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Editor’s note: In late October 2024, Finnair dramatically increased award prices for flights within the continental U.S. and Canada. Economy award rates increased from 11,000 Avios to 16,500 Avios, and first-class rates increased from 30,000 Avios to 40,000 Avios. This article references the rates in effect when the article was written and published, but current rates are 16,500 Avios for economy and 40,000 Avios for first.
Sometimes we find ourselves in situations where our points and miles don’t align with flights we want to book. For example, you want to book an American Airlines flight, but you don’t have AAdvantage miles.
If you have Citi ThankYou Points—the flexible currency earned through the Citi ThankYou® Rewards program—or other flexible currency, it’s possible to use these points to book American Airlines flights. There are two basic ways you can book American Airlines flights with ThankYou Points:
- Through Citi Travel, which functions like a third-party online travel agency similar to Expedia
- Through partner airline programs
While it’s often possible to get better value by transferring points to airline partners and booking flights through partner programs, that’s not always the case.
How to Earn and Redeem Citi ThankYou Points
Before getting into redemption possibilities, let’s discuss how to obtain Citi ThankYou Points. The most popular earning method is through welcome bonuses and spending on select Citi credit cards.
The following Citi credit cards earn ThankYou Points:
- AT&T Access Card from Citi (not available to new applicants)
- AT&T Points Plus® Card from Citi
- Citi Custom Cash® Card
- Citi Double Cash® Card
- Citi Prestige Card (not available to new applicants)
- Citi Rewards+® Card
- Citi Strata Premier℠ Card
One great thing about these cards is that most don’t have annual fees. Exceptions are the Citi Strata Premier℠ and the Citi Prestige. Many points and miles enthusiasts hold multiple Citi credit cards and leverage them for different benefits and earning rates.
Differences in points earning rates with Citi credit cards provide opportunities to maximize points earned by spending in certain categories on specific cards.
For example, the Citi Double Cash® is a popular card that earns 2X points per dollar spent, 1% when you buy, another 1% when you pay, on all eligible purchases. The Double Cash card provides a good base earning rate, but you can earn even more points by using other cards for specific purchase categories:
- AT&T Points Plus® earns 3X points on gas stations.
- Citi Custom Cash℠ earns 5X points in the category where you spend the most each billing cycle, with 5X points limited to $500 spending in the category per billing cycle.
- Citi Prestige earns 5X points on restaurants, airlines and travel agencies, and 3X points on hotels and cruise lines.
- Citi Strata Premier℠ earns 3X points on air travel, hotels, restaurants, supermarkets, gas stations and EV charging stations.
- Citi Rewards+® doesn’t have any categories with earning rates above 2X points per dollar spent, but points are rounded up to the next 10-point increment, so a $1 purchase earns 10 points.
ThankYou Points can be used in several ways, including obtaining cash back or statement credits, buying gift cards, shopping with points at selected merchants (generally poor redemption value, so don’t do this), redeeming through Citi Travel and transferring points to airline and hotel partners.
Citi’s rules for using points vary depending on the credit card through which the points are earned and the cards you or a trusted family member or friend hold, as discussed in our guide. The basic requirement to transfer ThankYou Points to most airline and hotel programs is that the account from which the transfer is made must have a linked Strata Premier or Prestige card.
Those who hold the Citi Rewards+ card get a 10% rebate on the first 100,000 points redeemed each calendar year. This rebate applies to points earned through your Rewards+ card and other Citi cards or accounts that are in the same ThankYou Rewards account as the Rewards+ card. This includes points redeemed for cash back or statement credits, through the travel portal and by transferring to partners.
Booking Flights through Citi Travel
ThankYou Points earned through any of the credit cards discussed above can be used to book travel through Citi Travel with Booking.com. When points are used in this way, each point is worth 1 cent. In other words, purchasing an airline ticket for $200 requires 20,000 ThankYou Points.
Keep in mind that this redemption doesn’t provide great value compared to what’s sometimes possible when redeeming points by transferring to an airline loyalty program. It’s also a lower redemption rate than certain cardholders can obtain by booking flights with points through travel portals associated with American Express Membership Rewards (for holders of select Amex business cards only), Bilt Rewards or Chase Ultimate Rewards programs.
