Watching Your Wallet: Who has the best airline rewards?

LANSING, Mich. (WILX) - Airline rewards programs can be overwhelming. You probably only want to know two things -- how many points or miles do I earn and what’s it worth?

NerdWallet compared U.S. airlines’ rewards programs by collecting hundreds of data points from real-airline routes to determine the value of points or miles for each airline. Then, it combined these results with the number of miles earned per dollar spent.

The study found Alaska Airlines’ Mileage Plan is easily the most rewarding domestic airline program.

With Alaska Airlines’ Mileage Plan, you will get about nine cents in value for every dollar spent with Alaska. Higher than the four to five cents per dollar spent you can expect from the big three airlines: American, Delta and United.

Second on the list was Frontier Airlines, followed by Southwest. Nerdwallet found that JetBlue Airways offers the most valuable points at 1.5 cents each.

If you are not a frequent traveler who takes a couple trips per year, you can mostly ignore the rankings. If you travel for work or take several trips a year the programs could help you save money.

More: Watching Your Wallet

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