<p>My daughter needs to get her first credit card.</p>
<p>She is traveling a lot with her job, so ideally she will quickly rack up lots of miles, both through the travel and through charging her business related travel expenses to the card.</p>
<p>What can you recommend for a good card that will generate frequent flyer miles which are not specific to one airline?</p>
<p>I love my worldperks visa. I use miles to book air fare.</p>
<p>I also use amex and use points for hotel stays.</p>
<p>We have a small business with huge expenses that we try to run though our credit cards. We have not paid for airfare or hotels in years.</p>
<p>No clue about not specific to one airline but southwest has 50K miles for signing up. Its $99 but 50k miles will take you pretty far.</p>
<p>Look at credit unions for Signature Visa - any flight, if you charge the flight on the card you can call to apply points and they will reimburse the charge.</p>
<p>depends on what carrier she will mostly use. You can’t beat chase ultimate rewards…those points can be transferred to many carriers and hotels. Look at the Ink cards…currently 50K sign up bonus. She can also get the Chase Sapphire preferred with another 40K point sign up bonus. That’s 90K ultimate reward points that can be transferred to airlines such as United, Southwest, British airways.</p>
<p>Citibank currently has 50k point sign up bonus for their AA(American Airlines) cards…personal and business would get her 100k points.</p>
<p>My first card was a Citi AAdvantage. Thanks to the card, I somehow got upgraded to gold status for a year, giving me better seats, priority boarding, etc. I’ve also been able to get some free flights.</p>
<p>Suggest focusing on one airline to get most value. Delta and platinum Amex has been wonderful for us. 10k bonus miles for 25k spent, double miles on delta purchases and double miles on trips once you get gold medallion status which is possible with lots of purchases and few trips. Adds up really fast even though I don’t travel all that much. Also get upgraded to first class pretty regularly including your companion. Lots of perks that make traveling more pleasant.</p>
<p>The card I actually use the most is citibank American airlines also.</p>
<p>I love my capital one. You can use your reward miles for ANY travel purchase and ANY airline. And it is simple to use – just use the capital one credit card to buy your tickets (air, train, even bus) or hotel stays, then use the purchase eraser to use your accumulated miles and they will remove the charge from your card. You’re not tied to any one airline, and there are no blackout dates. I can’t stand Alec Baldwin or the commercials, but I do love my capital one card</p>
<p>We have Capital One also, and it’s really easy to use. I like how I can wipe off charges for whatever I want with my points. I think the best value is not things, but hotels or flights.</p>
<p>^^ How many points does it cost to erase a dollar of a hotel bill? I can see how that would be fun but depending on the ‘cost’ it may not be the best value (if one cares about that).</p>
<p>For example, I sometimes get tickets that would cost $700-1000 (because over holiday or last minute) for <50K miles whereas I would only get $500 off for a hotel bill for the same 50K. So I always end up saving my Delta/AmEx or my Chase Sapphire (for use on United) points for tickets. Of course, having DS attending college across the country makes it extra useful that way. He’s a senior now and I have yet to pay for a ticket to have him fly home. Oftentimes, he doesn’t know his exam schedule for fall semester until well into the fall and we end up booking Christmas trip home late when it’s expensive to buy.</p>
<p>Another perhaps less known point. United not uncommonly has first class seats for 25K each way. I have taken to using that for my nearly 80 year old mother when she flies cross country to come visit us. She loves boarding early, sitting in that comfy seat and whipping out her iPad :). This last time, she figured out she could go through the expedited security line with her first class ticket and was pleased as punch.</p>
<p>If she will be flying to same area and she can identify an airline that she can always fly, then the airline cards are probably the best ones to get. If you fly a lot, you get status upgrades allowing early boarding, use of airline private club rooms, etc. </p>
<p>If you will be flying a variety of airlines, then probably the Capital One card is best bet. It offers 2 points for every purchase–no other card does that (some will give more points for some purchases, and less for others, and have annual caps for certain spending categories).</p>
<p>You can search on best credit cards for flight rewards and there are websites that list all the cards with their per year costs as well as their rewards.</p>
<p>As others have said, much depends on whether all or most of her flights are on one airline or on many different ones. United explorer card was good for us before we got premier status because it allowed us an extra $100 cash, 50k points and one free checked bag per person for two people and two passes to the lounge. It was also supposed to allow priority boarding. </p>
<p>Delta and AA have similar cards. </p>
<p>S taught me that if you have premier status on one airline, you can request it on other airlines and complete paperwork to get it. That gives you the perks on several airlines. S has the AmEx Gold card. He got it fre for 1st 2 years. Not sure about its benefits.</p>
<p>If JetBlue flies the routes, they offer an American Express card.</p>