Citibank Retires 13-Year Jet Airways Co-Brand, Launches PremierMiles
Citibank ended its 13-year-old Jet Airways co-brand card effective July 16, 2012 and replaced it with PremierMiles, an airline-agnostic miles card. Existing Jet co-brand holders got a 10,000-mile bonus to soften the switch.
After 13 years, Citibank and Jet Airways are done. The co-brand card that ran since 1999 ends effective July 16, 2012, and in its place Citi is launching PremierMiles — a card whose miles redeem across any airline instead of being welded to a single carrier.
Read the room and the move makes itself. Indian aviation is a graveyard-in-progress right now, and a miles currency that lives or dies with one airline’s balance sheet is a bad bet for a bank to underwrite. Airline-agnostic is the only sane design left.
Existing Jet co-brand cardholders aren’t being dumped empty-handed: Citi is crediting a 10,000-mile bonus to ease the migration.
Our take: single-airline co-brands concentrate risk you don’t get paid for. PremierMiles trades romance for flexibility, and flexibility is worth more — take the 10,000 miles and switch.