Frequent Miler on the Air - Citi adds valuable transfer partner: Japan Airlines | Coffee Break Ep123 | 9-23-26

Starting point is 00:00:00 This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. This podcast episode is sponsored by Sayley. Sayley is an e-Sim service app created by the security experts behind NordVPN. Instead of paying absurd daily rates to your home carrier or swapping SIM cards on arrival, Saly gives you flexible prepaid data plans and over 200 destinations worldwide. Setup takes just a couple of minutes on your phone before you leave. your data activates automatically when you touch down.

Starting point is 00:00:36 Plus, in order to reduce your data consumption, Saly actually blocks malicious sites, trackers, and annoying ads while you browse. Whether you need a quick gigabyte for a weekend away or unlimited data for a longer adventure, Saly keeps you connected without any surprise bills waiting for you at home. Ready to upgrade your international roaming? Download Saly from your app store and use our code Frequent Miler at checkout to get 15% off your first purchase. Details are in the show notes. Today's coffee break, City adds valuable transfer partner, Japan Airlines.

Starting point is 00:01:11 Welcome to Frequent Milers Coffee Break, where we focus on a single topic related to miles and points. Each coffee break is limited to 20 minutes or less or your money back. City's thank you rewards program is a transferable points currency, and to get the best transfer ratios, you need to have like a city strata premier card or strata elite card or maybe even the old prestige card. But once you do, then you get the best, you know, transfer rates, including to this new partner, Japan Airlines. And this is just one more in a set of kind of roller coaster changes that we've had in recent times from city, right? Yeah. So, I mean, a while back said he added choice privileges at a one to two transfer ratio initially.

Starting point is 00:02:05 So that was a yay. They added, I prefer, preferred hotels I prefer at one to four. Again, great news there, right? Big yay. Yeah. Then they added American Airlines at one to one. Biggest yay yet, probably. Right. I mean, that's something people have been waiting for for years and wishing would be the case. So they were on a role. I mean, looking on top of the world, right? I mean, who wouldn't, want city points at that point. Right. Exactly. So city realized that and said, well, hold on. let's back up the truck here. They reduced the transfer ratio to choice privileges. So it's no longer one to two. Now it's one to one and a half. Yeah, it's kind of a little boo there. It's not terrible, but yeah. Yeah. Well, but the bigger boo probably out of that. Well, I don't know if it's even bigger.

Starting point is 00:02:51 But they also reduced the transfer ratio to I prefer. And instead of being one to four, that's now just one to two. I thought that was a much bigger boo. Now, part of that, part of that has to do with that there's no one else where you could get that old one to four, whereas with choice, if you have Wells Fargo points, you could still get one to two to choice. Yeah. Okay, so now, now what's new? Well, now they've added Japan Airlines as a transfer partner, and transfers are one to one for those of you with all of those cards that we just mentioned. That's a big yay. And that's big yay. I mean, we were not, we were expecting that this might happen, but I don't know. I kind of thought they would do a capital one thing here and, and do a not quite one-to-one transfer. Yeah, but City decided not to do its usual craziness. And instead, one-to-one with a transfer bonus at launch when they first are launching this. So that's all great news, Japan Airlines there. Of course, they're not the only ones to transfer to Japan Airlines at one-to-one, since Built also transfers one-to-one. And so does Rove Miles. But still,

Starting point is 00:03:55 It's a great addition for City. Thank you, rewards. But also new this week, they've added lifetime language to the strata cards, indicating that, for instance, if you want the strata premier card, you are not eligible for the introductory bonus. If you have or have had the card before,

Starting point is 00:04:14 and hopefully you notice the difference in the way I said that versus Amex. It doesn't say you may not be eligible. It says you, it is not available to you if you have or have had the card before. The welcome bonus is not available to you. you. Yeah, that's a big boo. Now, previously there was, I think, 48-month language, so you could wait four years and get the bonus again. So that avenue appears to be completely dead. So, yeah, bummer there. But let's back up and talk a little bit about why Japan Airlines is so amazing. Why are we excited about that? So, first of all, they have fantastic award prices. I mean, we've talked before.

Starting point is 00:04:55 on the show about how like we see things like I think 42,000 points, business class from the East Coast U.S. to Europe, just incredible. Member only awards on Japan Airlines itself are available at reasonable prices. And what I mean by that is, you know, getting awards, especially premium cabin awards on Japan Airlines itself, can be really tough to find. But if you're willing to pay a bit more miles, you might be able to, you'll get better availability at the sort of next tier of pricing. So instead of like great pricing to Japan, you'll get good pricing to Japan and better availability. And to me, that's a win. And tell me this next one on our list.

