Transfer ThankYou Points to AAdvantage

Before I start, please note that as of right now, you can NOT transfer ThankYou points to AAdvantage miles. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if sometime in the near future Citi and American take their relationship to the next level!

Let me explain why there is some merit in my speculation here.

Chase is linked with United, American Express is linked with Delta and Citi is linked with American. The main difference here is that Chase and American Express are direct transfer partners with their respective Airline while American is not a transfer partner with Citi.

Citi and American have a different kind of relationship. Citi offers two great credit cards – the Citi Prestige and the Citi Premier – both of which offer lucrative sign-up bonuses, great perks and valuable bonuses on everyday spend.

If you have the Citi Premier card, you can redeem Citi ThankYou points for 1.25 cents / point towards the cost of a paid ticket on American Airlines and if you have the Citi Prestige card that value goes up to 1.6 cents / point. That’s a great redemption value on a paid ticket that will also allow you to earn AAdvantage miles since it is a “paid” ticket.  

This value can be maximized if you have both cards since you can pool all the ThankYou points earned from both cards on – sign-up bonus and everyday spend – and redeem them for the higher value offered by the Prestige card. This means the total 100,000 ThankYou points earned from the sign-up bonuses alone can be worth $1,600 of paid American Airlines tickets.

Citi is already giving a value of 1.6 cents/point on American, and starting March 22nd, AAdvantage miles are being devalued. I don’t see why Citi won’t be willing to have American as a 1:1 transfer partner.

Bottom Line:

I think this is not a far fetched idea given the already existing relationship between Citi and American. Transferring Citi ThankYou points to American AAdvantage miles would be a great way to compensate for the increasing costs of awards on American. I hope that this idea will one day become a reality.

If you have any questions please tweet me @pointspointers or email me at pointspointers@gmail.com