Sky Miles Credit Cards
 

Anyone have a Delta (or other Airline) sky miles credit card? Are they worth it?

It cost me $45 bucks a year but I took my family to Maui last year and we are going to New York this year. The miles are getting harder and harder to use so I'm starting to get away from it and use a Wells Fargo card that knocks principle off my mortgage.

How many miles do you typically need to earn an airline ticket?

25,000 each for our New York flights
35,000 each for our Maui flights

Call up and cancel (or threaten to) and they will usually ask what they can do to keep your business. At that point say they can waive the fee. THey will freqwuently lower or waive it. IT is a little dance my wife goes through almost every year.

Personally I use a Cash Back card. Get 1% cash back on everything. If I want to use it on flight, I can. No annual fee. Mine happens to be a Visa from NationalCity, but many banks offer them. Discover Card also has cash back and if you take the "cash" as a gift card you can get more value (i.e. $20 cash converts to $25 gift card at several stores and restaurants).

For travel, I have to split between two programs so miles accumulate slowly (use different airline depending on destination and fares). Maybe miles card programs would be more attractive if I was big into one or the other program.

5 or 10 years ago, it was totally worth it, especially if you traveled a good deal on business and raked in the miles. As RC Vikings alluded to, things are much worse now. It's harder to use the miles, and more and more airlines charge premiums for more and more flights. Whereas 8 years ago it was relatively easy to get a flight for 25,000 miles, now, unless you have good status with the airline, it is very difficult.

They can still be a good deal, but not for the casual user (since they will almost always charge annual fees). You need to work on making it worthwhile.