Finding the best airline credit card can quickly turn into a headache if you have several airline cards to choose from. The best cards all have various annual fees, different rates, blackout dates, mileage caps and so on. I'm here to help you relieve some of that aching with important sought after information about how to select the best frequent flyer programs.

I can tell you up front that my personal favorite airline is Southwest Airlines, just because I have often taken non stop flights on them from Kansas City to Las Vegas. Too, I really like their boarding policies. Unfortunately, just because they are my favorite airline does not necessarily mean that the Southwest Airlines credit card is the best miles credit card, even for me.

There are multiple factors that go into deciding what the best airline miles credit card is.

  Take into consideration the annual cost of earning your favorite airline miles. Annual fees can be quite pricey. I have seen a few lower quality airline reward credit cards that do not charge one at all and I've seen executive business cards that charge upwards of $450 a year! Always read the pricing information with the airline credit card application in order to find the annual fee.

  Watch out for miles that expire. Several airlines say that their frequent flyer miles don't expire, but they also have a disclosure stating that if your frequent flyer account is inactive for a specific length of time, you will lose them. What kind of hypocrisy is that?

  Don't be surprised when you get your first credit card statement, find out up front how many frequent flyer miles you will earn for each dollar you spend. Some frequent flyer credit cards only give you one mile for every two dollars you spend while others give two miles for every dollar you spend.

  If you want to use your mileage around the popular holidays, check to make sure the frequent flyer credit card of interest does not have those unpopular blackout dates and reward seating restrictions that many airline programs impose. These will usually be displayed in the reward program details.

  When you are searching for the best airline credit card, find out how many airline miles you can earn each year before you spend money without getting mileage. Many banks impose mileage caps on their frequent flyer cards, some as low as 40,000 miles per year.

The best frequent flyer credit card, in my opinion, should always offer you some type of special promotion to sign up. One promotion often given by the bank I used to work for was a certain number of free airline miles, usually enough to get a free roundtrip ticket. If bonus miles were not given, sometimes a discount or free travel certificate was given to the applicant instead. Credit card issuers come up with new offers everyday to entice potential customers into applying for their most lucrative type of credit cards.