How Many Air Miles Can I Earn?

Airline credit cards are great ways to earn air miles, which can be used with specific airlines to reap certain benefits, such as free flights, but also free or cheaper seat upgrades, preferential luggage retrieval, and access to special airline lounges at airports.

Knowing how to calculate your earned air miles can depend on several factors. Different airline cards allow you to accumulate air miles at different rates, but it is important to note that these rates may have caveats, such as fees and interest rates.

Use Your Air Miles Credit Card

The most crucial thing to remember when planning out how many air miles can be earned with an airline credit card is that most, but not all, transactions count towards increasing your air miles. Using a Qantas credit card to purchase goods and services will allow you to accumulate Qantas air miles, for example, as will setting up the credit card in order to make automatic bill payments for utilities. However, cash advance transactions, adding to the balance of your credit card, and balance transfers, for example, from your checking or savings account to your line of credit will not add to your air miles at all.

Look For a Favourable Ration of Air Miles : Dollars Spent

You will generally want to look for the most favourable ratio or air miles or points earned for each dollar spent with your airline credit card. Higher annual fees and credit cards reflecting a better credit history will usually coincide with better return ratios. For example, a standard airline credit card may offer you one air mile for each dollar spent, but a platinum card will give you two miles per dollar. Remember that gold and platinum cards will usually have higher annual fees, however, meaning you will have to spend more on your credit card in order to make the card worth it in terms of money saved with air miles.

Watch Out For Expiration Dates!

Another item to keep track of is possible limits and expiration times on air miles. While some airline credit cards, particularly those with higher annual fees, let you keep your air miles earned indefinitely, not all offer this capability. Make sure to check with the credit card company and airline to see if there is a limit on air miles you can earn each year, or if you only have a limited amount of time to use your earned air miles. If your credit card offers a return in a point system, make sure you know exactly how long you have to convert your points into air miles.

Are You Earning Points or Air Miles?

Keep in mind what exactly you are receiving in exchange for each dollar spent on your credit card. Most airline credit cards help you to directly accumulate air miles per dollar in a fairly straightforward way. However, make sure to take a look at the fine print on the card application to see if you are actually earning points instead of air miles. The point system is used by some airline credit card companies, and sometimes these points do not necessarily equal air miles in a 1:1 ratio.