As noted above, it’s possible to get a better redemption rate with ThankYou Points through Citi Travel if you have a Rewards+ card. Using the example above with a $200 ticket, 20,000 ThankYou Points would be used initially, but you’d receive a rebate of 2,000 points, resulting in a net cost of 18,000 ThankYou Points.
The situations in which you may want to consider booking American Airlines flights through Citi Travel using ThankYou Points include:
- The cash price for the ticket is low.
- The specific flight you want to book isn’t available through American Airlines partners programs, or award rates are high.
- You want to earn airline loyalty program points or elite qualifying credit for the flight but don’t want to spend cash on tickets. With most airline programs, you don’t earn redeemable miles on award flights, but using ThankYou Points to book through Citi Travel is like booking a cash ticket through an online travel agency.
For illustration purposes, we’re using an American Airlines flight from Orlando, Florida (MCO), to Los Angeles (LAX) with a main cabin (regular economy, not basic economy) fare of $140 and an award rate of 14,000 miles plus $5.60.
For the date we checked, booking the flight through Citi’s transfer partners with the lowest award rates requires 18,000 Qantas miles plus $5.60.
If the flight could be booked through Citi Travel for $140 or 14,000 ThankYou Points as expected, redeeming ThankYou Points through Citi Travel would require fewer points than booking through Citi’s transfer partners.
Citi Travel Booking Process
Let’s take a look at how to book through Citi Travel.
Step 1: Access your Citi ThankYou Rewards account on citi.com and select “Book travel.”
Step 2: Navigate to the “Flights” section, enter details for the desired flight and click on “Search.”
Step 3: Filter the results to find flights that meet your preferences. Options include selecting airlines, number of stops, price and other parameters. On the screen below, we’ve applied filters to find the desired American Airlines nonstop flight.
Unfortunately, the displayed price of almost $190, or 19,000 points, was about $50, or 5,000 points, more than the price we’d found directly with the airline.
Step 4: Complete the passenger information and select cash or points for payment. Given the price difference, we didn’t go through with the booking.
Following up with Citi
In the past, when a different company operated Citi’s travel portal, it was possible to contact an agent by phone who had access to a different system and could book flights that didn’t price correctly or couldn’t be booked online. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem possible now. The Citi Travel representative I spoke with said that they use the same interface and go through a customer’s account to book travel, so the price would be whatever is showing online.
The phone agent suggested booking the flight at the lower price directly through American Airlines and contacting Citi’s rewards department to obtain a statement credit or refund. When I assumed this was some sort of price matching and asked about the logistics and process, the agent recommended calling the rewards department, using the customer service phone number printed on my credit card.
Upon speaking to an agent in the rewards department, I realized that this actually involved two separate transactions: purchasing a cash ticket through American Airlines for $140 and redeeming 14,000 ThankYou Points for a statement credit or cash back via check or direct deposit to a bank account.
Although this method doesn’t actually involve booking a flight through Citi Travel, it provides the same value of 1 cent per point and removes Citi Travel as an intermediary. This can be a useful strategy if Citi Travel doesn’t price the flight correctly.
Takeaways from this experience are:
- It’s important to know the cash price that the airline is charging before booking through Citi Travel.
- When booking directly with American Airlines compared to booking through Citi Travel, a $50 difference is ridiculous and unacceptable. In contrast to Citi Travel, Capital One Travel displayed the flight for the same price as American Airlines.
- It’s disappointing that the Citi Travel phone agents seem unable to do anything in a situation like this.
- The approach of booking directly through the airline if the cash price is reasonable and then redeeming a corresponding number of ThankYou Points for a statement credit or cash back makes sense if you want to minimize out-of-pocket costs and don’t mind redeeming ThankYou Points for 1 cent each.
Booking Flights through Citi Transfer Partners
To transfer ThankYou Points to most airline programs, the Citi cardholder initiating the transfer must have a Citi credit card that earns ThankYou Points and has an annual fee. At the time of writing, for most people, this is the Strata Premier card.
