Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card and Capital One Spark Miles cardholders gained the ability to transfer to airline frequent flyer miles late last year.

Now they’re launching their 5th transfer bonus of the year: a one-third (33.3%) bonus on transfers to Qantas between September 16th at 12:01 AM Eastern and October 31st at 11:59 PM Eastern. That boosts their normal transfer rate of 2:1.5 up to 1:1 for the duration of the promo.

Capital One’s Regular Transfer Bonuses

Capital One miles transfers are less than a year old. They started running transfer bonuses in March. And already they’ve made it a regular feature of the program, running:

• 100% bonus on transfers to Emirates Skywards

• 50% bonus on transfers to JetBlue TrueBlue

• 20% bonus on transfers to Air France KLM Flying Blue

• 25% bonus on transfers to Avianca LifeMiles

You Can Pool Your Points in Qantas From Several Programs

American Express, Citibank, and Capital One all have Qantas Frequent Flyer as a transfer partner.

We’ve seen transfer bonuses to Qantas in the past from Citibank and from American Express which only just added Qantas as a partner at the end of May.

That means it’s easy to build up a balance in Qantas Frequent Flyer if that’s useful to you.

Ways to Leverage Capital One’s Transfer Bonus to Qantas

Qantas is useful for inexpensive short distance awards on oneworld airlines, and for redemptions on partners like El Al.

Where I’ve found the greatest use for Qantas points is redeeming for medium-distance travel on Emirates. Qantas and Emirates are partners. Qantas awards are distance based. You can fly Emirates from New York JFK to Milan for 60,000 Qantas miles (plus taxes and fees) each way in business class. In contrast if you were spending Alaska Airlines miles it’s 105,000 miles each way.

Emirates Business Class Bar

For a new parent like me Qantas is great, too, because they don’t charge miles or a fare for infant award travel. Taking my young baby on my first class Dallas – Sydney – Dallas roundtrip in first class cost me less than $17 (taxes).

Qantas First Class Bassinet

Both Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card and Spark Miles earn 2 miles per dollar, so with this bonus that’s effectively earning 2 Qantas points per dollar which is excellent.

And Capital One is in a better position to capitalize on transfer bonuses for new cardmembers and to encourage increased card spend than most issuers because points become available when transactions post to your card account (“between 1-3 business days after pending transactions charge to your statement”) you do not have to wait until statement close (or worse still, paying off a statement or the following statement close).

Other Transfer Options for Capital One Miles

Here’s Capital One’s list of airline transfer partners and standard transfer rates:

Airline Frequent Flyer Program		Transfer Ratio
Aeromexico Club Premier		2-to-1.5
Air Canada Aeroplan		2-to-1.5
Air France KLM Flying Blue		2-to-1.5
Alitalia MilleMiglia Program (eliminated)		2-to-1.5
Cathay Pacific Asia Miles		2-to-1.5
Avianca LifeMiles		2-to-1.5
Emirates Skywards		2-to-1.0
Etihad Airways Etihad Guest		2-to-1.5
EVA Air Infinity MileageLands		2-to-1.5
Finnair Plus		2-to-1.5
Hainan Airlines Fortune Wings Club		2-to-1.5
JetBlue TrueBlue (eliminated)		2-to-1.0
Qantas Frequent Flyer		2-to-1.5
Qatar Airways Privilege Club		2-to-1.5
Singapore Airlines Krisflyer		2-to-1.0

Transfer Bonuses Have Become an Integral Part of the Venture and Spark Miles Programs

Already on their fifth transfer bonus of the year, having just launched transferable points, and Capital One has shared in the past that “limited-time offers like this will be another major perk for Venture and Spark Miles account holders to take advantage of.” So I look forward to seeing what’s next!

Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card