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Get 25% bonus Virgin Points when you transfer Ultimate Rewards points between 12:00 AM ET on May 1, 2025 and 11:59 PM ET on June 15, 2025. Bonus points will be awarded by Virgin Atlantic Flying Club in your Flying Club account after your transfer is complete.
The first thing I’ll note is that there is currently a 30% transfer bonus from Citi ThankYou to Virgin Flying Club that ends May 17th.
Chase also had a limited two week only 30% transfer bonus to Virgin the first half of February.
Across all programs, there were 9 transfer bonuses to Virgin Atlantic’s Flying Club in 2024.
Bonuses are often 30% or even 40%, so I would not jump on a 25% bonus unless you are both flush with Ultimate Rewards and have a flight ready to book.
Keep in mind there are now massive surcharges on international Delta flights booked via Virgin to/from the US, killing off one of Virgin’s very best sweet spots (50k to/from Europe). So really, run a search before you transfer!
Best Uses of Virgin Flying Club points:
Two great uses are domestically on Delta within the US or US-Mexico/Canada and for economy flights to/from Europe that are as few as 12,000 miles each way on partners such as KLM or Delta. Delta One awards not to/from the US should still be a deal. Delta One to/from Europe is still 50,000 points but now with surcharges of around $1,000, so that “sweet spot” is dead.
The other, well known, “best use” is to book ANA First and Business class awards:
Get 25% Bonus Flying Blue Miles when you transfer Ultimate Rewards® points between 12:00 AM ET on May 1, 2025 and 11:59 PM ET on May 31, 2025. Bonus Miles will be awarded by Flying Blue in your Flying Blue account after your transfer is complete.
The first thing to know is that Air France Flying Blue transfer bonuses are frequent.
Here is a list of historical transfer bonuses from Chase to Air France Flying Blue and here is a list of historical transfer bonuses to Air France Flying Blue from all programs
The last one from Chase was 20% at the start of this year and one from Chase last April for 25%.
Across all programs, we had 5 transfer bonuses to Flying Blue ranging from 20% – 25%.
Note that the minimum rates for some Flying Blue awards have recently increased:
Flying Blue rates are variable, so run a search before transferring. When you get lucky, business class from the US to Europe can run as low as 60,000 Flying Blue miles (up from 50,000 previously). But that would be just 48,000 credit card points during this promotion!
Flying Blue is often the best way to book Virgin Atlantic Upper Class from the US to Europe and beyond, due to the lowest taxes of any way to book Virgin Atlantic, however with Virgin’s new dynamic pricing you really have to compare the pricing on both programs as it can now be cheaper with Virgin in some cases. Flying Blue can also book Delta, KLM, and other SkyTeam members when Saver award space is available.
Ending on May 31, 2025 at 11L59pm ET, this is a pretty rare 20% transfer bonus opportunity if you are savvy with Qantas’ program (which probably isn’t a ton of you!). We only see two historical transfer bonuses to Qantas dating back to 2022 when we started recording them, one from Capital One and one from Amex. Both were also 20%.
The first thing you’ll want to see is the Qantas award chart as prices rose, significantly in some cases, in August of 2024. There are actually multiple charts: One for Qantas, Jetstar, Fiji Airways, Air Vanuatu, and American Airlines and another for Air France, Alaska Airlines, Bangkok Airways, British Airways, Cathay Pacific Airways, China Airlines, China Eastern, EL AL, Emirates, Finnair, Iberia, Japan Airlines, KLM, LATAM Airlines, Malaysia Airlines, Oman Air, Qatar Airways, Royal Air Maroc, Royal Jordanian, SriLankan Airlines and WestJet.
And then there’s yet another for mixed oneworld awards.
The Qantas frequent flyer program tends to have very expensive rates, however, there are often times that they make First and Business Class seats from the US to Australia available with Qantas Frequent Flyer and not with partners. You may also find expanded availability with other partners – you’ll have to search but happily their search interface is pretty easy to use and provides calendar views.
You can also book Emirates First and Business class flights with Qantas. Compare against the Emirates Skywards program before transferring.
Don’t forget to check surcharges!
This transfer bonus is being run on the Qatar side, so you will not see the bonus offer on the Citi ThankYou website.
Per the promotional page on the Qatar website:
For a limited time only, you will collect 30% bonus Avios when converting reward points from participating partners into Avios by 31 May 2025.* The more reward points you convert, greater are your reward possibilities with Privilege Club.
