Are the flight points posted to your Thankyou Network account 6-8 weeks after the origin of your flight or you have to make enough purchase to match the flight points in order for the flight points to be transferred over?

Last month I earned 3000 flight points and made $500 purchases, so Citi only transferred 500 points to my Thankyou Network account. I thought they were wrong. But I noticed this message on my statement

"Remember, for every one Purchase Point that is transferred to your ThankYou Member Account, we will transfer one Flight Point as well. Purchase Points and Flights Points become available for redemption after they are transferred to your ThankYou Member Account.

This really doesn't make sense to me. Does this apply to you all or just me?

You have to match flight points with spending in order for them to transfer over.

I think it changed. I used to get the flight points the month afterwards, but now I have to match it with more plane tickets purchases

You have to match your flight points with purchase points, but they count bonus points as purchase points.

>>> Lets say I buy an airticket worth $5000 and fly on it. Do I earn 5000 TYPoints AND 5000 flight points (in addition to all miles I accrue on the airline program)??

You earn 5000 purchase points, plus one flight point per mile flown, plus whatever frequent flyer miles the airline gives you.

With this card and similar (CitiBusiness PremierPass), as well as with Driver's Edge Options, the miles flown / driven are only matched up to the amount equal to purchase points. So think of this as a multiplier.

For example, you spend $180 and buy a ticket to fly 4000 miles. You think you got 4000 points? Well, you did, but you can not "cash them out" until you have 4000 - 180 = 3820 dollars more in purchases.

So effectively you can make the Premier Pass as a 2% card if you can fly enough, and the Drivers Edge a 2% / 6% (first year 2% / 12 %) if you drive enough.

But there is a silver lining: the bonus points count in the same category as the purchase points, so if you get 15K bonus points, you can quickly get 15K flight points with maybe $2-$3K worth of flights, if you fly strategically, so to speak. Probably the best value is cross-country or Caribbean trips for two that are cheap but accumulate lots of miles. So spend a couple of K, get 30-35 K in points, worth at least $300-350, perhaps more if you turn around and buy fixed point flights using those. That's about the value of PremierPass.

But I believe you can rinse and repeat, so the this is a tree that blooms and yields fruit every year or so.

IMHO the Premier Pass was created as a competitor to all the airlines affinity credit cards for those who don't fly on one airline.

Most airline credit cards will give you 1% points on regular purchases, and 2% point on bonus purchases, and bonus is only something purchased from that airline flying on that airline.

With Premier Pass, if you fly enough, everything is 2% essentially. Better to keep one PremierPass card, then AAdvantage, United Miles Plus, NWA, US Airways, etc (of course, you can also harvest those for one time bonus or whatever).

IMHO, Premier Pass is better than maintaing two or more of those other airline cards (once again, you can harvest the bonus of those other ones, but keep PremierPass as the actual card you use).

TheWalL said:Flight points + Hotel stay $$ means this is very easily a 2% card.

One of these days...I'll go over to Flyer Talk...not get intimidated by their maze of forums and randomness and learn...one of these days....

c'mon over... we're not so scary.

Anyway, as someone else pointed out, the bonus points are matchable by flight points, so for the first 15,000-25,000 flight points you earn (depending on the size of your initial bonus) it will appear like the flight points did not require matching. This is an optical illusion. All flight points must be matched, by purchase, bonus, or 'select' points (which are a specific kind of bonus).

Like others have said, if you buy enough airline tickets, this is a 2% Thank You card... each of which redeemable for 1.5-3 cents if used for travel... making this a 3%-6% card for $75 annual fee. A steal, if you buy airline tickets and use the points for travel. It's been my base card for years now.

psychtobe said:TheWalL said:

One of these days...I'll go over to Flyer Talk...not get intimidated by their maze of forums and randomness and learn...one of these days....

c'mon over... we're not so scary.

completely off topic but since you do flyertalk can you answer this question psychotube:

Is the Citi Plat AMEX domestic flight plan where one ticket is free the same as the plain AMEX plat? I was over at flyertalk for over an hour and couldn't figure out the answer. I have the AMEX plat just for the domestic flights, it pays for itself easily. But the citi has a significantly less annual fee. I would move to the citi if the domestic B1G1 free plans were the same. Thanks in advance, I know you can figure this out for me.

coolbargains said:TheWalL said:OT...Wondering how flight points work...

Lets say I buy an airticket worth $5000 and fly on it. Do I earn 5000 TYPoints AND 5000 flight points (in addition to all miles I accrue on the airline program)??

TY Purchase points = 5000
TY Flight points = 5000 (if total distance flown is 5000 miles)
Total TYP transferred to your TY account = 5000+5000 = 10000
Airline FF program miles earned = 5000 (if 5000 miles flown)

So basically you were guessing it right

However, just to clarify for the infrequent flyer... earning 5000 flight miles will likely cost way way less than $5000. So I would not use the numbers above as any kind of guidance for earning ability.