Earn 2x points to use on many airlines with the Capital One Venture card
The Capital One Venture card is appealing in that it earns 2 points per dollar on all purchases. There are a few advantages to a travel rewards credit card that is not tied to a specific airline or brand. You are able to transfer the points to 15 different airlines and some hotels. This gives you the flexibility to not be locked into one airline.
However, all the airline partners are foreign airlines. There are no US-based carriers that you can transfer Capital One points to directly.
Capital One Venture card is best for foreign airlines
If you fly on any of the partner airlines such as British Airways, Qantas, Emirates, etc, then definitely get this card. You can't beat earning 2x points per dollar.
If you don't fly on these airlines, it is still possible to book flights on US airlines. This involves booking US flights on foreign partner airlines websites.
For example, American is a partner of British Airways and Qantas, Delta is a partner of Virgin Atlantic, and United is a partner of Turkish Airlines. Some airlines let you book rewards travel for a partner airline and some do not.
Qantas is one of only a few airlines where we could look up domestic US routes on its rewards travel search interface, but it did not show any business class seats. We could only book economy seats on American via Qantas rewards.
Can you get more value from a cashback credit card?
The goal with airline credit cards is to maximize your rewards for spending money. The best cashback credit card reward is 2% and many banks offer this. The easiest way to earn flights from your credit card spending is to get 2% cashback and then buy the cheapest flight available regardless of airline and other restrictions on rewards travel.
Therefore, if you're going to go through the trouble of shopping for airline credit cards, make sure that you will be rewarded more than 2%. This is usually only achieved by taking advantage of the special categories that earn 2x or more miles per dollar such as purchases on the airline itself. Earning 1 mile per dollar usually does not yield more than a 2% cashback credit card.
Here is an example comparing the value of a cashback credit card, an airline's own credit card, and the Capital One Venture card for a specific booking.
We looked for an LAX->JFK nonstop economy seat on American in November 2024. On American's website, it was $334 to book with money or 17,500 miles to book it with rewards. To book it on the Qantas website with rewards, it was 20,300 Qantas points.
If we had a 2% cashback credit card and wanted $334 in rewards, we would have had to spend $16,700.
If we had an American credit card and wanted 17,500 miles, we would have had to spend $17,500. Worse than the cashback credit card. This represents a 1.9% reward.
But if we had the Capital One Venture card and wanted 20,300 Qantas points, we would only have had to spend $10,150 because of the 2x points per dollar. This represents a 3.3% reward.
This is just one example and this won't always be the case, but it shows that if you have multiple cards, you can optimize which one to use for a specific flight.