Citi cardholders who hold only $0 annual fee credit cards have the option to transfer points to airline partners, but only if the cardholder has a friend or family member with a card with full transfer functionality. In this situation, the first cardholder “shares” points with the second cardholder, and the second cardholder transfers points to an airline loyalty program.
This strategy has limitations, including:
- Shared points expire in 90 days.
- There is a 100,000-point annual limit.
- Points from the Custom Cash card can’t be shared.
Assuming you’re eligible to transfer points to an airline partner, you can use several airline loyalty programs to book American Airlines flights. The following programs are both American Airlines partners and Citi ThankYou Rewards® transfer partners:
- Cathay Pacific Asia Miles
- Etihad Guest
- Qantas Frequent Flyer
- Qatar Airways Privilege Club
At the time of writing, multiple programs use currency called Avios, including Aer Lingus AerClub, British Airways Executive Club, Finnair Plus, Iberia Plus and Qatar Airways Privilege Club. Avios can be moved among airline programs that use Avios as their currency. If you have ThankYou Points, the ability to move Avios provides additional flexibility to book awards through programs besides Qatar Airways Privilege Club.
Identifying American Airlines Flights that Partners Can Book
American Airlines—like other airlines—doesn’t allow partner programs to access all the award space that’s available when booking awards using American AAdvantage miles. To find awards bookable by partners, you can either begin by identifying flights with a fare class that indicates partner award space or you can conduct your search through partner programs or third-party tools.
American Airlines is a Oneworld alliance airline, and our guide to searching for Oneworld awards provides details about how to search and when you might benefit from specific search approaches.
If you have your eye on an American Airlines flight, and you want to see if you can book it through partner airline programs, it’s helpful to know the fare class. American Airlines awards that are available for partner bookings will have the following fare classes for each cabin:
- Economy – T
- Premium economy – X
- Business for international flights or first for domestic two-cabin flights – U
- First for three-cabin flights – Z
American Airlines has other fare class codes that identify awards that previously were called “AAnytime” awards. Traditionally, these codes indicated higher-priced awards than “SAAver” awards, but with the introduction of dynamic award pricing, the former “AAnytime” award codes also started being used for lower-priced awards. These fare classes are Y for economy and J for business or two-cabin first class.
Since American Airlines transitioned to dynamic pricing on its own flights in 2023, it’s become much more difficult to determine when award seats are bookable through partner programs. At the time of writing, American Airlines search results usually display booking codes Y and J even when award space in fare classes T and U also exists.
The following screenshots illustrate this for a flight that has partner award space. In the first screenshot, American Airlines website shows flight AA 3417 having Y and J award space.
The second screenshot—taken from the subscription-based third-party tool, ExpertFlyer—shows that T and U fare classes also are available for that flight.
Flights pricing at American Airlines old “SAAver” award levels—such as 12,500 miles one way for a flight within the continental United States in economy or 25,000 miles in first—or the lowest award prices for the month might be an indicator of fare class T or U inventory that’s bookable by partners. For the flight shown above, the American Airlines award rates on the dates with partner award availability were American’s lowest award pricing for the month searched.
American Airlines flight details sometimes show T and U inventory, but this seems to be limited to itineraries where at least one flight is operated by a partner airline. In the example below, the first flight is operated by American Airlines, and the second flight is operated by Alaska Airlines.
Given that American Airlines search results often aren’t useful for definitively identifying partner award inventory and ExpertFlyer pro subscriptions aren’t free, many people choose to begin searches for partner awards using partner airlines or third-party award search tools.
Partner Program Analysis
There isn’t a single best partner program to use for booking American Airlines flights. The best option depends on the desired route, differences in programs, current transfer bonuses and personal factors. Regarding transfer bonuses, if two loyalty programs offer similar redemption rates, but one has a limited-time transfer bonus—for example, 20%—it’s better to book through the program with the transfer bonus.
