Best cards to transfer points to non-fuel surcharge airline programs

[reflekt]

Hi. Sorry if this has been covered before. I'm new.

I've done a lot of searching and haven't found a thread that directly answers this question. I'm a digital nomad, mainly Australian based financially, and do a lot of worldwide travel.

Most of my reading / education of how the Hobby works is US based, and focuses on getting points using cards that allow transfers to Airline programs that won't hit you with fuel surcharges so you can book alliance based routes. Ideally this seems to be Chase points -> United Miles. Eg:

extrapackofpeanuts.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/fuel-surcharge-chart.pdf

I don't have a SSN (though I do have an ITIN) so the journey to get US based cards is going to be a long or impossible road.

For the forseeable future I'll probably only be able to get Australian cards, and from what I've been able to see, none of them offer points conversions / transfers to any Airline miles programs that don't have fuel surcharges. Or do they? I haven't been able to find a definitive list for Australian cards that compares to a simple and clear list like this:

onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/best-current-credit-card-offers/

That combined with the fuel surcharge chart, show you the "holy grail" combinations of cards + miles programs.

Is there a similar list for Australian cards?

 

[andye]

Velocity has low charges so plenty of Aus CC opportunity there.
The other option is via SPG which transfers to multiple low fuel surcharge airlines (AA and Alaska of most relevance). These can be accessed either via Amex Membership Rewards (multiple Aus Cards) or Diners Club.
Both Amex MR and Diners transfer at 1 point to 0.5 SPG. SPG gives a transfer bonus so 20K SPG points equals 25K AA/AS points. When you look at overall earn rates Diners wins the maths but acceptance is lower.

 

[burmans]

Velocity has low charges so plenty of Aus CC opportunity there.
The other option is via SPG which transfers to multiple low fuel surcharge airlines (AA and Alaska of most relevance). These can be accessed either via Amex Membership Rewards (multiple Aus Cards) or Diners Club.
Both Amex MR and Diners transfer at 1 point to 0.5 SPG. SPG gives a transfer bonus so 20K SPG points equals 25K AA/AS points. When you look at overall earn rates Diners wins the maths but acceptance is lower.

MR to SPG to AA works well at the moment, effectively you get .75 to 1 if you move in 40K blocks.

 

[scwappy]

Citi is also worth checking out