Hi Shreycationers,
We’ve been talking a lot about how you can use your credit card points to get outsized value on your points. Instead of just getting 1¢/point, you can squeeze out 3x, 5x, or even 10x the value just by transferring your points into airline mileage programs to book “award travel.” This also lets you book free flights on airlines where you might not otherwise have any miles; just transfer them over from a card! There are entire forums dedicated to going down the rabbit hole on strategies for optimally deploying your points.
But if it’s your first rodeo, you’re probably hung up on a more fundamental question: how do I actually move the points from one program to another? The UIs for many of these credit card and airlines program are historically a bit lacking, so the process can be unintuitive.
So without further ado, a play by play guide on how to actually transfer your points.
Step 0: Identify your redemption
One of my dear Shreycation readers was recently fed up with the 29 degree weather in NYC and needed to escape somewhere warm. He wanted to book a flight to Hawaii, so I helped him through the process. Now I’ll be walking you through that same process in this issue.
Before we can book our travel using points, we must pinpoint available award seats that can be redeemed with an airline's mileage program. It’s essential to ensure this award space exists BEFORE we transfer points from your credit card, as once points are transferred, there's no going back. Point transfers are one-way and irreversible. Finding ideal award space is the subject of Shreycation issues past, present, and future, but for the purpose of this example, we’ll work with one of my favorite award redemption paths.
I’ve previously talked about how you can book dirt cheap domestic flights on United Airlines by redeeming miles in the Turkish Airlines Miles & Smiles program. (Turkish and United are partners, meaning I can redeem Turkish points on a United ticket.) Traveling to Hawaii counts as domestic travel in Turkish’s eyes, so we can take advantage of a sweet spot here and book a EWR (Newark) to HNL (Honolulu) flight for a very cheap 10k Turkish miles. (Booking this flight directly with United would cost 30k+ United miles.)
Now I don’t have any Turkish miles since I rarely fly on Turkish in the first place, but there’s where our credit card points come in. We can mint miles in Turkish by transferring from points from a card.
Step 1: Transfer the points
Now that you know where you want to redeem your points, go to your credit card rewards portal to start the transfer. You’re looking for a button that says something like “Transfer points.” Note that you do NOT want to go through their “Book travel” feature; this is for booking travel on cash (or using your credit card points directly, which is usually a pretty poor use of points).
Some quick links to your rewards portal: Chase, Amex, Capital One, Citi, Bilt (use app)
Here’s where to find the magic “transfer points” button in a few major card portals:
Confirm your credit card is partnered with your desired airline mileage program
Not all airlines are partnered with all credit card partners, so you’ll first need to make sure you use a credit card that can transfer to your desired airline mileage program. (This is also why I recommend having cards in multiple programs, even if it’s the entry level cards!)
Here’s a handy diagram I made for y’all to see all the transfer partners at a glance:
Going back to our EWR-HNL example, we’re booking through Turkish Airlines, so according to the diagram above, I’d need to use Bilt, Capital One, or Citi to transfer points. If I go the “Transfer” tab in the Bilt app, I can scroll down and select Turkish:
If you haven’t made an account with the target mileage program yet, you’ll need to do that first and enter your account number when transferring.
Calculate how many points you need to transfer
Most of the time, this is dead simple. The vast majority of points transfer tend to be at a 1:1 ratio, so if you need 10k airline miles, just transfer 10k credit card points. That means I just need to transfer 10k Bilt points into Turkish Airlines to book my EWR-HNL flight.
A few caveats:
There are some rare exceptions to the 1:1 transfer ratio, like transferring to EVA Air via Capital One.
Credit card programs often run transfer bonuses where you get more miles per point you transfer. You can take advantage of these bonuses to get hilariously cheap award travel, like many Shreycation readers did on Air Canada earlier this month. Bilt is renowned for their killer 75-150% transfer bonuses on the 1st of each month, and other programs like Chase and Amex have run 30-60% bonuses in the past.
Learning how to finally use that small fortune of points you’ve been sitting on? Send this article to a friend who desperately needs some help! (We have a referral program here at Shreycation that’ll score you some dope content and perks; use the button below to make sure your referral counts.)
Step 2: Wait
Many point transfers are nearly instant. Once you’ve triggered the request from the credit card portal, you can usually make a quick coffee and by the time you’re back, the miles will be credited to your airline mileage account.
