Are Citi Cards Actually Viable for Racking Up Southwest Airlines Miles?

Help Needed / Question Forum
1

Hey everyone…

I just discovered that you can swap 6,000 Choice Privileges points for 1,800 Southwest miles, which breaks down to a 3.33:1 ratio—basically, you need 3.33 Choice points to get 1 Southwest mile.

So, I’m starting to wonder if I’m losing it, but doesn’t that make Citi cards a decent option for accumulating Southwest miles, especially the non-AF ones? And if you’ve got an AF Citi card, could it be a sneaky good way to rack up even more miles? What do you all think?

2

Honestly, cash is the way to go. Those multipliers are weak—2.25x with the Custom Cash and just 0.9x with the Double Cash. You’re better off saving your points.

I made a post a while back about Southwest points, and while they’re technically above 1cpp, they barely scrape over 1.1cpp when you factor in gift card promos.

3

I think you’d be better off just cashing out the thank you points and paying cash for domestic flights.

4

The only way to do it without an AF is to have the Rewards+ card.

Just keep in mind that not all ThankYou points are created equal. If you want to transfer Citi ThankYou points to most partners mentioned here, you need a premium Citi ThankYou card, like the Citi Prestige® Card (which you can’t apply for anymore) or the Citi Strata Premier.

If you’re rocking just the Citi Rewards+ Card, you’ll get more limited ThankYou points that can only be transferred to JetBlue TrueBlue, Choice Privileges, and Wyndham Rewards. But if you’ve got the Citi Double Cash Card or the Citi Custom Cash Card, those earn cash back as “basic” ThankYou points that can’t be transferred to partner programs.

However, if you also have the Citi Prestige or Citi Strata Premier, you can combine your limited and basic ThankYou points with those from your Citi Prestige or Citi Strata Premier account. Then, you can transfer your combined rewards to any Citi ThankYou transfer partners.

5

how valuable are southwest points? Are you reliably getting 1.67 cent per point value with southwest?

6

It was an interesting thought experiment and I ended up at about 1.5 cpp from the 2 most recent flights I took. Interesting way to backdoor southwest miles that I hadn’t seen before. I think they allow for combined use of miles and dollars for flights now so that could be a spare use of some points