If you use these airline cards thoughtfully, they're a great deal for the consumer. Last year United offered both myself and my wife 50K miles to sign up with n

If you use these airline cards thoughtfully, they're a great deal for the consumer. Last year United offered both myself and my wife 50K miles to sign up with no annual fee for the first year. Then they threw in some club passes and more miles when we added each other, spent some amount, etc. We ended up each getting 55K miles or so. Then United had a mileage sale for tickets to Australia - 60K miles per roundtrip ticket. Combined with the miles we already had, we ended up with two free round-trip tickets from the US to Australia. Of course we never carried a balance on the cards and cancelled them before the yearly fee came in. Now we'll wait a year and sign up again.