Primary advantage of this card is airline club access if you don’t fly on the same airline all the time. Airports clubs generally charge more than $300 annually or have a daily fee of around $50. With this card, you can access airport clubs as long as you have a ticket on the airline for the club you are attempting to access.
This card has no annual fee, it pays 5x points on airfare, it offers 20,000 bonus points for new sign-ups (after spending $650), and spending $15,000 each year gets you complimentary membership to Priority Pass, which gets you into more than 600 airline lounges. I believe Amex Platinum only works for something like 150 lounges.
So it’s worth a look!
Matt
You guys should revisit the lounge issue again, Amex now offers free priority pass membership — just like Pen Fed. So the platinum card gets you the US Air, Delta and American lounge access plus the same 600 lounges that Pen Fed has. Also, you guys miss out on the fact that if you use Amex’s pay with points option for travel, you get $.125 per point and you get frequent flier miles on the newly booked ticket. So, if you book a roundtript flight from New York to London for $800, you would spend 64000 points, but also get about 7000 frequent flier miles. And that, of course, ignores you could get a free companion ticket if you’re wealthy enough to pay for a first class or business class ticket.
The companion ticket is something we rarely touch on, but that’s another
good point. We don’t like to assume that our average user would pony up for
a full price first or business class ticket, but if you’re looking for an
Amex Platinum card, it’s certainly possible!
