American Express Membership Rewards, for example, generally assigns a $1 value to 100 points for the purchase of an airline ticket. Therefore, a $300 ticket bought on the American Express Travel website would cost 30,000 Membership Rewards points. United Airlines, for instance, is not listed as a Citi ThankYou Points partner on the Citi website. Frequent fliers who redeem their miles to buy tickets with a program’s partner airline — an airline’s partner can be outside its alliance — may even find better deals there. For example, American Airlines and British Airways are partners, so a traveler can use American Airlines miles to buy a British Airways ticket.

Source: New York Times May 20, 2019 18:58 UTC