Starting point is 00:05:43 Well, not only that, do you get good member award pricing and reasonable, you know, sort of availability, but also we learned recently that it's possible to upgrade. at the check-in desk with Miles. So this is a tip I picked up from Journey on Points. So if you look up Journey on Points on Instagram, you'll find her channel there. And I just ran into her at an event the other day. And Julia told me the story that she had also posted there on Instagram

Starting point is 00:06:09 about how she upgraded with Miles at the check-in desk. She had looked and seen that there were seats available for sale in first class. And she had booked her Japan Airlines Business Class award using Japan Airlines mileage bank. And so she went to the check-in desk early. and asked if she could upgrade to one of those first class seats using miles. And she knew that there were seats that were empty at that point. And they told her that she would need to have the miles on hand.

Starting point is 00:06:35 And she said that was no problem. She had the miles already. It was 45,000 miles. And initially they told her that they would have to see if she got selected. But she said that she wasn't sure that was all about because it was an instant process. And she got upgraded to first class for just the 45,000 miles and no additional taxes and fees. Now, I can't guarantee that that's going to work every time. I don't know if that's something that's replicable again and again, but it tells me that's possible.

Starting point is 00:07:01 It can be done. And that's great news. That's really great news. I mean, it's similar or it sounds similar to what Emirates does or did. And, you know, my wife and I were able to fly Emirates first class because of that, you know, policy where we weren't able to find first class awards, but we were able to find business. class awards and then at the airport upgrade with miles and sounds like Japan Airlines you could do maybe can do the same and that's awesome great fine Julia what else what else do we love here well Japan Airlines has partners that are beyond the one world they've got some partners that are

Starting point is 00:07:40 interesting so for instance even though Air France is in Sky Team you can book Air France with Japan Airlines miles so that pricing that Greg was just mentioning the 42,000 miles one way in business class from the east coast to Europe. And again, in business class, you can book Air France sometimes at that rate or maybe it's 60,000 miles, depending on the distance, and no surcharges. So just like $5.60 dollars in the United States. So that's a huge win over booking through Flying Blue if you can find the availability. Similarly, you can book Emirates business class.

Starting point is 00:08:14 I want to say, I think it's 85,000 miles round trip for that from New York to Milan, for instance, if I remember correctly. So they've got not only interesting partners beyond one world, but also some really good prices in some instances to book those non-one world partners. Yeah. Yeah. And another cool feature is the weird way they handle their distance-based award pricing.

Starting point is 00:08:41 Most programs that have distance-based awards will look at, like, your outbound flight, how far is it, price it? And then if you have a return flight, they'll do the same thing and add up those two things together. But no, Japan Airlines is going to add up the miles flown for your entire trip, whether it's a round trip, a multi-city trip, whatever. And then compare that to their award chart,

Starting point is 00:09:06 their distance-based award chart, figure out what bucket you're in and price it that way. And that means that you can get incredible deals by making your trip longer, basically, or making it longer within a single booking is a better way of saying. And so a simpler way to think about it is that a round trip is usually going to be significantly fewer miles than two one-way trips. But deals can even be better than that if you're creative with it.

Starting point is 00:09:36 Very good. And like I mentioned with the Air France thing, often surcharges are low as compared to other programs or there may not be any surcharges at all, as is the case when you're flying Air France from the United States to Europe. anyway, you pay no surcharges. And that's terrific since there aren't other ways that I'm aware of to book Air France specifically without those surcharges. So, so there are some great deals to be found with Japan Airlines mileage bank, but there is at least one big drawback, right? Yeah. Japan Airlines has a strict 36-month expiry policy activity in your account will not renew it, will not reset the clock. So if you have a situation where you've, you know, transferred miles into

Starting point is 00:10:21 Japan Airlines and maybe you were planning to book something, it falls through, you have to cancel, whatever, you have to find a way to use those miles up within those 36 months or they'll be gone. Yeah. And so that's something you really want to pay close attention to and use some sort of a tool to track. All right. We'll be right back after this with our thoughts and analysis about what this means for City Thank you Rewards. Jamie writes in, love the show, but I have no idea what you're talking about. Please help. That's true. Well, this can be confusing. And luckily for you, Jamie, we have a beginner's guide that can help. You want to go to frequentmiler.com slash start here to check out our full beginner's guide. And we're back. All right. Let's talk about kind of where city ranks in our thoughts compared to other transferable points currencies.

Starting point is 00:11:16 You know, this is exciting. This on one level, like, elevate city way up there. But as I think more about it, I'm not so sure where it goes. So I'm going to talk about some of the advantages of city. And then I'll turn it over to Nick to talk about some of the disadvantages. And then we can kind of go from there. But some advantages. Frequent transfer bonuses.

