Travel: Why I succumbed to the United Quest card

…one of a series of occasional travelogue/travel tip posts I like to write! Just search “travel” in the blog search box to find more!

When it’s time to pay attention to miles and points

I’m not a black-belt miles and points person, but lately I’ve started paying more attention to this, with airfares, and now baggage fees, rising. As I wrote about in November, my miles/points radar perked up when I got an Amex Blue Business Plus card and pretty quickly clocked enough points for a free ticket to London this summer.

Newest case in point: I started to consider getting an airline-branded credit card, if it would pay for itself through flight credits and free checked bags. I recently did this with the United Quest card, and it paid for itself in one trip! If you’re interested in this type of card, my two favorite sources of good information are Frequent Miler, and NerdWallet. Just be aware that most “credit card comparison” websites make a great deal of money off affiliate deals; analyze the information and then make your own decision!

I’ve never had an “expensive” airline credit card, and I’ve never cared much about free checked bags. As described in this post from 2023, I despise checking luggage. To be honest, I barely track the cost of checked bags, because I’m usually on the traveling light plan with my Underseat Pro backpack.

Checked bags: The cost starts to add up

Checked-bag reality hit me this winter. My family took a ski trip to Idaho and Utah over New Year’s, flying on United. For that trip, we were able to check the bags for free on my young adult daughter’s United Premier Silver status, but she was back at school by the time my husband and I flew from Denver to Kalispell, Montana in March, checking a bag of skis and poles, plus a large duffel with our ski boots, helmets, and other gear that wouldn’t fit in the backpacks we carried on (again, on United). United charged $35 per bag, each way, so this added up to a not insignificant $140 total, which got me thinking about how to avoid such a charge in the future.

To boot, United, like many U.S.-based airlines, has now raised their checked bag fees, in United’s case to $40 per bag. Some airlines have gone even further, with Southwest (another airline we fly fairly frequently) jumping from $35 to $45 for the first bag, and $55 for the second. This was the wakeup call I needed: definitely time to look at credit cards that waive these fees.

Picking a credit card: Focus on what benefits you will actually use

Sidebar: when looking at credit cards with significant annual fees (I’d say $150 a year or more), think about what benefits are actually important to you, and what benefits you will actually use. In my case:

• Lounge access is of zero value to me. I actually enjoy the people-watching aspect of the boarding area, and if the noise is bugging me, I just wear headphones. And I don’t typically do itineraries with long layovers where the opportunity to take a shower or sleep would be of any value.
• I don’t have the patience for a million coupons. $10 credit for Uber, but only on Tuesdays in even-numbered months? Even if I would use the coupon credits, I don’t want to deal with calculating the eligibility criteria.
• We don’t tend to eat in fine dining restaurants or order food delivery. If you do these things, there are credit cards that might be really appealing. For example the American Express Platinum card gives you a $100 Resy credit every quarter, which is significant. But we do neither of these, so this is also a zero draw for me. Another good tip here: identify what’s not important to you and the benefits you will likely never use, even if they’re objectively appealing.

Advantages of the United Quest

After doing some research, I settled on the United Quest card. It has a $350 annual fee (not waived for the first year, you pay right away), but offers two financial benefits and one “soft” benefit that I actually care about:

• A $200 United travel credit each year. We fly United quite a bit, so I knew that I would use this right away. In fact, I did use it for a flight I booked within two weeks of getting the card.
• Two free checked bags for the cardholder and a companion, when you book the tickets on the same reservation. Ditto: On the first trip I booked, two checked bags were unavoidable. This meant that in the first trip after obtaining the card, I had already gotten $360 of benefits on the $350 annual fee, so we’ll put this card in the Win column.
• Group 2 boarding. This isn’t a quantifiable benefit, but I like it because you’re pretty much guaranteed an overhead bin spot for your bag, and there’s less boarding hysteria than in the later groups. Although I love my Underseat Pro (and it has saved me from baggage fees on airlines like Frontier and Spirit that charge you for the overhead bin), it’s nicer to have the leg room if you can get it. From Colorado, it’s a four-ish hour flight to the East Coast where we have a lot of friends and family, I’m a relatively tall person, so I like to get a bin spot if possible and have some leg room.

Additionally, by spending $4,000 on the card in the first three months, I’ll get 80,000 United bonus miles. Even as a relatively frugal person, this spending goal is doable. The card is a Visa, so you can use it at Costco (the only credit card they take is Visa, otherwise you have to use debit), where we buy most of our food, and I’ve also used it to book two sets of plane tickets and a couple of AirBnBs. Overall, I’m very happy with the benefits offered by the United Quest!