I have had two Citibank AAdvantage credit cards for as long as I can remember and before I really started playing the credit card/points game. The two cards are the Citi/AAdvantage Gold MasterCard, and the Citi/AAdvantage Platinum Select World Elite MasterCard.
Despite the fact that these cards earn American Airlines AAdvantage miles for dollars spent, for me, I would much rather earn Chase Ultimate Rewards points with my Chase credit cards and American Express Membership Rewards or Starwood Preferred Guest points with my American Express credit cards as I find there is a lot more flexibility with these points. So we only use these cards if Citibank sends us a good incentive to use them.
In fact, Rob just did take take advantage of an offer on this Mastercard from Citibank where he needed to spend $600 by September 30, 2014 to receive 2 Admirals Club (the American Airlines Airport lounge) One-Day passes. Since he has a ski trip planned to Colorado over MLK weekend 2015 with the boys, I figured he may be able to use these. I put the card back into circulation for a bit, he spent the $600 and we are currently waiting for the passes. Ok, I know, they still need one more as there are 3 of them traveling, but I have about 5 months to figure that out. 🙂
The cards have an annual fees of $50 and $95 respectively which I have paid over the years as we do take advantage of the card’s incentive offers at times and I do not think that the fees are that high.
However, don’t forget unlike Chase and American Express, I have found that Citi will waive the annual fee if you so something for them as well. The last time I called to cancel a Citi card because I did not want to pay the annual fee, they made me a deal where I needed to use the card on 5 purchases (OF ANY AMOUNT) and they would waive the fee. I happily did this!