TLDR: A lot of Citi cards can now transfer ThankYou points into American Airlines miles, unlocking a significant amount of value on a lot of day-to-day spend even with no annual fee cards.
This is a historic precedent, as the ability to transfer Citi points to American Airlines isn’t just unique to the Citi Strata Elite℠ Card. At first, the transfer was limited to certain Citi credit cards with annual fees. However, the transfer was recently unlocked for select no-annual fee cards, making it even easier to take advantage of Citi and American Airlines’ partnership.
American Airlines has never had any transfer partners, making American Airlines AAdvantage miles difficult to obtain and coveted for their value. Unsurprisingly, American Airlines is known for having one of the best values for its award redemptions, especially when you take advantage of American Airlines’ airline partners to book an award flight operated by a partner airline.
Compared to the award redemption of other major U.S. airlines, American Airlines stands out as among the best because of the amount of value you can get for fewer points.
As seen in this example above, you can book a long-haul business class flight from Tokyo (HND) to Chicago (ORD) on Japan Airlines for just 60,000 AAdvantage miles. Japan Airlines is well known for its hospitality, and its business class product is known to be an exceptional service.
When you consider the fact that you can easily earn the number of miles required to book a business class flight on Japan Airlines via cards such as the Citi® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® World Elite Mastercard®, the power and value of AAdvantage miles becomes even more obvious.
In comparison, if you want to fly from Newark (EWR) to Tokyo (HND) in United Airlines’ business class Polaris product, you’ll need 100k United MileagePlus miles. 60k miles is a much better steal, and you can easily score high-value redemptions on short-haul and medium-haul flights as well.
Additionally, you can use AAdvantage miles to book business class seats with Qatar Airways’ QSuites. Qatar Airways has been consistently ranked as the best airline in the world, and QSuites are an exceptional experience.
Business class seats start at 70,000 miles from the U.S. to the Middle East, and you can add on a connection to Africa for just an additional 5,000 miles.
You could fly all the way from Los Angeles (LAX) to Johannesburg (JNB) via Doha (DOH) in Qatar Airways’ QSuite business class for just 75,000 miles.
This is a massive value redemption. The first leg from Los Angeles to Doha takes 15 hours and 30 minutes, and the second leg from Doha to Johannesburg takes 8 hours and 25 minutes. This means you’ll be spending an entire day’s worth of flying in business class.
This same flight itinerary would cost over $5,000 in cash. By redeeming your AAdvantage miles carefully and strategically, you can easily save thousands of dollars and fly across the world without needing to pay exorbitant prices.
In the past, the only way you could earn AAdvantage miles in bulk was by taking advantage of introductory offers for new cardholders on certain American Airlines’ co-branded credit cards, such as the Citi® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® World Elite Mastercard® or AAdvantage® Aviator® Red World Elite Mastercard.
AAdvantage® Aviator® Red World Elite Mastercard once offered 70,000 AAdvantage miles after paying the $99 annual fee and making one purchase on the card, making the card extremely powerful to get, as you could easily get enough return on your $99 investment by using the miles to book a long-haul business-class flight.
Citi® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® World Elite Mastercard® is currently offering 80,000 AAdvantage miles after spending $3,500 on purchases within the first 4 months from account opening, and I am seriously considering getting it as my next credit card. 80,000 AAdvantage miles may be too good to pass up when taking into account how much value you can get from that many miles.
This new partnership with Citi is extremely useful in the fact that you will now be able to earn AAdvantage miles in bulk by transferring points from Citi cards.
Citi points are generally easier to earn, as they often have better earning rates for points compared to American Airlines’ co-branded credit cards. Additionally, the welcome offers on select Citi cards can be higher than what has historically been offered on airline co-branded credit cards.
For example, the 70,000-mile offer for the AAdvantage® Aviator® Red World Elite Mastercard and the 80,000-mile offer for the Citi® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® World Elite Mastercard® are best-ever offers, meaning that we haven’t seen an offer higher than those amounts on the respective. But, when compared to the Citi Strata Elite℠ Card, which has an offer of 100,000 bonus points after spending $4,000 in the first 3 months if you can get an in-branch application, those are some hefty potential American Airlines miles.
The cool thing is that you don’t just need one of the premium Strata cards; rather, you can also now transfer to American Airlines even if you have one of the no annual fee Citi cards.
For example, the ThankYou® points you earn with a Citi Double Cash® Card can be transferred to American Airlines miles to increase their value significantly.
Your transfer ratio depends on the type of Citi card you have.
If you have both qualifying card that gives you a 1:1 ratio and one of the other no annual fee Citi cards, then you will be able to transfer your points earned at the best rate (1:1).
Yes—this simple transfer partner unlock provides an absolutely ridiculous amount of value.
AA miles can be pretty comfortably valued at around 1.4 CPP, so if you any of the following no annual fee Citi cards alongside at least one premium Citi card that unlocks the 1:1 transfer ratio, your earn rate is effectively:
This is an exciting notion, since if you value AA miles at all, you’re actually getting some pretty incredible value on your spend. Getting 2.8% cashback on spend isn’t easy; only a few cards offer anything remotely close to that:
So, given you really only have to own the likes of the Citi Strata Premier® Card alongside a Citi Double Cash® Card to get up to ~2.8% cashback on all purchases is quite interesting.
Let’s consider the best “Citi Duo” as the Citi Strata Premier® Card and the Citi Double Cash® Card.
Likewise, the best “Capital One Duo” is the Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card and the Capital One Savor Cash Rewards Credit Card.
Generally speaking, both duos actually earn pretty similarly, with the Capital One Savor Cash Rewards Credit Card + Citi Strata Premier® Card giving access to 3x on dining spend alongside 3x on qualifying grocery/supermarket.
Both also have a strong “floor” given the Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card earns 2x miles per $1 spent vs the Citi Double Cash® Card earns up to 2x ThankYou points per $1 (assuming you pay your balance). However, I think the key difference is the ease of using your miles.
For the average joe, the Capital One miles ecosystem is not easy to use. There are no US based carriers on that list, and you’ll need to book more complex partner itineraries with Capital One miles. However, with Citi, you can pretty easily tap into the value of AA miles.
Furthermore, the Capital One pair here has a total annual fee of $395 vs Citi duo’s $95. While the Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card’s credit is relatively easy to use, it’s always hard to stomach that larger annual fee.
Maybe—depending on your city, you may actually benefit from going with a different duo/strategy. For example, for folks flying out of Philadelphia, it might be worth looking into a Chase Sapphire Reserve®.
Citi cards have been slowly on the come up, and for good reason. With the ability to now transfer Thankyou points to American Airlines across all annual fees, Citi cards have exploded in popularity and have finally positioned themselves as a valuable contender in the credit cards arm race.