I think Citi floored most of us with their limited-time option to transfer ThankYou Points to American Airlines miles. From now through November 13, 2021, you can transfer your ThankYou points to AAdvantage at a 1:1 ratio in increments of 1,000 miles. This is the Citi news that many of us have been anticipating for ages.
My Experience Transferring Citi ThankYou Points to AA Miles
I was just 4,000 American AAdvantage miles shy of a potential redemption. It even crossed my mind the other day to just buy them, as it was going to be cheaper than the surcharges on the Cathay Pacific redemption for a similar ticket. I’m glad I held off booking!
To redeem your Citi ThankYou Points for American miles, log into online.citi.com and click on redeem, navigating to the transfer option. You’ll see American Airlines heading the list of transfer partners.
Once you click continue, you’ll see the option to select how many miles you wish to transfer. You’ll also need to add your AAdvantage number the first time, selecting the option to save it to your ThankYou profile.
The Citi terms and conditions state that transfers can take up to 5 days. I was curious if they would be completed instantly. As always, Citi required me to receive a text or call to confirm the action I was taking to redeem my ThankYou Points. Once the transfer completed, I checked my AA account. No dice on the instant transfer. Checking later that evening, they still hadn’t been deposited.
The American miles from the Citi ThankYou Points transfer finally showed up in my account this morning, allowing me to easily book the ticket I wanted. A transfer time of ~24 hours isn’t bad at all.
Final Thoughts
It will be interesting to see whether American Airlines extends the “limited time” option to transfer Citi ThankYou points to AAdvantage miles. I’m sure it’s there call whether to continue to participate. If it could be profitable for both them and Citi to continue to allow transfers, I’m hopeful that this will become a permanent feature of the program. In the event that it does, this greatly changes the value metrics for Citi ThankYou Points and the TYP ecosystem. Earning 3x American miles on many purchases (through the Citi Premier card) would be amazing.
They’re almost as good as Turkish miles. 😉
H/T: The Miles to Memories crew to alerting me to this