The programs noted above all have distance- or zone-based award rates for American Airlines flights. The details about how award rates are determined vary, as do other factors, including change and cancellation policies and fees. Let’s take a look at these programs.
Cathay Pacific Asia Miles
Cathay Pacific’s award rates are distance-based and are calculated based on total distance for the entire route rather than pricing each segment separately. The airline publishes an award chart for its own flights, but it doesn’t publish an award chart for partners.
Awards for partner-operated flights typically are somewhat higher compared to Cathay Pacific flights. For example, a nonstop American Airlines flight that falls into the “Ultra-short” distance zone requires 10,000 miles, while a similar distance Cathay Pacific flight would require 7,500 miles.
Until recently, Cathay Pacific’s online award search and booking functionality didn’t include flights operated by certain airlines, including American Airlines. To check availability and book flights on these airlines, you would have to call or submit a flight award request form. At the time of writing, Cathay Pacific’s website contained a note about using the request form for booking flights on American Airlines and selected other partners.
Cathay Pacific online searches in early June 2024 found some award availability—although significantly less than other partners—for American Airlines flights. Hopefully, this is a first step toward being able to see and book all American Airlines award flights online.
Asia Miles charges $50 for award changes and $120 for cancellations. There’s also an option to offset these fees with miles.
Etihad Guest
Etihad Guest used to have some great sweet spots for travel on American Airlines, but those awards were eliminated in 2023 when Etihad simplified its program and implemented award charts with per-segment, distance-based award rates. One chart is for flights on Etihad, and the other is for flights on partner airlines, including American Airlines.
While there may be some niche good value awards—such as nonstop flights under 500 miles long for 6,000 Etihad Guest miles—Etihad awards for American Airlines flights generally aren’t priced competitively. Etihad awards on American Airlines flights also have higher taxes and fees compared to other programs.
Etihad Guest made negative changes to its award cancellation policy in February 2024. At the time of writing, Etihad’s FAQs discuss cancellation fees of between 25% and 100% of the miles required for the award, depending on the cancellation timeframe.
Date changes can be made up to seven days before travel for a 100 United Arab Emirates Dirham (about $27USD) fee.
Qantas Frequent Flyer
Qantas Frequent Flyer has a series of distance-based award charts, and the Qantas Classic Flight Reward table applies to one-way awards on flights operated by Qantas, American Airlines and other selected airlines.
Qantas awards are competitively priced in some situations, but there are other factors to consider to determine if using Qantas Frequent Flyer miles to book American Airlines flights makes sense for your situation:
- Qantas’ terms restrict award bookings to the Frequent Flyer account owner and family members.
- Qantas cancellation and change fees are assessed in miles, and the 6,000-mile cancellation fee and 5,000-mile change fee represent a large percentage of the award cost for some awards, such as American Airlines short economy flights where awards start at 8,000 miles one-way.
Qatar Airways Privilege Club and other Avios programs
Given the ability to transfer Avios among programs, you should consider which program is best for specific bookings. Although Aer Lingus AerClub uses Avios, it’s not a Oneworld member, and AerClub Avios can’t be used to book American Airlines flights. Despite using a common currency and distance-based award pricing, there are some differences in award rates, fees and policies among the British Airways, Finnair, Iberia and Qatar programs.
Award pricing: At the time of writing, British Airways Executive Club, Iberia Plus and Qatar Airways Privilege Club no longer publish award charts displaying the distance bands and Avios required.
Since 2023, British Airways has increased award rates on American Airlines flights twice. British Airways charges by segment, so Executive Club award rates often are higher than some other programs on flights with connections. After the July 2024 devaluation, British Airways and Iberia awards on American Airlines flights appear to require the following number of Avios.
Distance range | Avios required per segment | |
Economy | Business | |
Up to 650 miles | 12,000 | 24,000 |
651 – 1,150 miles | 16,000 | 32,000 |
1,151 – 2,000 miles | 18,000 | 40,000 |
2,001 – 3,000 miles | 20,000 | 50,000 |
The only good news with this significant devaluation is that award rates for American Airlines nonstop flights over 3,000 miles don’t seem to have increased, at least for economy class. This award rate won’t apply to many American Airlines domestic flights, since nonstop flights within the continental U.S. are under 3,000 miles.
