Buying
Seneca made an emergency landing onto a busy section of the autobahn after running the tanks dry, injuring seven people. According to investigators, the pilot forgot his credit card and didnt have enough cash to buy fuel for the trip. Officials said he scraped together almost enough cash to buy the minimum fuel to complete the flight. He almost made it the airplane crashed just short of Essen-Muelheim Airport, the intended destination.
On the flip side, two pilots flying from California to Texas in December aroused suspicion when they tried to pay cash for fuel during a stop at Albuquerques Double Eagle Airport, prompting a search of the airplane. While police did find 160 pounds of marijuana in the rented airplane, it can be reasonably presumed that anyone trying to pay cash for avgas or Jet-A could arouse suspicion (especially after 9/11) and trigger a time-consuming and embarrassing search of the aircraft. So the question is not whether you’ll be using a credit card to buy aviation fuel, but which card you’ll use. And here, there’s much choice: branded aviation fuel cards, non-branded aviation fuel cards, co-branded major credit cards or just the plain old vanilla major credit cards.
With the economy humming along, Americans have been on a buying binge, mostly financed by charge cards. According to consumer credit groups, the average U.S. household credit card debt is more than $11,000, a number that has steadily increased over the past number of years. According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), credit cards usage is widespread, with some 1.5 billion in circulation in the U.S. thats five for every U.S. citizen. In total, Americans used some 700 million credit cards to purchase more than $1.8 trillion in goods and services in 2005 alone.
Most cards are backed by six major issuers: Citibank, Chase Bank USA, Bank of America, MBNA America Bank, Capital One Bank and Discover Financial Services. Ever on the hunt for new customers, the banks have developed deals with businesses and non-profit associations to issue co-branded credit cards.