For example, my points took 10 minutes to transfer from Bilt to Turkish, and I got an email confirmation from Bilt telling me the deed was done.
Sometimes, the transfers can take longer though. For example, transferring Bilt points to American AAdvantage or Amex points to Singapore KrisFlyer can take up to 24 hours. Good award tickets tend to go away quickly, so if you’re dealing with a partner that has a transfer delay, you can often call up the airline to “hold” the award for you. This lets you rest easy knowing someone else won’t swoop your spot just because your points were in transit.
Step 3: Book it
Now that you’ve transferred the points, you can return back to the portal for the airline you’re booking through and complete your booking!
Wait why am I being charged cash too?
Often when booking award travel, you might notice you’ll still need to enter your credit card and pay some cash. This is because most award travel has a few taxes and surcharges, on top of the miles you’re redeeming. You can’t pay for these extra fees in miles unfortunately.
The surcharges vary pretty significantly across different mileage programs. Some programs like United charge a nominal amount of $5.60 (to cover the TSA security fee). However, others may charge you the dreaded “fuel surcharge”, a fee that often scales by distance and cabin class and can add hundreds to the flight cost. Air France is known for doing this:
Since these fuel surcharges can be hefty, it’s important to consider those when valuing your redemption — spending 27k miles to get a $400 flight for free is less compelling if you’re spending $170 in surcharges.
Step 4: Manage your flight
Now that you have your flight booked, you might be wondering how to manage your flight (e.g. check in, change your seat, upgrade, etc.). This differs based on whether you booked your award directly with the airline or if you booked via a partner.
If you booked an award with the airline directly
If you booked an award ticket with the same airline that’s operating the flight (e.g. you booked on United and you’re flying United), it’s business as usual. Once you book, you’ll already see your flight linked to your mileage account and in your app, no action required. You’ll also be able to change seats, upgrade, check in, etc. like it’s a normal flight. If you have an issue, you just take it up with the airline.
If you booked an award via a partner
In our example though, we’re using Turkish to book a ticket on a United flight, so things get a little more complicated since there’s 2 airlines involved: the one we booked from (Turkish), and the one we’re actually flying (United). Upon booking, Turkish will send me an email with a confirmation number.
Now I can enter that confirmation on the United website and it should link the reservation to my MileagePlus account (sometimes you may need to contact them if this doesn’t work automatically though). United may assign me a different confirmation number than the one Turkish gave me, but rest assured, it’s the same flight.
Since I have United status, linking my trip to my United account lets me enjoy my United perks on the flight (e.g. picking a Economy Plus seat for free). To be clear, I won’t earn any United miles or status points on this flight, but I will get to enjoy my existing perks.
What if I need to make changes or need customer support? If you need help with the booking (e.g. cancel/change flight), contact the airlines you booked through (Turkish in this case). If you need help with the flight (delays, missed flight, seat change), contact the airline you’re actually flying on (United in this case).
Putting it together
We’ve now gone through the full process of transferring points to get killer redemptions. It may seem like a lot at first, but after a few redemptions, it’ll be second nature to you!
As I mentioned earlier, this article is inspired by an actual Hawaii trip I was helping a Shreycation reader with. The golden rule of free travel is to earn lots of points per dollar and redeem them for lots of cents per point. Using tips and tricks we’ve covered in previous issues, he executed this to a T. He earned 10k miles from a single fancy dinner with friends because he took advantage of a whopping 16x bonus on Bilt Dining on the 1st of the month. He then identified a Turkish airlines redemption for his Hawaii trip for just 10k miles. Just by strategically earning and deploying points, his one dinner from 2 months ago paid for his Hawaii flight today. (That flight would have cost $775 by the way. That’s 7.75¢/point — insane value, especially for economy.)
Note for the Eagle Eyed: Turkish Devaluations
Those of you who have been following along with previous Shreycation issues might have noticed that the Turkish redemption here is 2.5k miles more than expected. After all, just 1 month ago I wrote that all domestic redemptions were 7.5k miles. Unfortunately, this week Turkish has finally succumbed to inflation the same way United and many others have, and they made various routes more expensive (sometimes as much as 90% higher). The silver lining is domestic trip awards only increased 33% from 7.5k to 10k, so it’s still one of the best deals out there for domestic travel.
Thanks for reading! I know it’s been a minute. I’ve been working on something new and exciting in the travel space, and y’all will be the first to hear about it once it’s up. It’s the culmination of months of work, and I’m excited to share it soon!
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