Dallas (DFW) to Honolulu (HNL) is almost 3,800 miles, and the price in economy is 20,750 miles per direction. First-class awards rarely are available to partners on American Airlines flights to Hawaii.
In 2023, Iberia and Qatar Airways made changes to more closely align their award pricing with British Airways, although there sometimes are differences.
Finnair has a zone-based award chart for American Airlines flights. Given the broad regions, Finnair has potential sweet spots for longer distance and connecting flights within North America and flights within and between other regions.
Fees and policies: British Airways provides an option of paying a $55 fee or the tax amount to cancel or change an award up to 24 hours before travel. Since many U.S. domestic routes have taxes of only $5.60 each way, forfeiting the taxes often is less expensive.
The worst program in terms of cancellation and change policy is Iberia Plus, since award flights on certain partners—including American Airlines—can’t be changed and are completely non-refundable.
Qatar Airways charges $25 for cancellations and changes made at least 24 hours in advance and $100 for cancellations and changes made three to 24 hours in advance. Finnair charges $50 for changes and cancellations.
Taxes and fees on award tickets also can be different among these programs. On U.S. domestic routes where American Airlines charges $5.60 in taxes and fees, British Airways charges the same amount, but other programs sometimes charge higher fees.
Other factors: If you transfer Citi ThankYou Points to Qatar Airways Privilege Club, it’s possible to directly link and transfer Avios between your Qatar and British Airways accounts. Transferring Qatar Avios to other programs requires another transfer between British Airways and the other program.
It can be challenging to find American Airlines award availability with Finnair and Qatar Airways, as discussed in our award search examples.
For example, Qatar’s website doesn’t do a great job with award searches between two U.S. airports.
Additionally, Finnair doesn’t support online searches for American Airlines and some other partners, and their website indicates that you need to contact Finnair via online chat or call customer service to book award flights with these airlines.
Avios programs summary: In most cases, the same number of Avios is needed to book flights through British Airways or Iberia programs, while Finnair and Qatar redemption rates are different. Iberia’s cancellation and change policy makes the program less attractive when award availability and rates are the same with Iberia and another program. With the July 2024 increase in British Airways and Iberia award rates for American Airlines domestic flights, it may be worth the effort to check award options and consider booking through Finnair and Qatar programs.
Award Search Examples
Let’s look at some American Airlines flights with award seats that should be bookable by partners. To show how different programs are better depending on the itinerary, we’ll look at one short nonstop flight and one longer connecting flight, both entirely within the U.S.
For both searches, we checked all programs where online award searches are supposed to be possible for American Airlines flights and did an online chat with Finnair Plus. Generally disappointing results were:
- Cathay Pacific Asia Miles: Searches didn’t display award availability on the short nonstop flight or the desired routing on the connecting flight.
- Finnair Plus: Chatting with Finnair Plus didn’t identify any awards on American Airlines. This is consistent with other anecdotal reports that many Finnair agents—both phone and chat agents—aren’t able to find American Airlines award space. It seems like it might be a situation where you have to try multiple times to reach an agent who is able to find awards.
- Qatar Airways Privilege Club: Searches didn’t display any award availability on either route. Qatar’s search tool doesn’t seem to be able to search certain airports or routes for American Airlines flights within the U.S.
Short Nonstop Flight
The first search is for a nonstop flight from Chicago (ORD) to Syracuse, New York (SYR), with an estimated distance of 607 miles per Great Circle Mapper. There are two nonstop flights on our search date of Feb. 4, 2025, and we’re focusing on AA 3417 departing at 1:15 p.m. As shown above, ExpertFlyer indicates partner award availability in economy (fare class T) and business / first (fare class U).
The following table summarizes the results. As a baseline, American AAdvantage award rates are shown along with awards available through Citi ThankYou Point transfer partners and other Avios programs.
