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Citi is offering a 25% transfer bonus from ThankYou Rewards to Air France Flying Blue miles through April 16, 2021. As with almost any transfer bonus, I don’t recommend transferring unless you have an immediate need for the miles. Flying Blue miles expire after 24 months and can only be renewed with crediting paid flights to Flying Blue or putting spend on an Air France credit card. It turns out that miles transferred to Flying Blue can be extended beyond 24 months by transferring more points into the program.
The Deal
Get 25% more miles when converting Citi ThankYou Rewards to Air France Flying Blue miles. Valid through April 16, 2021.
Quick Thoughts
Transfer bonuses from bank points to airline miles have been nearly nonexistent during the pandemic. It’s great to see transfer bonuses start to return even though I have no plans to take advantage of this one. The best use of Flying Blue miles is probably to take advantage of their Promo Rewards. Each month, Air France offers discounted award rates for a number of routes. Sometimes (at least pre-pandemic), we’ve seen economy flights from the US to Europe available for less than 11,000 miles one-way. That’s fewer than 9,000 Citi points with this bonus. Keep in mind that you’ll also have to pay taxes and fees which vary by route.
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Air France flying blue site has been horrible lately. I had to create a new account because my old FB number expired. New account won’t work online and password resets keep facing with a technical error. I decided to create FB accounts for family members and have the same exact issue. Air France says they’re aware of the issue that seems to be affecting some members. I tried to create accounts online for wife and son but have same issues. Customer service says this has been a know technical issue. In spite of the transfer bonus, How can I trust flying blue right now.
Yeah their web -site definitely has issues, last time (4 months ago) i could not finish paying for tickets online, had to call them on phone, they said the booking i made online is still valid/reserved and i finished paying on the phone. Also often Delta seats are not fully visible/available. Just log back in 10 min later and it works fine. It changes on minute bases (the delta availability), it is intermediary, on and off on minute bases. They said they know about it so i asked when it will be fixed, they said they do not know. I laughed, because it has been this way at least a year. In other words do not get discourage with first search, if you know Delta is involved in expected travel just try a few min later.
What are average taxes/fees on miles rewards to europe ? Are infants 10% of points fare?
Not sure what the average is, depends greatly on destination airport. AF miles in my typical case are worth at least 1.5, but recently more like 1.9 cents per mile. Infants flying without seat used to be free. My son is 8 so not sure what it is now. Within EU most airlines provide about 5-10% for any child i think below 6 years of age for regular tickets. Not sure if that applies for points as well. But my flights are always tied to Delta, from local Florida airport 1 flight to ATL is Delta, rest is AF. No discounts for kids there. The prices on their website varies greatly, depends how many Delta segments and what airport. Cheapest would be to those only serviced by AF like IAD. 2 years ago i had one way IAD to poland, thru AMS for only 16500 miles, it was their promo. The fees were $98 from IAD to KRK, and $134 KRK back to IAD. Flights from EU to US have always higher fees over flights from US to EU.
Just want to point out that miles expiry date can be extended by transferring more miles. They call them commercial miles and that is how it works now with these miles. This may be just relatively recent change, but I know that that is how it is working now. I transferred a few thousand miles several months ago and the expiration for the existing old miles i had in the account was extended automatically. In other words if you transfer a thousand miles once every 24 months the miles can “live” for ever. Certainly that improves significantly that program. PS, i had 66k thank you points expiring in end of this month and planned to move/saved them to AF miles anyway already last week. I was already at the very end but decided not to click the final confirmation and to wait another “last” few days i had left, hoping for “impossible” to happen that citi will offer extra bonus in the next few days i had left. BINGO, the impossible just happened, now i got 25% more miles, which i will be needing very soon. Lucky me. 🙂 BTW the EU destination i frequently use the miles for flights from Florida would cost in the middle of summer some $1200, but costs only 47k round trip per ticket. That is without any AF promo or citi bonus. That values even with the pesky AF fuel charges as over 1.9 cents per AF mile. With the occasional AF promos and very rare citi bonus it is more like 2.5 cents – exceptional considering how easy to earn AF miles.
