As bloggers, we take pride in helping our friends collect points and miles. It brings us great joy when they plan their first award trip. As a mentor, I occasionally encounter questions that I may not have an immediate answer to. When this happens, I use it as an opportunity to expand my knowledge. Recently, I was asked how to combine points from two different bank programs, one of which I don’t typically use. I was motivated to research and learn more about this topic.
While the answer may seem obvious if you’ve been collecting points and miles for a while, this can be very confusing for someone just starting.
One advantage of earning transferrable/flexible points is transferring the points to any of the bank’s partner programs. You keep your points with the bank program until you want to move them to whichever program has the award you want to book available. If you have points in two different programs, there’s a new set of problems you need to consider.
Each bank has its own list of transfer partners.
I’ll use the question my friend asked me as an example. He has Capital One points earned with his Venture card. He was looking to get a new card for his business and asked about the Chase Ink Preferred, which currently offers a 100,000-point sign-up bonus.
He was looking to earn points that could help him book two seats to Tokyo and wondered if he could transfer points to an airline, like ANA, with these miles.
I was glad to see that he had a goal in mind and was working on a plan to meet that goal. Already having those things makes answering a question so much easier instead of when someone asks, “What’s the best card for me?” with no idea of how they’re going to use the miles.
I let my friend know that up until recently, I didn’t really follow Capital One. Points earned with their cards were only good for cash back on travel expenses. That was, until early 2019 when Capital One began to let you transfer points from some of their cards (Venture personal and Spark Miles business cards) to these nineteen airline and hotel partners:
- Aeromexico (Club Premier)
- Air France/KLM (Flying Blue)
- Air Canada (Aeroplan)
- Avianca (LifeMiles)
- British Airways Executive Club (Avios)
- Cathay Pacific (Asia Miles)
- Emirates (Skywards)
- Etihad (Etihad Guest)
- EVA Air (Infinity MileageLands)
- Finnair (Finnair Plus)
- Qantas (Qantas Frequent Flyer)
- Singapore Airlines (KrisFlyer)
- Turkish Airlines (Miles&Smiles)
- TAP Air Portugal (Miles&Go)
- Accor Live Limitless
- Choice Privileges
- Wyndham Rewards
When you transfer 1,000 Capital One miles, you’ll receive between 500 to 1000 miles in the partner program. Being able to transfer points to partners makes Capital One points more valuable than when you could only use them for cash.
Now that I was familiar with Capital One’s partners, I needed to look at Chase. Since my friends wanted to combine points from Capital One and Chase to book a trip, I needed to see which programs were partners with both banks. Here’s the list of Chase’s airline partners:
- AerLingus AerClub (Avios)
- Air Canada (Aeroplan)
- British Airways Executive Club (Avios)
- Flying Blue AIR FRANCE KLM
- Emirates Skywards
- JetBlue TrueBlue
- Iberia Plus (Avios)
- Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer
- Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards
- United MileagePlus
- Virgin Atlantic Flying Club
Five airlines partner with both banks: Air Canada, British Airways, Flying Blue (KLM/Air France), Emirates and Singapore. He wouldn’t be flying on either Air France or KLM, but he could book a flight through their programs for one of their partners.
Air France/KLM (Flying Blue)
Flying Blue has several airline partners that would be useful to get to Japan:
- Delta
- Japan Airlines
- Korean Air
- China Airlines
The Flying Blue program doesn’t publish an award chart so the number of miles needed for flights can vary.
Singapore Airlines (KrisFlyer)
Singapore Airlines is a member of the Star Alliance and they offer a flight from Los Angeles to Tokyo as a 5th freedom route (the plane continues onward to Singapore from Tokyo). They have several partner airlines that are useful for getting to Japan with KrisFlyer miles.
- ANA
- Air Canada
- Asiana
- EVA Airways
- United Airlines
KrisFlyer has an award chart for Star Alliance redemptions. A round-trip ticket from North America to Japan (North Asia 2) costs 90,000 miles in economy, 175,000 miles in business class, and 200,000 miles in first class.
Emirates (Skywards)
They have four partners you can fly with to get to Japan.
- Air Canada
- Japan Airlines
- Korean Air
- United
You could also fly Emirates to get to Japan, but they add excessive fees when booking reward tickets on their airline.
Final Thoughts
Capital One’s list of airline partners includes some programs unfamiliar to US travelers. There are still some great options available and now that you can combine the points earned with Capital One cards with other flexible point currencies, it becomes easier to save up for the dream trip you’ve been planning.
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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
