You signed up for a credit card, met the minimum-spending requirements and earned a welcome bonus. You’ve done everything the credit-card issuer told you to do to take your first free flight on points, but you just can’t find any award space.

Don’t worry. This happens all the time.

Before you throw away the credit card that didn’t meet your quite reasonable travel expectations, let me teach you a valuable trick.

Let’s talk about Avios.

Three airlines—Aer Lingus, British Airways and Iberia—use this rewards currency, yet they’re separate award programs. Same, same, but different. And, because the programs are different, they also use their own award charts and follow their own rules.

Although there are three loyalty programs that use Avios, in this article, we’ll focus on two: British Airways Executive Club and Iberia Plus.

Points and miles are a great tool to reduce the cost of a vacation. They cover the cost of your flights and sometimes hotels and offer an opportunity to travel more and pay less.

Banks don’t make it easy to select co-branded airline cards for frequent flyers. Not only do you have multiple airlines, but you also have multiple credit cards associated with the same airline, and it gets confusing, to say the least.

Southwest Airlines, in partnership with Chase, offers five co-branded cards to its flyers: three personal cards and two business cards. No wonder it’s hard to pick the best one, but we’re here to help.

Personal Southwest Rapid Rewards Credit Cards’ Perks and Benefits

Chase issues three consumer Southwest-branded credit cards.

Air Canada’s loyalty program, Aeroplan, has been involved in so much drama in the last few years, any telenovela would be jealous of the twists and the turns.

For about 25 years, Aimia Inc. operated Aeroplan independently of Air Canada. The Montreal-based carrier planned to launch a new program but eventually bought Aeroplan back from Aimia for 450 million Canadian dollars in 2018. Now that Aeroplan has returned to Air Canada, the program underwent many changes, and we have the final result.

The program has migrated to a new system, but luckily everyone’s miles are intact.

The Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card and the Capital One Venture Credit Card both have made a few waves in the ocean of rewards credit cards recently. Both earn flexible points, have comparable annual fees and charge no foreign transaction fees.

However, are these two cards really that similar? Let’s go over their differences and similarities to help you decide which choice suits your needs best.

Chase Sapphire Preferred® CardCapital One Venture Credit Card5X points on travel booked through the Chase Travel℠3X Ultimate Rewards points on restaurants, streaming services, and online groceries (excluding Target, Walmart, and wholesale clubs).

Colombian air carrier Avianca might not be on your radar, but its loyalty program, LifeMiles, should be. It’s got pretty solid award redemption rates (when you can find ’em) and no fuel surcharges on partner bookings.

The program is a transfer partner of several flexible reward programs, which means your account can be topped off at any time.

LifeMiles uses a region-based award chart, yet still offers opportunities to book awards at promotional rates.

Avianca Partners

Avianca is a Star Alliance member, the largest airline alliance in the world.