Transfer Citi ThankYou Points to American Airlines Miles
Update 10/13/21: This is the last day to make a transfer to American Airlines if you are interested.
Citi has launched a limited time offer for ThankYou Rewards cardmembers. From July 18 through November 13, you will be able to transfer ThankYou Points to American Airlines AAdvantage miles for the first time.
As you already know, AAdvantage miles can be redeemed for flights and flight upgrades. You can also use them for vacation packages, hotel stays, car rentals, and more through the American Airlines AAdvantage program.
This gives even more avenues for ThankYou cardmembers to get the most out of their points. Right now Citi also has an increased 80K ThankYou points offer for the Citi Premier card, which can now be converted into 80K AAdvantage miles.
“Citi continues to prioritize innovative new offerings that help our customers use their points when and where it matters most,” said Chris Fred, Managing Director and Head of Proprietary Cards and Loyalty at Citi. “With this limited time offer, we are so pleased to provide our ThankYou cardmembers with a hyper-relevant redemption option as customers are eager to take to the skies.”
Point Transfers
The transfer ratio varies, depending on which Citi ThankYou card you have. Here’s how it works:
- 1,000 Points = 1,000 American Airlines AAdvantage® Miles
- Citi Chairman
- Prestige
- Premier
- 1,000 Points = 500 American Airlines AAdvantage® Miles
- Citi ThankYou Preferred
- Citi Rewards+
You can transfer points here. Transfers are done in increments of 1,000 Citi ThankYou points, and there’s a limit of 500,000 points per transfer.
Conclusion
This is great news for customers who are already invested in the ThankYou points ecosystem, or those who are thinking of applying for the Citi Premier card.
American Airlines doesn’t partner any of the popular flexible points currencies such as Chase Ultimate Rewards or Amex Membership Rewards. So this is a good transfer option that Citi ThankYou members will have for a limited time. The only other transfer options for AAdvantage are from Marriott Bonvoy and Bilt Rewards.
Let us know what you think, and whether this will make you re-think your ThankYou points strategies.
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I went through all kinds of transactions yo get to the spending required to earn the 80,000 miles to transfer them in time to American Airlines. It wasn’t easy because even if you have a long and good relationship with citi they only give a $3000 credit line with a new card. So I transferred in money to be able to spend enough in time to get the points. However, in the interim I read repeatedly about how American will be devaluing it’s bonus offers and therefore decided not to transfer the points to American after all. Hope that was not a mistake.
If you didn’t have any immediate plans for AA miles then I don’t think it is a bad choice at all.
Thank you. I addressed that question to several online travel sites and you are the only person to respond!
That is what I am here for 🙂
[…] spending $4,000 with your new card in the first three months. For the next few months you can also transfer those points to American Airlines AAdvantage miles. This is the first time that Citi has offered this option. So that 80K Citi Premier bonus can be […]
I haven’t read the T&C: is it possible to transfer TYP to multiple AA accounts (wife and kids)? Main goal is to keep their miles alive with activity.
Citi desperately needed this and so did AA. Citi needs us to want and use their cards and AA is broke and needs to sell as many miles as they can.
We are just lucky to benefit from both of their desperation and even still im happy with it.
I know they say it’s temporary but if this becomes really popular I can’t imagine them rolling it back if new card sign ups come in fast and swift. But only time will tell…
It took them less than a year to rescind the ability for Prestige customers to use ThankYou points (at 1.6 cents each) to buy AA paid tickets. In that case, it seemed it was AA that raised how much they wanted Citi to pay to continue that feature, and Citi, which never showed much concern for its “Premium Customers”, simply shrugged and ended the program.
This time around, AA owes around $8 billion from the mid-2020 pandemic relief loans. Citibank’s purchase of points for transfers to its customers may well be the best cash-flow solution for AA. But that is not good reason for AA to renew the deal afterward.
There are different costs to AA for Aadvantage miles that are nominally all the same, depending on what customer ends up controlling those miles. Miles that go to casual fliers who never use them are really free, as far as AA is concerned. Miles that go to people who use them for inventory that would otherwise be unsold is nearly free. People who use them to lock up seats that otherwise could likely have been sold for cash are the most expensive miles; and AA may feel that that is what happens with the miles transferred to people like us with big transferable-point balances, who use them specifically when they are cheapest way for us to fly where we want to.
So, a limited-time transfer option means people can’t count on getting the exact number of AA miles for a valuable seat just-in-time. That in turn forces speculative transfers as well as over- and under- transfers, all of which effectively lower AA’s cost of servicing the miles.
I just was approved for citi AA
card. If I had known this was coming I would have applie for premier. I hope the sign up bonus and transfer availability sticks for a bit longer than November