US Airways Debit Card and Check Card Review

The US Airways Check Card or Debit Card is available to those who have checking accounts with Bank of America. This card allows you to earn frequent flier miles. Let’s explore this card in greater detail.

Rewards and Fees – The US Airways Debit Card allows you to earn one mile for every dollar that you spend on Alaska Airlines/Horizon Air tickets and vacation packages. For other regular purchases, you will earn one mile for every two dollars that you spend. New check card holders get 3,000 bonus miles after the first purchase.

There is an annual fee of $30.

Other Debit Card Features – This debit also has some interesting features. For example, you could set your own daily cash limits. You could put your photo on your debit card for extra security.

Verdict – To compare an airline debit or check card, one really has to look at the its credit card equivalent. In most cases, having a credit card is much better than the debit card. But in the case of US Airways, that is not really the case. The US Airways World MasterCard (which is the lower end version) allows you to earn one miles for every dollar that you spend on the card on all items. The annual fee is $49. You also get 10,000 bonus miles after your first purchase and could earn an additional 10,000 bonus miles if you do a balance transfer! You also get an annual $149 companion ticket. So US Airways World MasterCard is better than the check card in terms of bonus miles and companion ticket. But it is only marginally better for earning miles (since it does not earn double miles) and the annual fee is only slightly higher. There is a premier version for the credit card that lets you earn double miles and it has a $79 annual fee.

For folks looking to earn extra US Airways Dividend Miles, I would recommend getting the Premier version of their “World MasterCard”. But since the “normal” Word MasterCard is only slightly better than the debit card, I actually think the US Airways Check Card is one of the better airline check cards around and would have no hesitation recommending it if you want to earn extra US Airways Dividend Miles but want to do so with a check card instead.