Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card cardholders gained the ability to transfer to airline frequent flyer miles late last year.

At the time Capital One shared they’d be adding airline points transfer partners. And when they ran an Emirates miles transfer bonus in March they shared that there would be more transfer bonuses to come. They added JetBlue as a transfer partner, and highlighted it with a transfer bonus in May (partnership ended). Then they ran an Air France KLM Flying Blue transfer bonus in June.

They’re not missing a beat with transfer bonuses, either — they’ve just announced a 25% bonus on all miles transferred to Avianca LifeMiles in July.

Here’s Capital One’s list of airline transfer partners and standard transfer rates:

Airline Frequent Flyer Program		Transfer Ratio
Aeromexico Club Premier		2-to-1.5
Air Canada Aeroplan		2-to-1.5
Air France KLM Flying Blue		2-to-1.5
Alitalia MilleMiglia Program (eliminated)		2-to-1.5
Cathay Pacific Asia Miles		2-to-1.5
Avianca LifeMiles		2-to-1.5
Emirates Skywards		2-to-1.0
Etihad Airways Etihad Guest		2-to-1.5
EVA Air Infinity MileageLands		2-to-1.5
Finnair Plus		2-to-1.5
Hainan Airlines Fortune Wings Club		2-to-1.5
JetBlue TrueBlue (eliminated)		2-to-1.0
Qantas Frequent Flyer		2-to-1.5
Qatar Airways Privilege Club		2-to-1.5
Singapore Airlines Krisflyer		2-to-1.0

Both Capital One cards earn 2 miles per dollar, so with this bonus that’s effectively earning 1.876 Flying Blue points per dollar which is excellent.

And Capital One is in a better position to capitalize on transfer bonuses for new cardmembers and to encourage increased card spend than most issuers because points become available when transactions post to your card account (“between 1-3 business days after pending transactions charge to your statement”) you do not have to wait until statement close (or worse still, paying off a statement or the following statement close).

Lifemiles has no fuel surcharges and a reasonable award chart. However not all connections are bookable, you’re pretty much limited to the options you see on their redemption website (which is serviceable) and telephone customer service is challenging (e-mail is better).

You can fly business class to Europe for 63,000 miles each way or Southeast Asia for 78,000. First class (Lufthansa) is 87,000 miles each way between the US and Europe.

Already on their fourth transfer bonus of the year, having just launched transferable points, and Capital One notes “limited-time offers like this will be another major perk for Venture and Spark Miles account holders to take advantage of.” So we can certainly expect to see more.

Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card