On November 13, American Airlines will discontinue their partnership with Citi. The airline has yet to announce what this means for the future of AAdvantage transfers and why they’re ending this deal now.
Citibank is ending their partnership with American Airlines on November 13th. This means that Citi cardholders will no longer be able to transfer points to American Airlines. However, there are still a few ways to redeem your miles for travel, and these methods may change after the end of the year.
Will Citi’s AAdvantage transfer program really end on November 13? And what happens after that?
on November 2, 2021 by Gary Leff
Citibank points were transferrable to American Airlines in mid-July. That was a pleasant surprise, as it increased the value of many cardmembers’ points with Prestige and Premier goods. Citi didn’t have a transfer partner with one of the major US airlines.
In reality, it was strange that American Airlines had not previously been a transfer partner. Even stranger, the partnership was presented as a transitory one, lasting just until November 13.
A handful of things have changed, it occurs to me. I expected that transferrable points would have to wait till the next co-brand card arrangement was finalized.
- Vasu Raja was promoted to Chief Revenue Officer, and AAdvantage was given to the Chief Revenue Officer. Maximizing income involves selling points, and with a $10 billion mortgage behind it, the AAdvantage program has a lot of money to earn.
- Bilt Rewards declared that its points will transfer to AAdvantage a month before the Citi transfers come into force. Bilt would have a credit card, and its clients would be able to earn AAdvantage points by using it.
Both of these factors convinced me that a new future in which American sold its miles as part of transferable points schemes made sense, and that its Citi partner made sense in a number of ways as the big bank to do so.
Despite this, the transfer agreement was advertised as a one-time deal that would end on November 13, 2021. A handful of people have contacted me to say that Citi officials have assured them that the transfer connection would continue. They are not right, according to my understanding.
- Those agents were most likely unaware of the deadline that had been set.
- Rather than possessing any unique insight into the program’s future,
However, I don’t see how Citi can sit on the fence and not pay American to retain this in the program for the sake of Thank You Rewards’ competition. If they don’t obtain transfers to American, they’ll very certainly have to exclude others from future co-brand deals.
Meanwhile, while not offering points transfers as a way to earn AAdvantage miles is one way to bolster the co-brand portfolio (you can’t earn as many American Airlines miles anywhere else), American is boosting card spend with Loyalty Points, and they’re already giving up exclusivity for earning their currency (at a minimum, with Bilt).
So, even though the existing transfer arrangement seems to be coming to an end on November 13, I wouldn’t be shocked if further changes occur in this arena in the near future.
More From the Wing’s Perspective
The “how to transfer points to american airlines” is a question that has been asked for a while. It seems like Citi will be ending transfers on November 13th, but what comes next?
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