The Continental Airlines 50,000 miles sign-up promotion ended this week, and as we near the completion of the Continental and United merger, who knows if we will see that good of an offer again. However, considering how all the credit card companies have been putting out some pretty incredible offers as of late, anything is possible.

The current best offer I could find available online is 30,000 miles + $50 statement credit. Technically I have received invitations marketing this as 40,000 miles + $50 because of the annual spend bonus of 10,000 points, but I am going to assume most will not meet that requirement. The application is available on the Continental Airlines website. Some key data points are as follows:

1. Pay no annual fee the first year. That’s a savings of $85+.
2. Earn 25,000 bonus miles after your first purchase. That’s enough for a round-trip reward within the U.S. (excluding Hawaii) and Canada.*
3. Earn an additional 5,000 bonus miles when you add an authorized user to your account within two months of opening your account and after you make your first purchase.*
4. Earn a $50 statement credit after your first purchase.*
5. Earn 10,000 bonus miles annually when you spend $25,000 on your Card.*
6. Earn two miles for every $1 spent when you purchase tickets from Continental Airlines using the Card.*
7. Earn one mile for every $1 in purchases charged on the Card.*

Note there are still some targeted 50,000 mile offers still out there, but they are not available online for public use.

In addition to the Continental card, there is another other great card available right now, the Chase Sapphire Preferred card that can be used to churn Continental OnePass miles. The current Chase Sapphire Preferred card is offering 50,000 points after $3,000 spend in 3 months. The 50,000 points can be transferred 1:1 to Continental.

Some of the nice benefits to the Chase Sapphire card are the following features:
– No annual fee for the first year
– 25% bonus on points redemption through Ultimate Rewards (this assumes you do not transfer the miles to Continental).
– No foreign transaction fees
– 7% annual points dividend

So with a little effort, one can gain 80,000 miles towards Continental, which can later be converted to United miles in the future.