OK... American Airlines / Barclay Bank sold me on this airmiles card.

[deepsea21]

I'm not sure how many of you play the air miles card game. I use my Chase British Airways card for everything as I can use BA Avios for AA travel via the OneWorld alliance if I chose but on our December flight down AA was pushing the new Barclay Bank AAdvantage Aviator Red Card (not a Citi card which dominates AA card offerings). This deal is offered through the end of January and it's more attractive than any Citi offerings I've seen for those who want to start or those who want to grab a card, burn up the miles and ditch it in a year.

Basics:
60,000 sign-up miles.
$95 annual fee charged to it the first billing cycle.
After that one only needs to make one purchase in the first 90 days to grab the 60,000 miles so one can buy a pack of gum with it but you must make at least 1 transaction every 6 months to remain active so another pack of gum about every 6 months.

60,000 miles is enough for 2 RT tickets within the US and US-Caribbean on select days but enough for 1 RT ticket any days I'd want to travel within reason. As such, I grabbed one for me and one for my wife. We'll use the miles and then probably cancel the cards. I wouldn't recommend carrying a balance on it with an APR of 17% - 26%! Pay it off every month if you are actually going to use it to rack up miles.

May be worth a look for what it's worth as this one is better than most to start or use as a grab, mile burn and toss... AAdvantage Aviator Red World Elite Mastercard | Barclaycard

 

[bgillis]

Thanks, I booked a round trip to Cozumel for 40,000 miles. This will fill my account back up.

 

[salth2owannabe]

Thanks - I go the Citi AA card this summer. In all of their advertisements I saw prior to signing up I never saw that the free checked bag only applied to domestic flights (with some exceptions). One of the reasons I get these cards is to not have to pay for the two bags of dive gear we check. That way one trip a year the bag fees and the card cost are a wash. I have the United card as well and on our trips down south they actually increase the bag allowance to two free checked/person. I mentioned this to a gal at the AA counter in Dallas last month and she said "Maybe you should fly United next time".