Wow — that’s a game change for AF miles. That is worth a blog post because one of the biggest dangers of transferring miles to AF was how restrictive it has been to extend them. My timing in comparison has been completely off for AF. First, I was looking at miles that were about to expire so I ended up getting the AF credit card to extend them. A short time later, AF automatically extended them. And now the card, which cost me a 5/24 spot, is completely unnecessary it sounds like. Last week, I made a booking and needed to transfer some miles in order to complete the booking from citi, only to have missed out on the transfer bonus by a week and to have used miles I didn’t need to use. Sigh.
I don’t think it is true that transferring points extends the life of the miles, at least as a rule. I just tested by transferring 1000 TYP. I now have 1250 miles that expire in March 2023 and the rest still expire in Feb 2022. Who did you transfer with that it extended the life of your Flying Blue miles?
AirFrance miles from Citi Thank You points. I did it 4 months ago and did it today again and it extends existing miles (the commercial or the thank you point miles). I am not sure whether it extends the actual flight miles earned by flying since i have none, but it does extend for sure the miles i transferred long ago from Thank You account.
I just responded to Greg below. I have over 100k miles from card transfers. However, I did credit a couple short, cheap Air Europa flights to Flying Blue (because the fare class was so low Delta did not count them), so I think that might have switched the miles from the transfer bucket over to the regular bucket. If so that is a major negative. Basically it means if you start transferring miles to Flying Blue, you never want to credit flights to them. I earned exactly 138 miles from those flights, and thought it was great because it extended my miles. Now I think I may need to continue crediting flights to them (or get their credit card?).
The Flying Blue FAQ seems to support this, maybe (found here):
If miles transferred from Citi count as “miles earned with all other partners” then, transferring again *should* extend the validity of the miles transferred in previously.
@NK3, this would make sense along with your situation if your expiring miles were not from a points transfer but from some other means.
Huh. So almost all of my miles were earned from transferring points in the past. I did credit a couple Air Europa flights (last one was Feb 2020), which extended the expiration of those credit card transfer miles, and I guess those miles now fall under “overall extending activity.” So once you start extending the expiration through flights, you cannot go back and extend them from credit card transfers, apparently?
NK3 – based on the terms of conditions I see in the link posted below, once you credit a flight to Flying Blue, all the miles earned *before* that flight now have to be extended with additional flights (or spending on an Air France credit card). However, if you have never credited a flight to Flying Blue (like me), it seems this isn’t an issue. It is kind of backwards but that’s what the terms say
https://www.flyingblue.us/kamino/policies/en/us
Ugh. That might be the case. Or maybe miles transferred in before they started treating them separately from flight miles might act like flight miles. Hard to say which is the problem here.
Yeah, as I stated above in a separate response, I think the lesson is once you start transferring points/miles to Flying Blue, never credit a flight to them, because it seems to switch they bucket they count them in. Guess I may need to get the Flying Blue card after all, because (I think?) that should still work. Or maybe credit a short cheap Delta flight.
I can support what kukuki says – I transfer miles to Flying Blue from Capital One, Amex and Chase. All instantly extend my mileage expiration by two years once complete.
Why no transfer, they often charge less for Delta flights than Delta.Fly to St Martin and relax a few days at the beach and then fly on Air France direct to Paris on 777.
I haven’t found much Delta award availability BOS-CDG/AMS, which for me is the best use of Air France miles. So not sure I’d take advantage of this until they are usable. Current award prices can be up to 400K/ticket.
When Delta award space returns (it comes and goes and during the pandemic its been mostly gone), Virgin Atlantic is even better for those flights: 50K one-way in Delta One
I think AF charges 56k and $6 for DL awards so transfer with 25% bonus would be a good option if there were availability. BOS-CDG in DL F for my family of four was one of my first big award trips, and I think I took advantage of a transfer bonus.
I currently have 330k VS points after a Japan trip cancellation, so I am just waiting to pull the trigger with either option!