Why an East Coast Traveler Loves His Alaska Airlines Credit Card

As a frequent traveler who lives on the East Coast, it might come as a surprise that my favorite airline credit card is from a West Coast carrier.

Less than a year in, the value I’ve received has well exceeded the card’s $395 annual fee. And that’s without stepping foot on an Alaska Airlines flight.

Here’s why the Atmos™ Rewards Summit Visa Infinite® credit card deserves a spot in your wallet.

A credit card sign-up bonus is the easiest way to quickly earn a pile of points. And the pile you’ll earn with the Atmos™ Rewards Summit Visa Infinite® credit card is massive. The card currently comes with a limited-time offer: Earn 100,000 bonus points and a 25,000-point Global Companion Award with this offer. To qualify, spend $6,500 or more on purchases within the first 90 days of opening your account. Additionally, receive a 50% flight discount code for a qualifying future flight after opening your new account.

The 25,000-point Global Companion Award you’ll receive each year you pay the card’s $395 annual fee can be extremely lucrative for travelers who jetset with a friend or family member. This award is applied as a discount on the points price of a flight, allowing you to “top-off” the award with additional points, and may be redeemed for any service class on any flight in Alaska’s full network, including eligible international partners. Terms apply.

Last year, I used 10,000 Atmos points plus the 25,000-point Global Companion Award for my partner’s round-trip first class ticket from the U.S. to Turks and Caicos to celebrate my birthday. My ticket was another 35,000 points. Those two tickets, which were on Alaska’s partner American Airlines, would have otherwise cost almost $3,000. The savings from that trip alone covers the card’s annual fee for more than seven years!

And for big spenders, it gets even better. Each cardmember year that you spend $60,000 or more on the card, you’ll earn an additional 100,000-point Global Companion Award. That’s enough to cover an international business class flight for your companion on world-class partners like Starlux, Finnair, Japan Airlines and Qatar Airways. Spending $60,000 on the card will also qualify you for Atmos Gold and reciprocal Oneworld Sapphire elite status (more on that below).

A unique feature of the Atmos™ Rewards Summit Visa Infinite® credit card is the ability to earn 3 points per dollar on all foreign transactions. No other card we’ve covered offers bonus rewards on international purchases, making the card a great option when you travel abroad. You’ll also earn 3 points per dollar on dining purchases and 1 point per dollar on everything else.

But it gets even better. If you have a qualifying Bank of America® account, you’ll earn a 10% rewards bonus on all points earned from card purchases. Since I have a Bank of America® checking account, that relationship bonus results in 3.3 points per dollar on foreign transactions and dining purchases. At NerdWallet’s valuation of 1.2 cents per Atmos point, that’s equivalent to about 4% back on those purchases.

On a recent trip to Mexico, I used my Atmos™ Rewards Summit Visa Infinite® credit card for every purchase I made. In the screenshot below, you can see the “foreign purchase bonus” netted an extra 1,537 Atmos points for the bonus category spending, and an extra 260 Atmos points for the Bank of America® relationship bonus.

Access to partner airlines is my favorite part of earning Atmos points. The program offers redemptions for flights operated by many Oneworld alliance airlines, as well as other partners, such as Condor and Starlux. As an added benefit, cardholders receive a waiver of the $25-per-person award ticket booking fee when you redeem points on a partner airline.

From the East Coast, I redeem Atmos points on American Airlines’ extensive network of domestic flights. Some American flights are actually cheaper when you redeem Atmos Rewards than if you were to use AAdvantage miles.

I also take advantage of Oneworld partner redemptions for international flights. In 2025, I redeemed 70,000 Atmos Rewards for a business class flight on Oneworld partner Finnair from Chicago to Amsterdam. Thanks to the generous stopover rules when you redeem Atmos points (including on partner airlines), I was able to book a free stopover in Helsinki (Finnair’s main hub). That allowed me to experience an amazing four days of sauna culture in Finland. I also took the ferry over to Estonia for a day, allowing me to visit two extra countries without spending more points.

I’m already half way to spending the $60,000 required to earn a 100,000-point Global Companion Award. Once I spend the full $60,000, I’ll earn a total of 40,000 status points for the year, including 30,000 status points from spending and 10,000 status points from the anniversary bonus. That will also let me qualify for mid-tier Atmos Gold and reciprocal Oneworld Sapphire elite status, which includes business class lounge access when I travel outside of North America, preferred boarding and free seat selection.

The Atmos™ Rewards Summit Visa Infinite® credit card effectively bridges the gap between a standard airline card and a luxury travel tool, making it a compelling choice even for East Coast travelers like myself. The combination of unique perks and flexibility through partner airline redemptions makes it one of the most rewarding credit cards in my wallet. While the $395 annual fee may seem steep, the massive welcome offer, annual Global Companion Award and ancillary perks like flight delay compensation ensure that the card more than pays for itself.

About the author

Craig Joseph is a NerdWallet credit cards and travel rewards expert. He has degrees in geology from West Virginia University and oceanography from Oregon State University and has published in academic journals, newspapers and blogs. Craig is passionate about personal finance and wants to enhance the financial literacy of everyone he meets. He’ll probably also try to convince you why rocks are cool.