Originally Posted by
NatGeo
By and far the best bang airline points for the dollar United Mileage Plus points.
The Chase Saphire Reserve is a ripoff. Don't get me wrong, in theory all of the benefits it has sound good, but when you have to pay an annual fee of $500 then that card just became a ripoff!
The Chase Saphire Preferred is the card you want. Unlike the CSR you do not have an annual fee for the first year. I think the sign up bonus is 50k miles.
Another good card is the Chase Explorer United Mileage Plus card. It has a 50k mile introductory bonus. 1 free checked bag on United flights. 2 complimentary United Club passes each year. United Clubs are found in airports and they are a great place to kill time if you have a long layover.
The Starwood Preferred Guest card from American Express is the only offer besides Chase where you can get United Mileage Plus points. You get 25,000 miles for signing up.
I'm very cost conscious and would not call the CSR a "ripoff" by any means. It effectively costs $150/year out of pocket because any spending you do on travel (hotel, airline, bus, train, boat, etc) results in $300 statement credit every year. The Priority Pass select is extremely useful for me, but that may not be the case for most airline pilots. The ability to transfer URs to numerous different partners makes that currency much more versatile than a single airline like UA.
Common consensus among the bloggers is that Alaska miles have the highest value for a stand alone airline "currency". The B of A Alaska cards are still churnable to an extent, but not as easy as in years past.
That said, the United MPE is in my card line-up and is useful for increased award space by being a card holder and United miles can have some reasonable redemptions on partner airlines. I just did a TPE-SHA trip on EVA for only 8000 UA miles while doing it on China Eastern would have been 17,500 DAL miles by comparison.