Great Availability Business Class Awards to Europe For Just 43,000 Miles Thanks to New Transfer Bonus

by Gary Leff

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Here’s a great redemption opportunity especially if you have Citi ThankYou points.

Transferring Citi ThankYou Points to Miles

Citibank ThankYou points from their premium cards transfer to:

  • Star Alliance: Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer, EVA Air Infinity MileageLands, Thai Airways Royal Orchid Plus, Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles, Avianca LifeMiles
  • SkyTeam: Air France-KLM, Garuda Indonesia GarudaMiles
  • oneworld: Cathay Pacific Asia Miles, Malaysia Airlines Enrich, Qatar Airways Privilege Club, Qantas Frequent Flyer
  • Non-alliance: Etihad Airways Guest, Virgin Atlantic Flying Club, jetBlue, JetPrivilege

25% Transfer Bonus to Air France KLM Flying Blue

Citi is offering a 25% bonus on transfers to Flying Blue through July 20, 2019. (HT: Doctor of Credit)

We’ve seen two programs offering Virgin Atlantic transfer bonuses at the same time and now we have two programs offering transfer bonuses to Air France KLM’s Flying Blue at the same time because Capital One has a 20% bonus on Air France KLM transfers through end of June.

Since Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card will normally get you 1.5 Flying Blue miles per dollar spent, and 1.8 with this transfer bonus, unbonused spend is more rewarding under the Cap One bonus than with the ostensibly larger Citi bonus which yields 1.25 Flying Blue miles per dollar of unbonused spend. (Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card is the most rewarding personal card for your ongoing unbonused spend.) Last summer by the way Citi offered a 30% bonus.

A week ago I shared 10 secrets to leveraging the Air France KLM Flying Blue program during a transfer bonus. Some of the tips are obscure and others surprising. What I love most is the strong business class award availability at reasonable prices the program offers even for West Coast – Europe.

A 25% bonus means 43,000 Citi points transfer to 53,750 Flying Blue miles, which covers transatlantic business class for many destinations.

Some Things to Consider With Citi Cards When Choosing to Apply for a Citi Card

Citibank doesn’t have a hard limit on the number of their cards you can have though of course how much credit they’ll make available for each person will vary.

After you apply for one card they’ll consider another application from you 8 days later, but you can’t apply for more than 2 cards in 65 days.

Generally Citi will give you the bonus on a new card account if you haven’t received a bonus or closed a card in that product’s family in the past 24 months.

Bonus ThankYou® Points are not available if you received a new cardmember bonus for Citi Rewards+℠, Citi ThankYou® Preferred, Citi ThankYou® Premier/Citi Premier℠ or Citi Prestige®, or if you have closed any of these accounts, in the past 24 months.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Editorial note: any opinions, analyses, reviews or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any card issuer. Comments made in response to this post are not provided or commissioned nor have they been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by any bank. It is not the responsibility of advertisers Citibank, Chase, American Express, Barclays, Capital One or any other advertiser to ensure that questions are answered, either. Terms and limitations apply to all offers.

Comments

  1. Ouch, just transferred Amex yesterday. Have plenty of TYPs too

    I did it all too quickly as I just found out that some 77ws still have angled flat seats in J. Luckily I have another flight planned, with lue flat seats in the route. So I’m only out 20k points as otherwise I’d be worried about the expiration policy which I think you should always mention when talking about AF).

    Thanks for the post because the other flight will take a few more points than this one. Flying Tunis-LAX for 61 -69 k points (depending on day) plus about $250 each ticket in taxes and fees.

    On that route, I’m taking an 8 hour layover instead of a 4.5 hour layover to get like flats cdg-lax

  2. Hey Gary, thanks for saving my butt this week with the whole EVA fiasco. I’ve always want to try out flying blue but always find their taxes and fee are a bit much on redemption. Might just pull the trigger though with these transfer bonus though.

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