IMPORTANT: Bonus Avios earned as part of this campaign will be credited to a Member’s Privilege Club account by 30th June 2025.
So, you may not get those bonus Avios for 1-2 months! This is a big difference between when the US bank offers a transfer bonus (bonus points are credited with the transfer) and when it’s run by the airline. I’ve seen both Qatar and Cathay Pacific specify delayed posting of the bonus which (I think) kind of ruins the deal since we never advise stockpiling – that said, you can still move these to other Avios programs later.
Remember that Qatar Avios has become competitive and inline with other Avois partners. It’s always worth checking whether one or another Avois partner (i.e. British Airways, Iberia, Finnair, or Aer Lingus) has a better redemption price since you can freely move between them. You can even connect your British Airways account directly inside Qatar’s website for easy and instant transfer.
SECOND IMPORTANT NOTE: Qatar has devalued their own program twice in recent months, first significantly raising the pricing for AA and Alaska awards, then by adding significant new surcharges on long haul premium awards by almost 200%. I wouldn’t transfer speculatively myself, but an Avios pro user with lots of ThankYou points might.
NOTES: Virgin Flying Club has moved to a dynamic pricing for awards. In some cases we are seeing extreme value like 29,000 point Business Class awards from the US to London. In other cases, the prices have risen dramatically. Run some searches before transferring.
It’s also worth Virgin Atlantic transfer bonuses are fairly frequent between various programs. See historical transfer bonuses to Virgin Atlantic here. This is the 9th transfer bonus in the last year from a bank program to Virgin Atlantic. As you can see, it’s nearly always 30% with unicorns for 40%.
If we isolate to just Citi ThankYou to Virgin Atlantic Transfer Bonuses, it’s always 30%.
Best Uses of Virgin Flying Club points:
Two great uses are domestically on Delta within the US or US-Mexico/Canada and for economy flights to/from Europe that are as few as 12,000 miles each way on partners such as KLM or Delta.
If you could actually find a Delta One award FROM Europe to the US, it would be just 50,000 points. Availability is a unicorn. Unfortunately, awards TO Europe on Delta now cost more and have $1,000 + surcharges). Virgin Atlantic can also book Air France and KLM flights as well as other SkyTeam alliance airlines.
The other, well known, “best use” is to book ANA First and Business class awards:
Note that you can also book these ANA awards as one way for half the points. Search on United and then call Virgin to book.
Bilt Members get a bonus of up to 100% when they convert their Bilt Points to Southwest Rapid Rewards points today only.
● Platinum: 100% transfer bonus
● Gold: 75% transfer bonus
● Silver: 50% transfer bonus
● Blue: 25% transfer bonus
Bonus applied on transfers made between May 1 at 12:00 AM ET – May 1 at 11:59 PM PT.
Southwest lacks any partnerships for award redemptions. They have also been devolving the entire airline into a “me too” airline minus premium service or First Class cabins – or partner airlines for redemptions.
However, they do still have the famous Southwest Companion Pass which we show you how to earn for up to two full years, which gets you a companion on every flight paid with cash or points paying only their taxes and fees.
That can obviously amp up the value of a redemption!
With the caveat that I’d still rather use my own Bilt points (which I value at 1.8 cents each) for Hyatt, Alaska, or soon JAL for international premium cabin awards and luxury hotel stays, you might want to use for Southwest flights – especially if you have the Companion Pass.
Here’s how the baseline approximate values shake out:
● Platinum: 100% transfer bonus (2 Southwest points per 1 Bilt point) means a rough value of 2.5 cents per Bilt point on an average redemption. With a Companion Pass, that gets to around 5 cents per point. It’s hard to ignore that value – again, if you aren’t gunning for international premium cabin awards which these cannot get you.
● Gold: 75% transfer bonus = 2.185 cents per point (using the same formula as above) or around 4.4 cents using a Companion Pass.
● Silver: 50% transfer bonus = 1.875 cents per point (using the same formula as above) or around 3.75 cents using a Companion Pass.
● Blue: 25% transfer bonus = 1.56 cents per point (using the same formula as above) or around 3.12 cents using a Companion Pass.
However, before you get too excited (FIVE CENTS PER BILT POINT?!) – not so fast!! The Companion Pass applies to cash tickets all the same – so I leave it to you whether or not that counts in your calculation of whether you want to transfer or not. And you may not even have the Companion Pass!