Starting point is 00:11:40 We've seen over recent months and maybe a couple years, they've really stepped up the game when having transfer bonuses kind of all the time. They're probably the, as, you know, looking back historically over the last two years, I would guess, I haven't done the math on this, but that they have the most of the common transferable programs. You're right. They now have great one-world coverage between American Airlines, Japan Airlines. Of course, they have Avios, like British Airways and such, as does every program. And they also still have one-to-one to Cathay Pacific Asia Mile. So that combination means that if you're looking for one-world flights, I don't know that there's any program that's going to beat, you know,

Starting point is 00:12:29 beat them. There might be other programs that are about even. But really good there. They continue to support, of course, one-to-one transfers to EVA, which is great if you want to fly EVA itself, because they have much better available. for their own members. And I'm going to throw in JetBlue as one-to-one, which is not true. Some of the Transfer World Points programs that support JetBlue have less than one-to-one. So it's good that city has one-to-one. So I'm sure there's other advantages, but I'm going to stop there at like sort of off the top of my head. What are some of the best things? Yeah, disadvantages, things that come to mind are that they have relatively poor Star Alliance coverage. And what we

Starting point is 00:13:11 really mean by that is they don't have Air Canada Aeroplane and most transferable programs do have Air Canada Aeroplane. They do have Avianca Life Miles and as you said, they've got Eva too. So they got a couple of different options that you can book Star Alliance Awards with, but they don't have aero plan. They have poor hotel coverage at this point and that's a big swing because a year ago, we would have been saying that City had perhaps the best hotel coverage in the sense that transfer ratios were really good to both choice privileges and preferred hotels. But now with the drop in ratios there, there just aren't very many opportunities to get outside value for lodging. And it's hard to earn lots of city points through new credit card introductory offers.

Starting point is 00:13:55 There just aren't very many city cards with intro offers to begin with. And most of them aren't particularly strong, especially in the landscape of transferable points cards where we've seen cards from Amex and Chase and Capital One offering upwards of 100,000 miles or more, sometimes with Amex, 200,000, even seen on the business side, 300,000 points. Of course, there aren't any business thank you cards available, new on the market. And so there's just a much more limited set of opportunities. And you can no longer combine your points with a player too. So if you have someone else in your household that's collecting city thank you points, you used to be able to move points back and forth between cardholders,

Starting point is 00:14:38 but you no longer can do that, which again makes it really hard to accumulate enough points for a meaningful award. And of course, the lifetime language now makes it even harder. So you used to be able to every four years, sign up for new cards with player one and player two, and then combine the points and make, you know, all that has become much, much harder. So, yeah, those are some pretty big disadvantage. So, you know, when I think about like the strengths here, it sounds really good, but those disadvantages I feel like are really, really significant. So, you know, I'm not ready to say this is anywhere near the best transferable points program at the stage. Yeah, you know, it's difficult

Starting point is 00:15:22 because on the one hand, you've got cards that have good category earn and you could really put together a pretty good wallet with a low annual fee. And so if that's your main goal, then I think city is pretty strong in the sense that it does have some good cards to have and hold and keep long term and low overall cost. You can get a good transfer ratios and everything with a low overall cost. So City Thank You Rewards has some strength there. And adding Japan Airlines adds a little something extra, a little something more than what it had before. However, it's still just not very competitive overall for anybody who's enthusiastic about getting new cards, chasing new bonuses, and really combining forces between. multiple cards and multiple players in a household.

Starting point is 00:16:07 It's just not nearly as easy to accumulate a meaningful number of points with City. So having Japan Airlines at one to one is nice, but it really kind of depends on how much you're going to earn from that. And really, if you're booking cash hotel stays, then you might earn more miles with Roeve than you would with City from a new card bonus, depending on what the cost of your hotel stays are. So it limits my excitement a little bit about this at the same time.

Starting point is 00:16:33 I'm sure that people that are flushed with city points are looking at this as a really strong opportunity to get great value. This episode was produced and edited by Carrie Yoder, music by Annie Yoder. If you've enjoyed what you've heard today and you'd like to get more of this in your email inbox each day or each week, go to frequentmyler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. Follow us on all the various social media. Join our Frequent Myler Insiders Facebook group. And wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to like this or give it a thumbs up. If you have a question that you'd like to be considered for a future question of the week or a piece of feedback that you'd like to be considered for our giant mailbag, you can send that to

Starting point is 00:17:10 Send it to mailbag at Frequentmiler.com

Frequent Miler on the Air - Citi adds valuable transfer partner: Japan Airlines | Coffee Break Ep123 | 9-23-26

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