An Airline Credit Card Dirty Secret

[jeffrey]

So you carry a balance on your credit card but rationalize that at least you're getting free airline tickets for your spending efforts. Well, you may be an unwitting member of the Suckers Club.

CardWeb.com crunched some numbers on 11 major U.S. carriers who sponsor a credit card. The findings aren't pretty if you don't pay off your balance in full every month.

For starters, CardWeb found that while airline cards give you an average of 1.4 percent back on your purchases in the form of free miles, they also charge about 5.9 percent more in interest than non-rewards cards...

So in effect, that "free" airline ticket is actually costing $118 more than if you just used the best-priced no-frills card and bought the ticket yourself.

Of the 11 cards CardWeb analyzed, only three (America West, Frontier, and Southwest) would have saved you money compared with the cost of using a non-rewards card from the same issuer and buying a roundtrip ticket on your own... [read more at money.cnn.com]