To recap, here are the cards currently in my wallet.

My family’s preferred airline is Southwest — we get a lot of value out of Southwest points and to this point, they’ve gone where we’ve been wanting to go.

Despite no assigned seats, we have been able to sit together thanks to the family boarding policy: families with a child age 6 or younger may board between A and B group. We still have a few years before we age out of that. With Southwest, you can check in at exactly the 24-hour mark (easy for me to do ahead of a trip, not so easy during the return) and we’re usually in the B group, but sometimes early C.

Or, you can pay extra for Early Bird seating. At $15 per person one-way, that is $150 for a round-trip with my family. I suppose we can just try it for return trips, but it is a gamble. The fees are annoying, but possibly still cheaper than other airlines so I’d need to comparison shop for each trip.

Southwest can’t get us everywhere we want to go, so it is time to add a second airline to our mix: Delta.

I chose Delta because of the big 3 that come to our home airport, this is my husband’s preferred for his business travel. They have a good route and network, and points don’t expire. I can top off my Delta account by transferring points from my AmEx SPG on a 1:1 basis, or I can get a 5,000 points bonus if I transfer in 20,000 point increments. AmEx cards earning Membership Rewards can also transfer, but I don’t hold any of these cards (yet).

I decided to jump on a Delta credit card offer: the American Express Delta Platinum card. This card recently had a large public sign-up Offer, but I missed it. All wasn’t lost! A friend had a referral for the offer: 70,000 Delta points when you spend $3k in 3 months + $100 statement credit on Delta purchases made within first 3 months. (I can refer you for this offer, too, just see the link above or contact me).The annual fee? $195. Gulp. Not waived in the first year.

On the renewal each year, I will get a companion ticket for the price of taxes. I’ll need to pay for the first ticket at the cash rate to do the companion deal.

The welcome bonus, checked bag, and companion ticket are why I signed up for this card. The 70,000 points should have at minimum $700 in value. The $100 statement credit makes the first year’s annual fee effectively $95. I purchased a $50 Delta e-gift card to trigger the $100 statement credit. The card also comes with 10,000 MQM, but I’m not chasing status so for me that bit is irrelevant.

We don’t always check bags, but it is nice that if we do, this card will make it so we don’t have to pay the $50 round-trip for 1 checked bag.

The card will have access to AmEx Offers. I’ve saved $100 so far with those offers on my AmEx SPG, and I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to use some offers on this card to further offset the annual fee.

I’m tentatively planning on using the companion ticket to go to Jackson Hole, WY/Grand Tetons area. The ticket ought to save at least $300-400 even when factoring in the annual fee, and I should be able to use the sign-up points for 2 round-trip tickets on that itinerary.

This card could prove to be very valuable to our travel, or it could be a flop. My plan is to use the card benefits and points, and evaluate whether to keep this card on a year-by-year basis. I won’t know the actual value until I start booking some flights.

How about you? Do you have any airline-specific cards?