that Alaska Airlines is not an airline you’re flying often unless you live on the West coast, but if you’re lucky enough to fly them, this card is awesome!

For $95 a year, you get:

1. A free checked bag
2. Priority boarding for you and up to 6 guests on the same reservation (highest number I’ve seen)
3. If you have an authorized user, they also get these benefits when they book a reservation on their card (that’s super rare!)
4. You also get “Alaska’s Famous Companion Fare,” a companion $99 fare plus taxes and fees each account anniversary after you spend $6,000 or more on purchases within the prior anniversary year. That’s very attainable guys. Like spend $500 a month attainable, so while it’s not useful for auditions, it could be very useful for vacation or holiday travel.

Alaska lounges are some of the best in the biz, and you certainly have to pay for that luxury. This card has a $100 discount on annual Lounge+ membership access, so you would only pay a meager $650 a year, lollllllllllllllll.

Earning structure:
Unlimited 3 miles for every $1 spent on eligible Alaska Airlines purchases
Unlimited 2 miles for every $1 spent on eligible gas, EV charging station, cable, streaming services and local transit (including rideshare) purchases
Earn 1 mile on everything else

You can earn a 10% rewards bonus on all miles earned from card purchases if you have an eligible Bank of America® account. That boosts your effective earning rates on these purchases even more. 

Don’t forget that sign up bonus. A month ago when I wrote this it was pretty ridiculous, where you could earn the companion fare immediately upon meeting the spend, but I have a feeling that’s going away soon so check if it’s still there.

All in all, this is a really good card if you’re lucky enough to use Alaska Airlines a lot. Definitely one of the best cards we’ve talked about today.

Conclusion

Overall, I’d argue that the best cards for most musicians are either the Southwest Priority card or the United Explorer card. Obviously you have to be flying them regularly to get the most benefits.

There are plenty of other cards that offer great value in the list too. You’ll have to judge which, if any, of the cards discussed today is best for your own travel needs.

Whatever airline you fly the most, you should look into their cards and see whether it makes sense to add one of them to your collection. 

I hope some of this information was helpful to you all. Be sure to let us know if you have questions on any of these cards, or others you’ve been looking at, by contacting us at freewayphilharmonic.com, emailing us at freewayphilharmonic@gmail.com, or on instagram. As you know we always offer free, no-pressure credit card consultations!

Thanks very much, have a great week! 

Links

LINKS:

https://www.southwest.com/customer-experience-enhancements/

https://www.jetblue.com/route-map

https://www.alaskaair.com/en/sitemap/flights-from-city-to-city/page-1

https://www.alaskaair.com/content/route-map