Fantastic Citi Prestige American Airlines Last Minute Redemption
As many of you know, tomorrow the Citi Prestige gets its enhancement devaluation. While it will get a few new things like a metal card and online 4th night free bookings, the changes are overwhelmingly negative.
Among the negative changes are:
- No more free golf benefit.
- No more Admiral’s Club access.
- The 4th night free is calculated differently.
- Points are worth only 1.25 cents for airfare.
That last bullet point is a big one. For a long time now I have enjoyed earning 3X ThankYou points with my AT&T Access More card. I then use those points with my Citi Prestige to book American Airlines flight at a value of 1.6 cents each or other flights at a value of 1.33 cents each. That ends tomorrow.
My Last Best Redemption
Whenever I see an amazing airfare come across my screen I always try to see if I can make it work for me. When that airfare is to/from my home city of Las Vegas, then it is even better! Yesterday such an airfare surfaced and it is still available.
The full details are available in yesterday’s post, but the basic premise is that you can fly from Las Vegas to Newark or vice-versa for about $120 roundtrip on American. I love New York, so I immediately pulled up my son’s schools schedule after seeing this. For many of his breaks I couldn’t find availability for that fare, but then I noticed something. Next year he has 5 days off for President’s Day weekend and I was able to make it work.
It looked something like this:
As you can see I paid a total of 31,024 points for 4 roundtrip tickets to New York (New Jersey). In cash it would have been $496.38 ($124.09 per ticket). Put another way, it only took spending $10,341 online with my Citi AT&T Access More card to get these four flights.
That isn’t the whole story though. Depending on whether these are bulk fares or not, we could earn up to 20K AAdvantage miles for the flights as well. Even if it isn’t a bulk fare we will still earn some miles for the flights. A nice kicker!
Conclusion
With 1.6 cents per point redemptions soon to be a thing of the past, I’ll probably lean on points transfers to ensure I am getting a decent value going forward for ThankYou points. For now I am grateful for that one last deal that let me burn some points and ensure we will have an awesome President’s Day 2018.
Have you been making last minute redemptions before the devaluation? Share what you have booked in the comments.
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[…] My Last Prestige AA Redemption: 31K (or Less) TOTAL for 4 People Roundtrip Vegas to New York! […]
thats awesome man! enjoy dude!
but i dont get something. dont you always get more than 1.6 cpp with AA via long haul J / F that you do often? i guess im wondering why it wasnt worth just the straight rev and save the miles. im trying to understand how 1.6 cpp on AA is a big deal or not since im n00b.
take care man!
You can’t transfer the points to AA but can get a higher than 1.6 CPP value by transferring to partners. With that said, I have used the 1.6 CPP AA redemptions quite a bit since they also earn miles and credit towards elite status. Now booking those same tickets will be at a value of 1.25 CPP. I can still book at 1.5 CPP with my Sapphire Reserve, but I like to use Ultimate Rewards points for other things.
i see. thank u for the explanation man. enjoy NYC with the family!