Citi Thank You Points Now Transfer to Virgin America + Limited-Time 25% Bonus

Citi has gradually been improving the flexibility of their ThankYou (TY) Points rewards program. In the last couple years, they have added several internationally-based airline partners on a 1:1 basis including Cathay Pacific, EVA Air, Etihad, Flying Blue by Air France and KLM, Singapore Airlines, and Thai Airways. Today, Citi announced that eligible cardholders can now transfer their ThankYou Points to US-based Virgin America Elevate® points. The list is currently restricted to “premium” cards including the Citi ThankYou Premier® Card and Citi Prestige® Card. (As long as you have one of these cards, you can transfer in ThankYou points earned from other cards.)

What are Virgin American Elevate points worth? To keep things simple, the overall best redemption option is for US flights on Virgin America. (There are other partner airlines available, but that gets more complicated.) Here is Virgin America’s US route map [pdf], which includes New York City, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Cancun, and soon Hawaii.

Assuming you are interested in one of their routes, Elevate points are pretty easy to use. There are no blackout dates or capacity restrictions, so you can redeem points for any domestic Virgin America flight. The amounts of points for a reward flight is vary with the cash cost of the ticket (before taxes and fees). As long as you have an Elevate account, you can poke around and get an idea of the ratio. For the flights I looked at, it varied from 1.6 to 2.6 cents per Elevate point.

Here’s an example San Francisco to Honolulu flight at 2 cents per point for Main Cabin:

Here’s an example Austin to Los Angeles flight at 2.6 cents per point for Main Cabin:

Transfer ratio and value details. ThankYou points will transfer to Virgin America Elevate® points at a 2:1 ratio, with a 1,000 points minimum. In other words, the minimum transfer would be from 1,000 ThankYou points to 500 Virgin America Elevate points. At this standard redemption ratio of 2:1, that gives you a value of 0.8 to 1.3 cents per Citi ThankYou point using this transfer option.

Limited-time 25% transfer bonus. If you make such a transfer by 10/21/15 (11:59 p.m. ET), you will get a 25% bonus on your Elevate points. During this promo, every 1,000 Thank You points = 625 Virgin America Elevate points. At this promotional redemption ratio of 2:1.25, that gives you a value of 1 to 1.6 cents per Citi ThankYou point using this transfer option.

Better to book through ThankYou Travel Center? The problem is that the transfer are only limited to the premium cards, which already have a pretty good redemption option via the Travel Center, which is a aggregation site like Expedia, Travelocity, and Orbitz that sells flights, hotel stays, car rentals, and cruises at similar prices.

• The Citi ThankYou Premier® Card offers 1 ThankYou point = 1.25 cents toward any travel booked through Citi ThankYou Travel Center. You also still get to earn elite qualifying miles on your redeemed flights.
• The Citi Prestige® Card offers 1 ThankYou point = 1.33 cents toward any travel booked through Citi ThankYou Travel Center. You still get to earn elite qualifying miles on your redeemed flights. In addition, you get 1.6 cents per points when redeemed towards American Airlines or US Airways flights. You also still get to earn elite qualifying miles on your redeemed flights.

I am interested in this development because I am currently in my first year of owning the Citi Prestige card and have already earned a 50,000 Thank You point bonus and want to spend them. For me, the two best redemption options value-wise are now on specific Virgin America flights depending on the point/price ratio and all American Airlines flights where I can get close to 1.6 cents per point value. The added flight choices make it easier to find a redemption overall.

I’ve never flown on Virgin America myself, but I wouldn’t mind trying them out as they seem to be at the top of many “best US airlines” lists for customer service and flying experience. (Not that the competition is all that great.)