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tl;dr— You’ll receive a 25% bonus when you transfer Citi ThankYou Points to Avianca Lifemiles. This may be a helpful offer if you need a handful more miles to complete an LifeMiles redemption.
Through April 12, 2025, you’ll receive a 25% bonus on Citi ThankYou Points transfers to Avianca’s LifeMiles loyalty program. Transfer bonuses, if you’re unfamiliar with them, are promotions that incentivize you to exchange one point of currency for another. As one of the most versatile ‘bank points,’ Citi ThankYou Points can be transferred to 19 travel partners – 14 airlines and 5 hotels. This current transfer bonus with Avianca might be a good deal if you’re seeking to top up your Avianca balance for an immediate redemption.
It’s worth mentioning that Avianca habitually sells points throughout the year (usually with a bonus between 155% and 200%), so depending on your situation, it may make sense to purchase Avianca Lifemiles directly through the carrier’s website if you only need a handful. As ThankYou Points can be deployed in many different ways, there’s a real opportunity cost to transfer them out when there are relatively frictionless alternatives. Over the last few years, the best transfer bonus we’ve seen between Citi and Avianca is 25% (last one was October/November 2023) so the current offer is what we’ve come to expect when these Citi and Avianca pair up for a transfer bonus. Citi and Avianca offer these transfer bonuses usually once a year.
How Do You Transfer Citi ThankYou Points to Avianca LifeMiles Club?
Transferring your ThankYou Points is simple:
- Start by visiting citi.com, login, then select ‘ThankYou Rewards’ from the ‘Rewards & Offers’ tab. Next, from the ‘ThankYou from Citi’ portal, navigate to the Travel tab and select ‘Points Transfer’ from the dropdown.
- Find Avianca LifeMiles from the list and click ‘Continue’. Given the promotion it should be at the top.
- Use the slider or enter in the amount of points you’d like to transfer and then follow the prompts to complete the process. If you haven’t yet linked your Citi and Avianca account, you’ll need to enter in your Avianca LifeMiles information. If you haven’t yet created you’ll need first do so at LifeMiles.com before continuing with the transfer.
What are Some Good Uses of LifeMiles?
Oftentimes you’ll find the best redemption deals come from using the loyalty currency of one airline to redeem for a flight on another airline. For example, one might redeem LifeMiles to fly with a partner airline, say Singapore Airlines, as they are members of the same airline alliance – Star Alliance. Airlines also strike one-off partnerships with others airlines, even if they aren’t part of the same alliance, thus enabling members to earn and redeem miles when flying each respective program. This is a key concept for playing the points and miles game and I touch upon this briefly in this Introduction to Points and Miles – A Primer post.
The LifeMiles loyalty program is a favorite among points and miles enthusiasts due to the good availability of premium cabin partner awards seating, lack of fuel surcharges, reasonable redemption costs, and frequent miles sales. There are some solid redemption options within LifeMiles.
For example, for just 40,000 LifeMiles (one way) you can fly in style – business class – between the Japan and Oceania on All Nippon Airways. That’s incredible value.
Or if you’re keen on seeing Europe, you could fly Lufthansa first class, from the US to Frankfurt, for 87,000 LifeMiles.
Conclusion
If you plan to take advantage of this 25% transfer bonus between Citi and Avianca you have until the April 12, 2025 to do so.
Feel free to share your favorite LifeMiles redemptions in the comments!
