Questions and Answers

How frequently do Citi, Amex, and Chase’s reward programs offer mileage transfer bonuses to transfer points to airline programs? Does one program offer this more frequently than others, or is it more up to the airline?

[USER=87]@chancepress[/USER] — I don’t recall ever seeing one for Chase, and Citi’s program is pretty new. Amex has them every so often. They used to be very common for Amex back in 2010-2012, but now we only see them a few times a year, if at all.

As Tiffany noted, haven’t seen any from Chase or Citi, though they’re reasonably common with American Express. They used to be more frequent, though are rarer nowadays.

For American Express you’re generally most likely to see the bonuses with Air France, British Airways, and the Virgins (Atlantic and America). We almost never seen them with ANA, Delta, or Singapore.

Great question as to what causes them. I would guess it’s a combined effort between the airline and credit card issuer, though I could be wrong.

So if I’m trying to earn enough points for two biz class one-way tickets on Air France, would it be a good strategy to get all of those miles from Citi bonuses (100k from Prestige and Premier and 20k from a Preferred card I get for my wife) and then just let the Amex points sit until there’s another bonus?

Do you foresee any issues pooling the Citi points in this scenario?

That sounds like a good strategy to me. You shouldn’t have any issue pooling the Citi points.