Personally, I wouldn’t because I’d consider it no different than using cash meaning that if I’m Platinum, which I am, it’s 2.5 cents per point or just 0.7 cents more than my base value of a Bilt point.
As a Gold, you come out about .38 cents per point ahead of an average Bilt point redemption via transfer partners (as always, this isn’t the value you WILL get – it’s an approximation based on the various transfer partners).
At a Silver or Blue Bilt tier, you are below the Bilt point value and so that’s a no go for me.
Bottom line, if you are Platinum, have a Companion Pass, and fly Southwest often – this may well be a pretty darn nice transfer bonus!
If you are Gold with a Companion Pass…. it’s probably worth moving some?
If you are below Gold status with Bilt, I’d leave this one alone.
I hope that helps!
Get 1,800 IHG Rewards Points for every 1,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards® points when you transfer by 11:59PM ET on April 30, 2025
We see transfer bonuses from Chase to IHG ranging from 60% to 80% approximately twice a year.
Do some sample searches before considering this bonus as we value an IHG point around 0.4 cents and a Chase point around 1.75 cents making the math here hard to justify. it’s a bit better if you have an IHG Premier or IHG Business Premier credit card which gives the 4th night free on awards.
So even though this is the high end the bonus range, I’d be hard pressed to recommend this transfer unless you know exactly what you are booking and the value exceeds what else you can get with your Ultimate Rewards® points.
While not frequent, we have seen transfer bonuses from American Express Membership Rewards to Aeromexico before, although the last two were in 2024 and 2022 (skipping 2023). This transfer bonus ends 11:59 p.m. MT on 4/30/2025.
Aeromexico Rewards points are worth *roughly* 0.75 cents each but with a wide range of ways to redeem.
Normally, you get 1.6 Aeromexico points for 1 Membership Rewards points so that bumps to 1,920 Aeromexico for 1,000 Amex under this promotion – almost 2:1.
Aeromexico uses a range of redemption options including standard fixed awards and flexible awards – and you’ll see what’s available by searching and that does not require an account.
You can search here (use Google Translate in your browser if available as it’s in Spanish) to check possible redemptions.
Importantly, note the Aeromexico Rewards cancellation policy which is that, well, you can’t cancel it. You can change it, though.
Award Ticket may not be cancelled or reimbursed. If the Member decides not to use the Award Ticket and does not have a flight date scheduled, their Award Ticket will be open for a future flight on the same route, season and cabin.
The Award Ticket will be open for 1 (one) year after the original issuing date, so the trip must be completed within said validity period. Route or cabin changes are not applicable to new Award Tickets. However, there might be a tax and Premier Point difference between the original Award Ticket and the new one. Said difference must be covered when the new Award Ticket is issued. The issuing of the new Award Ticket is subject to seat availability on the desired flight.
Luckily, Aeromexico miles don’t expire.
UPDATE: April 28th, 2025 – You may have received a notification about this bonus ending on April 30th. It was our understanding at the launch based on multiple reports that it would end that date. However, the offer has been pulled entirely. So please ignore the notification about it ending on Wednesday April 30th as the offer has ended.
Ending 11:59 p.m. MT on 4/30/2025, this transfer bonus is not the same for everyone. Some are being offered a 10% bonus and others are being offered a 20% transfer bonus.
If we look at historical transfer bonuses to Etihad Guest from all transferable points, we see that the average transfer bonus is 20% – 40%, making both iterations of this promotion at the very low end of the range.
My opinion (which was true at 40%, let alone 10%-20%) is that only an expert user of Etihad Guest should even consider it. If booking on Etihad itself (which you might do for access to Etihad First Class space), you will pay between 25% and 75% to cancel a GuestSeat (saver) booking. That is the most punitive of any program I can think of. You can use it to book JetBlue (80k US-Europe in business) but you can also use Qatar for that without the punitive penalties.
You can book short haul partner awards like AA for as little as 6,000 miles, but I don’t think the juice is worth a speculative squeeze. Then again, AA to Europe for 65,000 Etihad isn’t bad with a 40% transfer bonus… You can always check pricing for Etihad Partners if considering it.
Let’s just get it out of the way – it’s odd that this bonus is starting on the 16th of March and ending on the 12th of April. Luckily, since you are subscribed to Transfer Bonus Alerts, you can get notified 7 and/or 2 days before that odd expiration date!