Program | Economy award | Business / First award | ||
Miles | Tax & fees | Miles | Tax & fees | |
American AAdvantage | 7,000 | $5.60 | 20,500 | $5.60 |
British Airways Executive Club | 12,000 | $5.60 | 24,000 | $5.60 |
Iberia Plus | 12,000 | $5.60 | 24,000 | $5.60 |
Etihad Guest | 12,000 | $23 | 25,000 | $32 |
Qantas Frequent Flyer | 12,000 | $5.60 | 27,600 | $5.60 |
Cathay Pacific Asia miles results aren’t included, since the program didn’t show availability on either nonstop flight.
Qatar Airways searches weren’t successful because their system didn’t support searching for Syracuse. In one search interface, it wouldn’t accept the airport as input, and in another interface, it produced an error message.
During searches for a similar-distance nonstop American Airlines flight between Washington (DCA) and Chicago, Qatar Airways Privilege Club showed award availability at a lower redemption rate than British Airways: 9,500 / 20,000 Qatar Airways Avios vs. 12,000 / 24,000 British Airways Avios in the main cabin and first-class cabin respectively.
If you don’t have American Airlines or Alaska Airlines miles and aren’t successful in working with a Finnair or Qatar agent to find award availability, all options require the same number of miles for economy awards, and British Airways is slightly less expensive for business class. Most partner programs classify first class on American Airlines two-cabin flights as business class.
Transcontinental Connecting Flight
For this search, we looked at flights from Philadelphia (PHL) to Palm Springs, California (PSP). The specific routing was Philadelphia to Phoenix (PHX) to Palm Springs. Distance per Great Circle Mapper is shown below.
We focused on flights on Feb. 2, 2025, for which ExpertFlyer identified partner award availability in economy (fare class T) and business / first (fare class U): AA 639 and AA 1884.
The following table summarizes the results. Similar to the previous example, we’re including the award rates through American AAdvantage, Citi ThankYou Points airline partners and other programs that use Avios.
Program | Economy award | Business / First award | ||
Miles | Tax & fees | Miles | Tax & fees | |
American AAdvantage | 9,500 | $5.60 | 30,500 | $5.60 |
British Airways Executive Club | 32,000 | $5.60 | 74,000 | $5.60 |
Iberia Plus | 32,000 | $5.60 | 74,000 | $5.60 |
Etihad Guest | 28,000 | $43.50 | N/A | N/A |
Qantas Frequent Flyer | 18,000 | $5.60 | 41,500 | $5.60 |
For both economy and first class, Qantas Frequent Flyer has the best award rates for this search.
If these American Airlines flights could be booked through Finnair Plus, the award rates would be lower at 11,000 Avios for economy or 30,000 Avios for first class. A Finnair chat agent confirmed that an economy award on Alaska Airlines from Philadelphia to Seattle (SEA) to Palm Springs was available for 11,000 Avios. Finnair’s award charts show the same economy-class award pricing for Continental U.S. and Canada awards on Alaska Airlines and American Airlines.
Cathay Pacific Asia Miles didn’t show award availability on any flights on the search date. Cathay Pacific has a strange way of displaying award results. It shows specific flights with a note saying, “There are no redemption seats available for this flight.” The only flights displayed for Feb. 2, 2025, were routes with connections in Seattle and at least one segment on Alaska Airlines.
Qatar Airways searches weren’t successful because their system didn’t support searches to Palm Springs.
Final Thoughts
It’s possible to book flights on American Airlines using Citi ThankYou Points. You can redeem ThankYou Points to book flights through Citi Travel, or you can transfer points to several airline programs and book American Airlines flights through these partner programs.
The decision about which airline program to use for booking American Airlines flights is situational, and it’s a good idea to check multiple programs to ensure that you book through a program that offers the best combination of award rates, cancellation and change policies, ease of booking and other factors. Routing specific factors that impact award pricing through different programs include distance, regions and number of connections.
The sample searches demonstrate differences in award availability among partner programs. Possible causes include:
- American Airlines releases more award seats to some partners than others.
- Limitations with partner search tools don’t enable partner programs to find some available American Airlines awards.
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