Best credit card for flying

8 comments

1. Delta Amex?

2. Chase Sapphire. No international fees. Points don’t expire. Points can be transferred to a lot of airline groups. For example if I want to use points to fly from Osaka to Tokyo I go through United Airlines even though my flight will be ANA. I can transfer points to United to pay for the ANA flight. Any airline that is part of a group or alliance should work this way.

3. Of you get the ANA card you can access the private VIP lounges basically anywhere in the world.

4. I don’t think there is a good Japanese one. Had the ANA Visa and it was hopeless.

5. This is a topic that comes up with some regularity in /r/JapanFinance. You can see a selection of threads on it [via this Google search](https://www.google.com/search?q=best+credit+card+site%3Areddit.com%2Fr%2Fjapanfinance).

   [This thread had some good info](https://www.reddit.com/r/JapanFinance/comments/zmi2sq/what_credit_cards_offer_the_most/) but as you will see via that Google link, there are lots of discussions.

6. I dunno if there are better alternatives, for booking flights and so on I use a JAL card and for everything a Rakuten Card, since it’s no problem converting Rakuten Points into JAL miles and it also comes with a priority pass includes and gives you access to all of the cheap Japanese Airport lounges.

7. I would do those two things separately. As far as I could see the last time I looked, the Tokyo Metro Gold card was the best option for miles if you used one of their sign-up promos (unless you’re up for doing fiddly things like paying with QuicPay for everything). Whereas for international use the exchange rates will swamp the value of any mileage, so you want something that gives you a good rate, probably the bank card from a multi currency bank account.

8. None of the free one are any good.

   You’ll likely need one of the platinum airline cards before any meaningful miles can be saved.