Next, this bonus is being offered directly by Citi, so you can see it in the usual place in your ThankYou account (I always prefer that to the ones sponsored by the airline directly where the bonus may or may not be instant).
It’s 25%, so it’s not too shabby, although Citi made the same offer back last October (you can see all historical bonuses to Avianca Lifemiles from all issuers here). Many recent transfer bonuses from other credit card currencies have been just 15%.
Avianca has really been messing with its program lately. They’ve devalued twice in the last 6 months, although in the most recent devaluation all sorts of quirks emerged with pricing. For instance a business class ticket from the US to/from Europe could be 69,000 miles or it could be 80,000 miles. And last week, I saw JFK – Zurich in Business Class on Swiss for around 55,000 miles!
All of the same issues I’ve always had around Lifemiles customer service remain. I don’t want to ever have to deal with a schedule change than needs a ticket reissued with them again, and sometimes the website shows phantom availability and phone agents are often unable to help after incredibly long hold times.
You can also stack a Lifemiles+ membership with this (from $20 / month or free if you have the Lifemiles Amex). If you found a business class ticket for 69,000 miles, after the 10% lifemiles+ discount and 25% transfer bonus, it would be a great deal at 49,680 – if you know the risks of Lifemiles bookings and are ok with that.
So, for expert Lifemiles users, this could be a great deal…. but would I speculatively transfer? Not a chance.
Bilt’s Rent Day for April 1, 2025 includes a Avios transfer bonus between 50% and 100% based on tier.
Here are the details by Bilt status level:
Blue: 50% transfer bonus
Silver: 60% transfer bonus
Gold: 75% transfer bonus
Platinum: 100% transfer bonus
The transfer bonus also applies to transfers directly to Iberia Avios and Aer Lingus Avios. For this one day transfer bonus, I’m consolidating all of my thoughts under this one article – mainly because you can transfer points between any Avios program, including British Airways, Iberia, Aer Lingus, Qatar Airways, and Finnair.
Sweet spots vary by program.
Personally, I value a Chase point at well more than even 1.2 British Airways Avios, but if you have plenty of Chase points and a planned redemption it’s something to consider. Also consider, however, that Chase offered a 30% bonus in October of 2024 and Capital One offered a 20% bonus in November of 2024.
Beyond that, my usual thoughts apply:
Despite past shortfall domestic sweet spots evaporating, you can still transfer these miles over to Qatar Airways Avios where that same flight would be 9,500 miles (up from 6,000 but still cheaper than BA). And that’s the thing – you can transfer these Avios to any other Avios program airline including Finnair.
Also – outside of the US, BA still prices flights under 650 miles (i.e. SYD-MEL on Qantas) at 6,000 miles in Economy and only 12,500 miles in Business – hello, sweet spot!
BA does have a very favorable lap infant policy – 10% of the miles paid for the adult fare. Beware their draconian surcharges on long haul awards.
This is almost never a good transfer unless you are topping off for an award you are ready to book. Keep in mind that we value a Chase Ultimate Rewards point at roughly 3X the value of a Marriott Bonvoy point.
However, there are always exceptions and you might find a 5 night stay (5th night free) where the transfer makes sense, so do the math – but you likely do not want to transfer speculatively unless you are a Bonvoy pro and believe you will exceed value you can get via other Ultimate Rewards partners.
This matches an existing 20% transfer bonus from Citi ThankYou to Qatar Avios.
Remember that Qatar Avios has become competitive and inline with other Avois partners. It’s always worth checking whether one or another Avois partner (i.e. British Airways, Iberia, Finnair, or Aer Lingus) has a better redemption price since you can freely move between them. You can even connect your British Airways account directly inside Qatar’s website for easy and instant transfer.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Qatar has devalued their own program twice in recent months, first significantly raising the pricing for AA and Alaska awards, then by adding significant new surcharges on long haul premium awards by almost 200%. I wouldn’t transfer speculatively for just 20% myself, but an Avios pro user with lots of Amex points might.
Amex states the transfer can take up to 48 hours.
On the same day as transfer bonuses to BA and Aer Lingus, keep in mind that all Avios can be moved between programs – including Qatar and Finnair.
Iberia’s chart is similar to BA’s however, note that I recommend only using for travel on Iberia. That is not only because fees will be lowest (you can fly from the East Coast of the US to Madrid in Business Class off peak for 34,000 Avios) but because award travel on partner airlines booked with Iberia Avios is non-refundable!!